volvoclearinghouse said:There are some seriously messed up conspiracy theories about those purple/blue lights.
Nothing conspiratorial about it. Just corporations selling crappy, overpriced products to government, generally with the knowledge of persons working within government, and that's literally been going on forever.
I could swear I read somewhere about some other country that also uses E26 sockets for light bulbs, but at a higher voltage than the US. The bulbs that are designed for their market are supposed to work in the US, too, and end up being more durable. I should see if I can find that info, I've had similar issues with LED bulbs, name brand and generic.
Edit: It's not higher voltage, it's just that there are more LEDs running at a lower power to reduce heat. Dubai lamps.
1988RedT2 said:volvoclearinghouse said:There are some seriously messed up conspiracy theories about those purple/blue lights.
Nothing conspiratorial about it. Just corporations selling crappy, overpriced products to government, generally with the knowledge of persons working within government, and that's literally been going on forever.
WAKE UP SHEEPLE.
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/pwlepj/you_didnt_hear_this_about_purple_street_lights/
RevRico said:How clean is your power at home? Mix of old and new wiring? How's the local transformer, at or near its limit? With problems like that you either have crap luck with bulbs, or Id suspect some sort of power issues, voltage spikes, weird frequency changes or some such.
The house is old, but it was rewired with all new NM-B in 2012. New 200A Square D panel at the same time. As far as how clean it actually is I'm not sure. I only know that when I was doing some wiring a couple years ago, I noticed that with that one breaker off, I was getting 9-10V phantom which I was able to reduce by separating the neutrals and grounds in the panel. The service itself is terrible. Wind and ice cause brown-outs constantly. Repeated calls and emails to the power company get the same "we value your input" response but no joy. So, that could explain why some of the house fixtures lose LEDs.
But what about the theater? What about my van? I know the van has a pretty sophisticated voltage regulation system as part of the ECM and BCM. Similar assumptions about the RV. Everything comes into a converter and dropped to 12v, so even if I had dirty, undervolted AC input, I should have pretty clean DC.
I think what I was wondering (more than solving my individual problems) was to explain the more global reasons. One would think like with any product you can buy it at HF and expect it to last for one project, but if you buy a Festool or Metabo you expect it to last. I expected some hit-or-miss with my Flxtorp or Moqtor Amazon cheapies, but didn't expect the exact same problem with the Phillips, Feit, or Sylvania.
red_stapler said:Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:Why do they suck donkey balls?
The company that sells fewer LED bulbs goes out of business.
Meh, that's a little over-simplified. It takes all kinds. People who want a good cheese might shop at Whole Foods and pay a premium. People who just want something cheese-like might pick up a pack of Kraft Singles at WalMart.
The company that sells more LEDs because they're crap will go out of business since no one will make the same mistake twice. The company that sells fewer LEDs is likely a higher quality product with a higher profit margin per diode. I find it hard to swallow that they all put out crap simply so I have to buy more. The whole benefit (other than power use) is that they're supposed to last tens of thousands of hours, but most of mine last less time than incandescent.
GameboyRMH said:Meanwhile LED lights in cars continue to run for decades, because if their power source was that crappy the car would fry the ECU too.
The Phillips LEDs in my van didn't last two months. Half of the diodes have fallen off and the remaining diodes flicker like a bad neon sign.
Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:I bought my house in 2017. First thing I did was go through and replace every bulb with LEDs. Most of the house is recessed lighting except the bedroom, bathroom, and basement. For the most part, the recessed flood bulbs have been good, but one died in the kitchen. But the bathroom vanity light which has two R7S style is now on it's seventh bulb replacement. I have tried four different random Amazon LEDs that were failures out of the box, and now on three Phillips (apparently made by Feit electric) replacements which are equally short-lived.
For that vanity light, have you looked into how clean the power is from that part of the circuit / panel? And have you considered replacing that light fixture with a different one?
In my old place / my parents' place, our bathroom light -- which is an old school flourscent tubes setup -- had a habit of being OK with fresh flourscent tubes. Then once the tube is 1 or 2 years old, it'll start flickering and the ends of the tube would start to darken out. Eventually the tube would die and we rinsed and repeated. Because the duty cycle for each tube was still typically 2+ years before it would completely fail, we just kind of put up with it for a long time.
And then one day, I guess my old man just had enough with it, and changed the whole thing out for an LED setup and it has never given us any trouble anymore.
I've had almost zero LED bulb failures at work or at home. One thing that I find annoying is how many stores primarily stock LED bulbs with high Kelvin numbers. Does anyone actually like ice blue light? Give me the warmer spectrum. Another annoyance are are the incandescent heat lights for our reptiles. They get bounced around in the stores and about 25 percent are broken by the time they are screwed in.
Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:red_stapler said:Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:Why do they suck donkey balls?
The company that sells fewer LED bulbs goes out of business.
Meh, that's a little over-simplified. It takes all kinds. People who want a good cheese might shop at Whole Foods and pay a premium. People who just want something cheese-like might pick up a pack of Kraft Singles at WalMart.
The company that sells more LEDs because they're crap will go out of business since no one will make the same mistake twice. The company that sells fewer LEDs is likely a higher quality product with a higher profit margin per diode. I find it hard to swallow that they all put out crap simply so I have to buy more. The whole benefit (other than power use) is that they're supposed to last tens of thousands of hours, but most of mine last less time than incandescent.
Of course it's over simplified, I'm not a professor of economics. Now, with your cheese analogy, there isn't an expectation for the expensive cheese from whole foods to feed you for 10 times longer than an equivalent volume of kraft singles.
The company that can get you to buy more LED bulbs because what it sold you didn't last as long as it might have is the successful company. I'm sure there's a chart somewhere that shows exactly how long a bulb should last to maximize profits. If they don't optimize for that, they're going to lose to the company who does.
ProDarwin said:z31maniac said:I haven't had an issue with them. But whatever the appropriate color range at Lowe's. We've been here almost 6 years.
Only on our 2nd porch light.
How long is your light on daily? Most LEDs advertise significantly longer lifespans than that. To replace a light once in 6 years is much sooner than expected.
I have replaced a number of them in my house that are less than 5 years old. Unfortunately I'm not great about documenting what brand they are so I can make sure I don't repeat the same mistake.
Dusk til dawn, everyday for about 5 years before it got dim enough I replaced it. So let's say 10 hours per day, every day for 5 years. That comes out to 18,250 hours. I think we typically buy the GE Refresh bulbs. I just looked them up they say " rated 13.7 years @ 3 hours per day," that's 15,000 hours.
I don't think that's too bad for $6. Maybe it was 4.5 years, that's still 16,425 hours. They are cheap enough and replaced so infrequently, I don't bother to keep track.
red_stapler said:I'm sure there's a chart somewhere that shows exactly how long a bulb should last to maximize profits.
"Long enough that the customer doesn't notice"
Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:I get it. Everything is made in China now. Some of those things are fine, others are not.
I bought my house in 2017. First thing I did was go through and replace every bulb with LEDs. Most of the house is recessed lighting except the bedroom, bathroom, and basement. For the most part, the recessed flood bulbs have been good, but one died in the kitchen. But the bathroom vanity light which has two R7S style is now on it's seventh bulb replacement. I have tried four different random Amazon LEDs that were failures out of the box, and now on three Phillips (apparently made by Feit electric) replacements which are equally short-lived.
I did a similar thing with my Express van. I bought all LED replacement bulbs for exterior and interior (except dash lighting). I have now had to replace four of them in two years, and it doesn't seem to matter if I get Amazon cheapies or expensive Phillips or Sylvania from the FLAPS
Same exact thing with my RV. I got all LEDs for interior lights to make the battery last a bit longer without shore power. They suck.
Save thing with my theater. I often do the LED version of a bulb for things like a floor lamp on the set, or lobby lighting, to minimize the chances of a bulb dying which is a distraction to a performance, and also to reduce heat and the chances of fire. They can also be sourced with plastic globes which means there can't be broken glass on a set which can be very disruptive. The likelihood of that bulb acting funny, dying, or causing other issues is about the same as an incandescent.
Why do they suck donkey balls?
The common theme: You are replacing incandescent bulbs with consumer-grade retrofit LEDs.
As matthewmcl and Toyman! and ProDarwin pointed out, price is very much a factor in those products. Nobody's keeping a spreadsheet of which brands last and which brands don't. Whether the brand will even be around in six months, or whether the name on the box has any correlation to the manufacturer, are also up for discussion in the Amazon era.
Commercial LED fixtures, automotive LEDs fitted by OEMs, etc., all seem to be very reliable - certainly better than what you're seeing with retail retrofits.
I have some exposure to commercial lighting, but not much in theatrical. When I get to work tomorrow I'll ask our lighting designer (who coincidentally has a background in theater lighting) if he can help put you in touch with a lighting rep in your area. If not, he can at least recommend some manufacturers, and the manufacturers can probably find a rep. I know you didn't start this thread looking to purchase a bunch of new stuff, but might be worth starting a conversation if your existing lighting is giving you this much trouble.
Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:I've had almost zero LED bulb failures at work or at home. One thing that I find annoying is how many stores primarily stock LED bulbs with high Kelvin numbers. Does anyone actually like ice blue light? Give me the warmer spectrum.
Absolutely! I definitely don't want anything cooler than 4000k, and I prefer 3500k-3700k.
What bugs me is low Color Rendition Indexes (CRIs). I love LED efficiency but I hate when it brings out all the weird color undertones. Especially in foods - I have good restaurants I will no longer eat in because they put in cheap LED lighting and it makes all the food unappetizing.
CRI needs to be 90 or better, which costs more too.
In reply to Duke :
We had this discussion over in Tuna's sleep thread; those high K color lights (bluer) can seriously mess with your sleep patterns, particularly later in the day. My office has 6500K fluorescent tubes, but in my shop/ garage I used 3500-3700K LED lights, since most of my time there is at night.
In reply to volvoclearinghouse :
I get the physics behind it, but my anal retentiveness is aggravated that hotter color temperature (higher degrees Kelvin number) is actually considered "cooler" light.
The CFL bulbs were a disaster (long warm up times, and very limited life), and honestly the LEDs haven't been much better in terms of longevity. I never remember replacing incandescents with the frequency that we replace the LEDs in our house. I typically pick up whatever's on sale in the size I need at Home Depot, maybe I should shop online via Amazon so I at least have a sense of the reviews before purchasing. I've purchased name brand, lesser-known brands, etc. and they all seem to fail pretty frequently.
The outdoor LEDs seems to last much longer that the ones inside. I know those were some of the most expensive LEDs I've purchased, so I'm thankful for that!
ProDarwin said:red_stapler said:I'm sure there's a chart somewhere that shows exactly how long a bulb should last to maximize profits."Long enough that the customer doesn't notice"
Long enough that the same Alibaba bulb you bought off Amazon when it was called Flintorg received enough bad reviews that they renamed them Synfluf and seeded the reviews with a bunch of fake positives. That way you return to Amazon saying "well, I'm not buying those awful Flintorgs again," and stumble on the Synfluf and say "I'll give these a try."
red_stapler said:Now, with your cheese analogy, there isn't an expectation for the expensive cheese from whole foods to feed you for 10 times longer than an equivalent volume of kraft singles.
Exactly my point. I buy cheap Amazon bulbs with low expectations. I buy expensive Phillips bulbs at HD and I expect more. The problem is, the Phillips look identical, have the same markings, have the same failure rate, and (above all) the same failure mode. Normal free-market expectation is that "you get what you pay for" and that mostly holds true. I expect better things from an Exedy clutch than I do an $18 friction disc from Pep Boys. But in this exercise, they all appear to be the same junk. I don't see how that is sustainable in a market that has the presumption of price being proportional to quality.
What I'm saying is, I went to WalMart and got some Kraft Singles. I didn't like it, so I went to Whole Foods and bought some 6-year aged Scottish Cheddar, and when I opened the package, it was Kraft Singles inside.
Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:Long enough that the same Alibaba bulb you bought off Amazon when it was called Flintorg received enough bad reviews that they renamed them Synfluf and seeded the reviews with a bunch of fake positives. That way you return to Amazon saying "well, I'm not buying those awful Flintorgs again," and stumble on the Synfluf and say "I'll give these a try."
[thump thump thump] ...is this thing on?
Yes, exactly. You know exactly why LED retrofits suck.
The fact that you can buy the same cheap crap for a higher price under a familiar brand name at Hammerbarn is because people walk into Hammerbarn looking for retrofit LED "bulbs" under a familiar brand name. And Hammerbarn wants to sell whatever the customer will pay for today.
We have been conditioned, by a century of incandescents, to view lightning elements as consumables. The manufacturer of replacement elements is under no pressure at all, and probably no incentive, to make them as long-lived as an actual LED fixture has to be in order to remain viable.
Cree is a good name in LEDs.
Frankly I can't explain the problems you're having, but I wish I could. From personal experience messing with them (to echo BeerBaron) LEDs are finicky to temperature, their driver, and how clean the power is- the latter I know you said you've rewired your home, but are you able to pop an oscilioscope on the lines to see the sine wave itself? Other than that, I can only guess that the recessed lights can't get airflow and are overheating.
In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :
I don't think they earn bad reviews. 99% of customers won't remember the brand or when they bought it or how long it should last. Most people who actually review things will do so after a very short period of time. So the only hurdle the manufacturer needs to clear is "works when the customer first tries it, and for a short period after that"
DarkMonohue said:Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:Long enough that the same Alibaba bulb you bought off Amazon when it was called Flintorg received enough bad reviews that they renamed them Synfluf and seeded the reviews with a bunch of fake positives. That way you return to Amazon saying "well, I'm not buying those awful Flintorgs again," and stumble on the Synfluf and say "I'll give these a try."
[thump thump thump] ...is this thing on?
Yes, exactly. You know exactly why LED retrofits suck.
The fact that you can buy the same cheap crap for a higher price under a familiar brand name at Hammerbarn is because people walk into Hammerbarn looking for retrofit LED "bulbs" under a familiar brand name. And Hammerbarn wants to sell whatever the customer will pay for today.
We have been conditioned, by a century of incandescents, to view lightning elements as consumables. The manufacturer of replacement elements is under no pressure at all, and probably no incentive, to make them as long-lived as an actual LED fixture has to be in order to remain viable.
Your view is a little depressing, but it's not wrong.
ProDarwin said:In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :
I don't think they earn bad reviews. 99% of customers won't remember the brand or when they bought it or how long it should last. Most people who actually review things will do so after a very short period of time. So the only hurdle the manufacturer needs to clear is "works when the customer first tries it, and for a short period after that"
Exactly. I call it the "new sneakers" effect. We all did it as kids. We got new sneaks and instantly went outside to see if we could run faster.
Same with tires. Of course you'll leave a good review on brand new tires that replaced bald ones, but will you come back three years later to amend your review after the hard rubber near the bottom of the tread caused you to nearly wipe out during a panic lane-change?
Reviews aren't always a good indicator of product quality.
An analogy: We have a multi-year history of vehicle quality. Brands A and B have proven to be quality vehicles and a good bet to buy used. Brands X and Y are fraught with terrible reputations. It just seems like LEDs are all X and Y with the rare exception of a few brands that are A. Most products on the market range from cheap and sucky up to expensive and good. It feels like LEDs are at the absolute extremes of the spectrum - as if 95% of the price range falls into the sucky category and 5% of them fall into the super-expensive and quality category.
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