Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/07/15/for-90-years-lightbulbs-were.html
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Sooo - eventually it will be subscription based? As per the article the other day where in the future you own nothing and have access to every thing. You pay x a month to light your house with Phillips bulbs? Then they can make long lasting bulbs, and get a small amount for each bulb from you per month? If one does burn out, they replace it. If you break it, you replace it.
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Insert usual LED overrated lamp life bit here.
Add halogen lamp life of 2,500 hours typical.
Add section about better color rendering and dimming.
Add bit about medium base socket not being proprietary.
Signature.
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What I don’t understand is if these things are supposed to last 40 years why am I often going back to Home Depot to buy replacements for the ones that have burned out? I just replaced 2 this morning. EcoSmart brand.
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I’m not quite sure what point you are making but I have decided - there is no way I’m using IoT lighting. A wired network using a non-TCP/IP protocol, yes, working on that.
IoT is a good idea in theory but standards are nowhere sufficiently developed to do it in practice. I feel IPv6 was a very bad idea. A secure system with levels of cloaking and very restricted protocols should have come first, then services built on top of it. As it is, we’ve had crazy services based on uncontrolled use of URIs and ports.
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One of the major problems with edison base bulbs is similar to that of cigarette lighters in cars: A completely inferior form-factor based on obsolete technology that is detrimental to their current use.
Cramming all the LED’s and their associated power supplies into the form-factor of an incandescent bulb gives terrible light distribution, heat dissipation, and is expensive to do on top of that.
If you want to use LED’s in your house, use a purpose-built LED fixture. With the LED’s spread over a larger area, and with power supplies that actually have the possibility of airflow, they will last for a LONG long time.
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Average of 40 years. The next ones you buy might last till 2096.
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Is “IoT” the new ‘chemtrails’ for EFF members?
Where LEDs are concerned, it really just comes down to quality. If you want to pay crazy prices for internet-connected bulbs, hey, go for it, but I doubt anyone will see the point. The LEDs I’ve bought at IKEA are super cheap, and last about as long as a cheap incandescent bulb, but the CREE brand bulbs I’ve bought from Home Depot have lasted years so far. I’d also add that what seems to be driving their lifespan isn’t the bulb itself, but the heatsink (?) between it and the base.
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So how do manufacturers of other long-long-long-term durables grow their business and markets? Lodge makes cast-iron skillets that are nearly indestructible. I have an Estwing framing hammer (made in USA!) that will likely last generations. Last I checked, these companies are doing just fine.
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It’s the same series of points I make anytime anyone trots out LED vs halogen. LEDs have internal drivers whose warranty is usually two years. If your electronic transformer goes and is out of warranty, having a diode on the other end of it good for another twenty years is now useless.
Add the dimming issues, the lower light quality, and now proprietary technology and I’m still recommending halogen in homes.
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I’d like to answer and in doing so have a few questions so it’s not pure speculaton, mostly about lamp use:
- What kind of fixture are they going in, ceiling can lights?
- What direction is the base, upward or downward?
- Where did you see the 40 year lamp life?
Enough with your modern stuff.
Gas mantles were good enough for my grandparents, they’re good enough for me.
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My neighborhood’s street lights were recently converted to LED, which sounded great in theory. In practice, what we got were harsh, painful-on-the-eyes lights that each use three separate LED bulbs, so each streetlight throws three sets of crisp shadows. The result is a weird blurry effect that makes you feel dizzy just walking down the street.
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So, with all the negatives, perhaps it’s best that these bulbs not last so long.
Were those the krunjsplugels? The grindenplanderdongs are much better.
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Could. Not. Agree. More.
First-gen and second-gen LED Christmas lights are an abomination. I hope every string goes out before December.
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I don’t need no stinking LED bulb for that…LSD works just fine
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I suppose it depends greatly on whose theories you’re listening to. I feel pretty alone in the world saying LED isn’t going to solve all the problems.
Well, I do have some pretty good company, but nobody listens to him either.
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there are a few inherent problems with LED bulbs.
Unlike incandescent bulbs, heat kills the electronics so a LED bulb put in an enclosed fixture that is fine with a conventual bulb will soon get too hot and fail pretty quickly.
Then we come to quality, many of the cheaper LED’s use a capacitive dropper circuit which has 2 problems. Firstly if the led’s are exposed they are referenced to the mains and depending on the number of LEDs sometimes at quite a high voltage. Then there is the fact that they are all in series which means if one cheap ass led fails the whole light does.
On the cheaper bulbs quite often they run them too hard which makes them fail sooner and run hotter.
Then there is the use of dimmable LEDs, if you don’t have the correct dimmer they will die after a few months. Most dimmers have a minimum load which is more than the LED’s will be when they are dimmed, which really screws them up.
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They’ve been upgrading ours from the old sodium arc lamps. Going from the softer warm orange glow to the bright white lights is really off-putting, though happily ours have enough of a matrix of leds that they work out to a reasonably diffused light so at least there’s no weird shadowing, but they don’t have great diffusers, so they’re more like spotlights.
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Hammers are the most likely tool to tunnel through extra-dimensional space to elsewhere the minute you look the other way, which is what Big Hammer relies on for profits. They secretly campaign to hold back physics research for this very reason.
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