LED room lighting (again)

[hellymedic]

I reckon about half the working incandescent bulbs here have not been changed since I moved here in 1999. Many get little use. Some just LAST.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Sorry, I meant they were always on when it's dark. There's a light/dark sensor and a timer. I use the timer (which has the most inaccurate clock ever). Obviously, the main reason for the lights is so that we can see the bears. They hate it when you walk into them.

I did once almost trip over a badger. But that was down the road.

The bears are tangoing on the camping stool. Dancing in the dark, probably.

[Jaded]

Our outside lamp is twenty years old. I’ve only changed it once and when I did that I put it on a proximity sensor. It is incandescent.

Well I’d be pretty miffed if you only gave me any attention once every 20 years

 

[Jaded]

Sorry, I meant they were always on when it's dark. There's a light/dark sensor and a timer. I use the timer (which has the most inaccurate clock ever). Obviously, the main reason for the lights is so that we can see the bears. They hate it when you walk into them.

I did once almost trip over a badger. But that was down the road.

The bears are tangoing on the camping stool. Dancing in the dark, probably.

Dancing in poo is never fun.

[ian]

That's the problem with dancing in the dark. Especially if you're a bear. In the woods.

[pcolbeck]

I reckon about half the working incandescent bulbs here have not been changed since I moved here in 1999. Many get little use. Some just LAST.

This. I think there is a form of natural selection that works with incandescents. You start of with a load of random ones but gradually all the short lived ones blow and get replaced and you end up with only good ones that will last for ages.
Duff fittings or being switched on and off all the time mitigate against any kind of long life for them though. Office use where they are switched on once a day or sometimes left on all the time is perfect for maxing out the life of a good incandescent bulb.

[hellymedic]

I reckon about half the working incandescent bulbs here have not been changed since I moved here in 1999. Many get little use. Some just LAST.

This. I think there is a form of natural selection that works with incandescents. You start of with a load of random ones but gradually all the short lived ones blow and get replaced and you end up with only good ones that will last for ages.
Duff fittings or being switched on and off all the time mitigate against any kind of long life for them though. Office use where they are switched on once a day or sometimes left on all the time is perfect for maxing out the life of a good incandescent bulb.

Most of mine will have been left in situ by the previous occupants.

[ian]

That as well, the two big halogen security lights are the originals we inherited. We did remove the front lights (also halogens) and added the security lights down the side of the house. But those two weren't broken so we left. I'd probably change them if they were on more, but they come on for 10 seconds or so at a burst and even then you have to stand and wave frantically for their attention. Or be a bear or one of the yeti that lives at the top of the garden.

[Kim]

This. I think there is a form of natural selection that works with incandescents. You start of with a load of random ones but gradually all the short lived ones blow and get replaced and you end up with only good ones that will last for ages.
Duff fittings or being switched on and off all the time mitigate against any kind of long life for them though. Office use where they are switched on once a day or sometimes left on all the time is perfect for maxing out the life of a good incandescent bulb.

Back in the good old days, the effect of turning on and off on lightbulb longevity was the helmet debate^[1] of the stagecraft newsgroups.  It goes something like this:

Lightbulbs usually fail when you turn them on...
Therefore turning lightbulbs on is bad for them (inrush current, thermal cycling, etc)...
Therefore they'll last longer if left on continuously, rather than when cycled on and off.

The counter argument is that, manufacturing defects aside, eventual failure is due to the evaporation of material from the filament, which is a function of run time.

Usual digressions include:
The use of pre-heat (commonly theatrical dimmers set to 0% will light the filament to a dull red glow, in order to improve their response time).
Halogen cycle.
Anecdotes involving traffic lights.
Anything from Big Clive under the pesudonym 'Davie Dimmers'.

At the time, I predicted that filament lamps would be thoroughly obsolete before we saw an end to these arguments.  I failed to anticipate the withering of usenet due to social media.


_{[1] Technically, the ability (or otherwise) to stimulate fluorescence using a tungsten source with a #181 (Congo Blue) gel is the more direct equivalent of the helmet debate, but let's pretend it's analogous to the hi-vis debate for general neatness}

[Cudzoziemiec]

But will the lightbulb as visual sign of a bright idea ever be replaced by the LED? Or maybe by something else? My feeling is that, just as the old floppy disc lives on as the save icon, it won't be replaced, though it might morph into something slightly different as (or if) physical lightbulb shapes fade from artists' memory.

[Kim]

I don't think I've ever seen an LED icon^[1] outside an electronics CAD package.  The lightbulb as a symbol for a bright idea, and indeed as an icon for 'lights' and 'on' is bound to live at least as long as the telephone receiver or vintage microphone icons.

The 3.5" floppy for 'save' is doing surprisingly well, considering the short window (at around the time that WIMP GUIs went mainstream) during which they were likely to be the medium in use.  I suppose hard disks, like LEDs, lose out as icon-fodder because the average person doesn't really know what they look like.

The bellows camera is still winning, I reckon.


_{[1] Either the schematic symbol, or a stylised through-hole LED.}

[Redjeep!]

I don't think I've ever seen an LED icon^[1] outside an electronics CAD package.  The lightbulb as a symbol for a bright idea, and indeed as an icon for 'lights' and 'on' is bound to live at least as long as the telephone receiver or vintage microphone icons.

The 3.5" floppy for 'save' is doing surprisingly well, considering the short window (at around the time that WIMP GUIs went mainstream) during which they were likely to be the medium in use.  I suppose hard disks, like LEDs, lose out as icon-fodder because the average person doesn't really know what they look like.

The bellows camera is still winning, I reckon.


_{[1] Either the schematic symbol, or a stylised through-hole LED.}

What about the steam train at a level crossing ? That must be a similar vintage to the bellows camera.

[Cudzoziemiec]

The bellows camera is one I've only seen on UK road signs. Might be used elsewhere but in Poland for instance (as that's the only other country I can remember having seen camera road signs, and road signs are the only place I can think of having seen a bellows camera icon) it looks like an instamatic, with flash.

As for the steam train, back in 1996 I was living the jet set lifestyle in a backpackers' in Auckland. Watching the news one day with my fellow enterprising, go-getting, industrious youth of today, there was an item about moves to reduce the number of collisions at level crossings. A new road sign had been introduced – the steam train. Koncerned Ciwis were saying how this new sign might be confusing, which of course amused us all. At this a woman from Montana (I can't remember her name, but it wasn't Hannah) joked that the sign might mean "Toy shop ahead!"

[ian]

You have no idea how adept I am at drawing floppy disks (I know, it's not a disk and it's not floppy, a joke that has less viable currency these days than a Zimbabwean dollar) and good old fashion manila folders. The floppy icon has actually acquired its own meaning separate from what it originally represented. I honestly haven't seen a floppy disk for years. I have a box of them somewhere. I suspect they contain bad poetry written for deprecated girlfriends. I quite possibly have a 5.25-inch disk somewhere that contains the software for running a Hewlett Packard HPLC. I think it might be for an Apple II. I only remember this because it was next to the helium cylinder which was not only critical for degassing acetonitrile but also comedy pizza ordering.

I fear the future will be bereft of visual metaphors so we'd better kept the old ones going.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Or interpreting vintage in another way, the steam train icon was introduced (in most of the world) at a time when steam trains were still common, as were the light bulb and floppy disk icons for their real life counterparts, but the bellows camera icon was introduced many decades after such a thing had ceased to be the standard form of camera.

[Cudzoziemiec]

You have no idea how adept I am at drawing floppy disks (I know, it's not a disk and it's not floppy, a joke that has less viable currency these days than a Zimbabwean dollar) and good old fashion manila folders. The floppy icon has actually acquired its own meaning separate from what it originally represented. I honestly haven't seen a floppy disk for years. I have a box of them somewhere. I suspect they contain bad poetry written for deprecated girlfriends. I quite possibly have a 5.25-inch disk somewhere that contains the software for running a Hewlett Packard HPLC. I think it might be for an Apple II. I only remember this because it was next to the helium cylinder which was not only critical for degassing acetonitrile but also comedy pizza ordering.

I fear the future will be bereft of visual metaphors so we'd better kept the old ones going.

It's only a matter of time then before those balancing rocks, which apparently are a real geographical feature, become an icon for something like <sentence ends here as this is not POBI>.

[thing1]

I reckon about half the working incandescent bulbs here have not been changed since I moved here in 1999. Many get little use. Some just LAST.

We used to regularly cycle by this fine example
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Light

The Centennial Light is the world's longest-lasting light bulb, burning since 1901.

[Ham]

I've just ordered a bunch of these for a shed/studio https://trade.ledhut.co.uk/spot-lights/downlights/fire-rated-downlight-with-5-watt-gu10-included.html - a fiver for a fire rated downlighter comlete with 50W equivalent GU10 bulb. I figger if the bulb goes nastypop the fire rating may contain it.

[fuaran]

Any suggestions for LED to replace the fluorescent tube in the kitchen? It is currently a 6ft T8, 70W.
How does it work for the starter/ballast? Do you need to remove or rewire these? Or worth replacing all of the fittings?

[Diver300]

Any suggestions for LED to replace the fluorescent tube in the kitchen? It is currently a 6ft T8, 70W.
How does it work for the starter/ballast? Do you need to remove or rewire these? Or worth replacing all of the fittings?

All the LED replacement tubes that I have seen need to have the ballast removed. It's not exactly difficult to do, but the tubes don't seem to be plug and play.

I'm very pleased with the fluorescent-fitting-shaped LED lamps that we have in the garage, but the electrician fitted them and I don't know the make.

[tonyh]

I've just fitted a dozen or so of these (this firm seems to sell only packs of five [EDIT: they do singles but more expensively]):

https://www.simplelighting.co.uk/5ft-22w-t8-led-tube-cool-white-6000k/

They came with a "dummy starter" which replaces the fluo tube starter (by shorting it out); apart from that, just put the LED tube where the fluo one was.
Ballast stays where it is. Must be a magnetic ballast tube for this set-up to be ok.

(No commercial interest. Very small electrical knowledge, so don't rely on any of this!)

[fuaran]

Ikea have LED bulbs for £0.90. Either B22 or E27. Only 400 lumens, 5W, so not the brightest. But could be useful in some rooms. Anyone tried them?
https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/products/lighting/light-bulbs-accessories/ryet-led-bulb-b22-400-lumen-globe-opal-white-art-40387472/

[rafletcher]

Any suggestions for LED to replace the fluorescent tube in the kitchen? It is currently a 6ft T8, 70W.
How does it work for the starter/ballast? Do you need to remove or rewire these? Or worth replacing all of the fittings?

All the LED replacement tubes that I have seen need to have the ballast removed. It's not exactly difficult to do, but the tubes don't seem to be plug and play.

I'm very pleased with the fluorescent-fitting-shaped LED lamps that we have in the garage, but the electrician fitted them and I don't know the make.

Late to this, but I just fitted LED tubes in my shed. All I had to do was remove the starter, and put the tube in. Work really well.

I got mine here

https://led.me.uk/t8-led-replacement-tube-6-1800mm-in-cool-white-6000k

[hellymedic]

Sainsbury's now stock the R63 7w (60w equivalent) E27 fitting, lamps that adorn my kitchen for £5.

I've just fitted one of these to replace yet another from the long-life lamp company.
We will see...

Nearly 2 years on, this lamp has lasted, so far.

The lamp over the sink is flickering like mad. My records state it's a Sainsbury's model, replaced 11/11/17.

The lamp over my head appears to have lasted since before I started recording lamp changes.

[Jaded]

We've had 9 LED downlights in our kitchen for 4.5 years and 16 in the remainder of the ground floor for 3.5 years. No failures and they are guaranteed for 10 years, so I'm not expecting failures for a while.

We've had a failure. In the second batch referred to here.

Contacted the company and they will send a replacement when they are in stock.