Way back in 1976 I started a job as an artist for a custom silkscreening shop. After a few months I thought my eyes were going bad. I had terrible eyestrain, and even when I wasn't at work my eyes could hardly focus enough to read. Then someone suggested the twin-tube fluorescent lights I worked under might be the problem. So I removed the tubes and just used my incandescent desk lamp. Very soon my vision returned to normal. Later we replaced the old fluorescent fixtures with new ones, and I never had any trouble with them. To this day I don't know if the old fixtures had a defect that caused them to flicker at an abnormal rate, or the newer ones just didn't flicker as much.
i'm like a vampire, but the only attribute I have is to compulsively count stuff and read signs and texts on the back of everything I buy.. so yes, I obviously read it..
I'm watching this for the first time in July 2023. Your sub count is 2 million. It just warms my heart to see you making this announcement about quitting your day job and how you hope it will all turn out... I'm so glad you took that leap, and I'm so glad it worked out.
"I'm so thrilled that this channel has passed 35 thousand [subscribers]. It still doesn't quite seem real" *checks and sees 1.23m subscribers" Come a long way in four years, Alec. Kudos.
I agree so much about cold-white lighting being dreadful, especially at home! It took me almost 15 years to convince my parents to ditch the old circline fixtures in the living room, where they firmly only installed 6000K cold white circlines all these years, I always mentioned that it felt like i was still working at the factory, instead of being inside my home. Finally this winter both light fixtures just straight up cooked themselves to death (all the plastic they were built off became so brittle they couldn't clip a circline anymore), so with very little money we switched to classic E27 fixtures and "wrongly" bought powerful OSRAM Led, all warm-white. My parents were really happy and convinced that now our living room looks more like a warm, cozy room than a cold, hospital-like ward.
Thank you for not dumbing this down. As an almost-electrical engineer (I switched my major to software), I appreciate the gritty details of bridge rectifiers, voltage drops, filter capacitors, and all the other electronics-geek goodies you packed into this video. Cheers!
Don't run out of money. I went from Comp Sci to EE at a more expensive school because the coursework in comp sci at that point was full of stuff I already knew, some I knew was way outdated. should've stuck it out considering I was also pretty poor and couldn't afford the new school for long enough.
Funniest way i've ever spotted flicker from LED lamps: Peeing. Yes, peeing. The stream of ..err ...drops... appeared to be going UPWARD from the toilet ... THAT was trippy lol
Same, bought two cheapo dimmable LED filament bulbs in China from aliexpress and they have no flicker. I bought a fancy LED light fixture from Ikea or some store like Ikea and it's a headache-inducing abomination.
I am extremely sensitive to the pulsing/stroking of florescent and LED lights. I've known this for years and could not believe other people could not see it. When I was a kid my school's florescent lights used to make me almost sick from kind of vertigo. Like when you are in a dark room with a strobe light to long you can get the same ill feeling. When computers became a "thing" with CRT monitors I could alwasy see the monitors set at 60hz from across rooms. I could pick out a monitor in a sea of CRT's in a computer lab that was set to 60hz. Again, most people told me they could not see this. Sometimes others can see if if they look at the CRT out of the corner of there eye, look above the monitor at a point. I could also tell when the schools upgraded to electronic ballasts in their florescent lights. The flicker was almost gone. Then came LED. At first most where great. Then I started to notice some flickered. People told me I was again crazy as LED lights didn't flicker.. I was like no.. I'm totally sure this thing is flickering.. later to find out by making them cheaper they now flicker. I could also tell a 75hz CRT.. though it was harder. I could not "see" it from across a room like 60hz. I'd have to change 75 to 100 or have 2 side by side to tell the dif between 75 and higher. A doctor I see for ADD and other mental fun said in passing while listing symptoms others have "sensitive to florescent lights" I stopped him dead.. wait.wait.. no kidding! Told him how I've always known I was way more sensitive then others and he said yep.. this would help explain it.
Yes there is indeed a giant gap in available LED bulbs nowadays. Lots of them flicker like hell, even "good" ones like Osram. It's basically a gamble what you get since even for the same bulb they might have changed the electronics over the years. This is why I do not want LED in my room. I use fluorescent tubes with a good ballast at 40 kHz. They are even cheaper, last longer, and you can easily switch the color temperature in a minute by just switching a $5 tube.
The ones that I've found that I can't notice any flicker are Philips filament style (labeled flicker free on package) and the newer Cree LED's that they sell at Home Depot. I tried the camera trick like in this video and I can't notice any flicker with both of them, so I feel the claims are correct. My bedside lamp I use a Philips filament style and it seems fine. My utility and laundry room still have some dirt cheap ones from Ace Hardware. They make my rolling shutter go crazy. The whole house was filled with them when I moved in and 2 of them have already stopped working. I replaced all the lights that I use often like the kitchen, living room lamps, and bathrooms with the Philips and Cree right away, they're still working great. Like you, I can notice flicker more than the average person at least. I too could easily see when CRT's were at 60Hz, I always bumped mine to 75 as it drove me nuts. LCDs were a blessing when they came out as even at 60Hz, it was much easier on the eyes. I now have a 144Hz monitor and I'll never go back. At least for my main monitor. My secondary is still just a 60Hz one.
I don't 'see' the flicker but the spectrum and PWM of LEDs triggers migraine headaches for me. Also, I can 'hear' the whine of a CRT and flourescent ballast, and although people say you lose that ability as you age, it seems my sensitivity to that is even stronger as I age. I can also hear a router.
@@andrewt9204 same here. I could only use CRTs at 85 Hz or more, the 60 Hz gave me instant headache. Also for the LED bulbs, the best ones I have are Phillips. I have various filament bulbs of various CRIs and age and they are all great! So far, only one or two broke prematurely, they are flicker free and somehow only Phillips manages to give the 2700K bulbs the right amount of red to make them look almost like incandescent bulbs, all the other manufacturers produce bulbs with a strong yellow cast, even at CRI 90±. And don't get me started on Osram! As a German I thought I could get superior German engineering for the premium price they're asking. I could not have been more wrong. Color cast, flicker, premature death, and flicker. Did I mention the flicker? So much flicker. It's really sad, because they made the best CFL tubes!
I have a similar experience, although far less extreme than you. I mainly see flicker in small lights (specifically back lights of cars), and I have also noticed that nobody else appears to see them. I also sometimes see it in Christmas trees. When visiting some people a while ago I noticed that all the lights in their living room did this, and I saw it in someone's car dashboard as well. I mainly notice it when my eyes are moving, because then I see patterns of dots and stripes. At a previous job I sometimes felt very tired, and I think that was caused by a combination of fluorescent lights (at 50 Hz) and monitor (at 60 Hz). At some point I just removed the lights above my head and that fixed it. I'm happy with this video and the responses here, because now I know what to look for when buying new lamps!
Your videos are absolutely top-notch. I love that you eagerly talk well over the pointy little heads of typical youtube viewership. You don't dumb anything down, ever -- which is a testament to your own intelligence, and really draws me in. I love learning about new topics by immersing myself hardcore into stuff I don't yet understand. It's the only way to learn. Trying to learn English via baby talk will only teach you baby talk. Learning by listening to experts talking to experts will stretch your brain and stimulate genuine curiosity. I learned in Tae Kwan Do as a kid that in order to break wood with your hand, you have to aim _past_ the wood, not at the wood. Your videos pull my mind way past the wood. You're great. Thanks for your truly superior content!
They are toxic as well especially if they break. They contain mercury in them it even says on the packaging if it breaks leave the house for an hour to air out. I changed all my lights to daylight LEDs. I even have one in my fridge. Works great
install exhaust fan with light and nightlight, as nightime/pee usage lol. I have LED A19;s in open bottom globe fixture as primary bath light. the combo exhaust has 60watt LED equivalent as it's primary bulb and 7 watt incandescent nightlight(through opaque lens) your choice of brightness, dull glow to blinded :))
@@TheCowboy4000 That's not true. The amount of mercury they have isn't enough to cause permanent damage to a person unless you purposefully try to breathe in as much as possible. For the longest time, there were several (full size) fluorescent bulbs in our basement that had been smashed apart and never cleaned up. Also, it would be important to note that I was around 4 to 6 years old when they were like this and I was frequently in that room because it was where our train layout was.
@@TheCowboy4000 That was more a problem with older lamps, the mercury - REALLY old ones, you could see a mercury "blob" in them almost - hy the time the glass breaks, the mercury is scattered to the four winds already, it's THAT little in there now...they can make them using so little mercury now, that it's almost none - I'd still let it air out a bit and use caution, but NOT so much for the Mercury as much as the Phosphors... What you want to watch out for in modern lamps is the Phosphors, those are more toxic than the tiny "whiff" of mercury needed for any tube or compact fluorescent light made in the last 6-7 years to work. That's more why they're dangerous now
"I really don't know what I'm doing with this whole thing, but I guess I'll try Patreon if people want me to..." Two years later, making $140,000+ from Patreon. Couldn't be happier for you Alec, you deserve every penny of it!
The voltage on mains supply is 120 Vrms which is ~169V peak, if you divide that by the 3V each LED requires you get ~56 leds, that is why each array has 27 or 28 LEDs not 20 as it was mentioned :)
VRMS is what the light sees over time and is the voltage that matters. The LED also only cares about average voltage. Also as mentioned above, the LEDs never see direct mains AC. They only see whatever their driver supplies.
@@lunchie80 Once you rectify AC, you're working with the peak voltage, and the filter capacitor serves to keep it near that peak voltage. The LED light output cares not about the average voltage, but rather the average current. However, the LED will not conduct at all until it reaches the junction voltage, and it will avalanche conduct much more current as the voltage goes above the junction voltage. That excessive current will heat the junction and cause the LED to fail prematurely. This means the LED string will be designed to run at the peak voltage of the AC supply, not the RMS. You can still use the RMS voltage to calculate the AC power, though, as the current flow into the system on the AC side will still behave according to the RMS value of the AC supply.
It usually is a full bridge rectifier, you just don't have to shout it. And i know you're referring to electroboom, but i don't like his kind of humour.
Do I care that you specifically don't like this kind of humour? Not even a single bit and I wonder why you felt it necessary to inform me that you don't like it.
Once again, thanks for your analysis! I always blamed fluorescent lights for my headaches, yet it turns out that some CFLs in my house are NOT the problem.
Thank you very much for this video. I'm one of those persons who gets eye strains from flickering light. I had found my nirvana with those high quality CFL bulbs, which had more Hg in the tube - so they started quickly in winter; and emitted constant, non fluctuating light. Now those CFL have become unfindable, as they are being replaced with LED bulbs. Now, the LED bulbs can be designed with different criteria in mind. Since power semiconductors rapidly become expensive when they have to manage higher currents, some designs use a large number of small LED in series, just as you show in your video. Low current = cheap transistors, or better, cheap TRIACS. The electrolytic capacitor in the circuit smooths the rectified AC for the own use of the chip, and not for the operation of the LED strings. Thankfully, not all LED bulbs use that horrendous driver. Many good LED bulbs use one (or few) big LED, controlled by a constant current driver. The problem is, the manufacturer don't state it on the bulb package. There is one 100% sure way to tell that a LED bulb has a constant current driver, thus emitting pure smooth light. That "sure way" is when the bulb is marked for "110 -240 V" operation. At home, I use OSRAM LED bulbs with this wide voltage range, and I am truly happy with the steady lighting they provide. On the negative side of things, they are expensive, around $ 7 to $ 10 each, but they come with a lifetime warranty, which means the filter capacitor is properly chosen. To date, I never replaced any of them, while the cheapy cheapos LED bulbs lasts few months - at best. Again, thank you for shining light on the dark design of these badly flickering LED bulbs. Regards from the UK,
A lot of the time I tell people "fluorescent lights give me headaches" just because it's easier for most people to understand. When I say "I get headaches from cool lighting" I usually get looked at like I'm crazy and then have to explain color temperature to someone who has never heard of it before
Tydaze get yellow lenses. This has made a world of difference for me. No more tired eyes at work in front of a computer monitor, within reason, of course.
Technology Connections: "They have to be rectified into DC using a--" ElectroBOOM: "*FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER!*" Technology Connections: "No, a single diode rectifier" ElectroBOOM: >:(
As someone who works in the Lighting (mostly nightclub/concert and theater lighting) I deal with this every day. I get asked if there are alternatives for Halogen lamp (those used for Ellipsoidal lights and PAR-Cans) by people who don't understand how it works. Although halogen lamps run hot, and consume lots of electricity, and like to go out with a bang (sometimes literally), they are not simply swap-able. Concerts and other events get recorded, and LED's have been known to produce that unwanted flickering. Professional LED's are designed to adjust for any inconsistency in the incoming AC power's 60 or 50 Hz. That requires a lot of electronics and usually a power conversion to DC or a phase change (less common) and require an active cooling solution, unlike Halogens that passively cool. LED's are great, but expensive to replace entire halogen based lighting. They do exist, but come at a steep price and many halls and nightclubs cannot bear the cost to replace hundreds of fixtures. That was a rant.....
This is a perfectly good video with clear information and enjoyable content. And yet his newer videos are so much better. It's really cool to see how this channel has come. I wish I'd found it sooner!
I'd give this video multiple likes if I could. It really showed me how this subject is more complex than I'd have guessed. I now realize how some LEDs are much better designed than others. Just putting 80 or so diodes in a series string-that just skeeves me out, and I never would have thought such a thing would be sold. Now I find myself wondering which of my LEDs have good designs, and which don't, and how to check them.
Dreamed of having a successful channel. Humble bragging about 35k subs, now you got over 1M subs. So glad your dream is a reality. We are all enriched by your existence on this medium. Hopefully 10M in a few more years.
I was fully prepared for the "note from the editor's desk" to be him saying "I'm the editor, and this is my desk. *plays a random note on a piano* Thank you" and back to the video
A British study some 15-20 years ago showed that the reason fluorescent lamps cause eyestrain, fatigue and headaches while reading is because a flickering light source makes it more difficult for the eye to track lines of text on a page, compared to a constant light source. At a time before compact fluorescent lamps and LED lamps, the only choices for interior lighting were typically incandescent bulbs with negligible flicker and fluorescent tubes with noticeable flicker.
You kids and you dang fangled new technology. I still use vines wrapped around one end of a stick. Its called a dang ol' torch ya young'en whipper shnappers!!!
And he deserves every one. Its 584k as of right now. I know the basics of a lot of what he shares, but its when he gets into the gritty detail (with a wonderful sense of dry, deadpan humor and timing) that really draws me in. So much I didn't know, after all! Capricorn, by chance?
So cool to see this video now, 3 years afterwards. He announced that he had 35,000 followers (now 860,000) and that he was starting a new Patreon account, and that he was essentially quitting his day job to do these videos for us full time. I just couldn't be happier that this has all worked out, for him, and for all of us. It is great to see the occasional corner of the Internet that is not polluted with idiocy, pandering, or catering to our intense over-subscription to digital junk food.
Another negative for the CFL high frequency ballast operation is _significant_ radio interference, especially on MW and LW. Sometimes one CFL turned on can wipe out AM reception in an entire house, and even close neighbors.
Amateur operator here. I have ONLY CFL's (except two bulbs) in my house. But I buy quality ones. No interference at all. But I have problems with a classic linear fluorescent light from the neighbour which causes a lot of interference on HF band.
I've found electronic ballasts with bulbs that are failing to be the worst. The emit a large RF burst every 3 second when they try to start the lamp. I'm sure they probably emit the same burst when turned starting a good bulb too but I care less about that. I once wasted almost two days tracking down RF from a bad electronic ballast when doing photon counting at work.
Fluorescent tube lights flicker rates do bother some, me included. Some flicker at 60 Hz, especially when old. That causes headaches from retina flash, dry eye and fatigued vision. I have been sensitive to those lights all my life, from school thru college and now work life. My solution? I unscrew all the tube lights from the receptacles in my office and use dim natural light from window or in winter, just work in the natural dimness. Took a year before the cleaning people caught on and stopped re-installing or replacing the bulbs. Lol. Finally last year, the lighting company came and installed new, energy efficient LED tube lights. No more headaches.
I got driven crazy in school with dodgy 50Hz tubes that were on the way out. I could see the bloody flicker, but seemingly nobody else could, and my complaints were ignored. Best I could do was sit on the other side of the room or wear sunglasses. No, taking the offending tubes out myself was not an option. The ceilings were way too high for that.
They probably installed low flicker LEDs. Quite a few people tend to be under the impression that all LEDs have really bad flicker, but it's primarily the cheap ones or ones with small drivers
@@jeffkardosjr.3825 That maybe due to either the use of a high color temp or the phosphors are degrading and some of the UV from the LEDs themselves are coming through. And yes, FYI under the yellow phosphor are blue/UV LEDs
@@exoticcar5482 Yeah. It is a little wierd to describe. Like occasional dots or stars of a deep blue. Not directly on the lamps, but the area they lit.
I came here 4 years late, only because I'm just going through your videos that sound exciting to me. (New subscriber) At the time of this video, LED bulbs were fairly new, and color-changing ones were kinda expensive. Now I have a smart LED color-changing bulb that I bought for 5 bucks. A year later, still runs like a champ. Also, I want to congratulate you for making over a million subscribers. At the time of this footage, you only had 35,000. So congrats again. Now that I wrote this, I realize that you or your team (if you have one) probably won't even read this. Lol.
@@kaizenstateofmind Mehdi, the one who runs the ElectroBOOM channel, has a favourite phrase "full bridge rectifier". He always loves to dramatically echo-shout it whenever it comes up while speaking.
@@jeffreymontgomery7516 Right? I ended up throwing away a bin of the damned things I'd saved while trying to find somewhere that would would take them for safe recycling. Recycling was fantastic in theory but didn't work out in the boondocks. Or anywhere I lived really.
Any company that accepts Laptops or Flat Screen TV, SHOULD, be accepting CFL as it's basically the same elements. Mercury Lamp inside the Laptop along with the circuit board in the CFL. BOTH, can be placed in the same Hammer mill for recycling
I learn something cool and new every time I watch your videos. I’m so glad its working out for you and I look forward for more knowledge! Keep up the great work!!!!
You should see Bigclive.com's teardowns of these things... There are THREE common driver circuits in use. 1. The very flickery capacitive dropper, usually found on pound / dollar store bulbs... it does have a very rudimentary amount of smoothing, but that's only to protect the LED chain from switch on spikes. These are non-dimmable, and the massive spikes caused by a dimmer would probably burn out the inrush limiting resistor. Has significant capacitive power factor. 2. The "driverless" approach, where LED chains close to supply voltage are driven by a rectifier and current limiter - the dimmable version would tend to have an extra resistive load that is turned on when the voltage drops below the LED conduction limit. Excellent power factor. 3. Switchmode buck regulator - the least flicker, but can show a harmonic power factor like any non-PFC switchmode PSU
.... very flickery capacitive dropper, usually found on pound / dollar store bulbs... it does have a very rudimentary amount of smoothing, but that's only to protect the LED chain from switch on spikes. Nope. The smoothing cap is to bring it closer to DC, reduce flicker, and improve efficiency. A resistor is usually used to limit current surge.
@@kaitlyn__L Hue bulbs house tiny computers which happen to drive LEDs. It's like plugging your PC into a dimmer and expecting it to dim your monitor :)
@@SheaMcCombs but the monitor has its own microcontroller and driver handling the backlight. So your analogy is a stretch. Especially because the microcontroller inside a Hue bulb responds to other aspects of light switches. And I never said that I expected them to behave with dimmer switches, I factually stated that they don't work with dimmer switches. You can take your condescension elsewhere.
The cold-weather outdoor performance of CFLs really turned me off to them. I kinda liked them, especially IKEA ones, but once I put one outside for my backdoor light over the winter and it was dim as a half-wit, I kinda swore them off. LEDs are my faves now. They're bright and instant and work well even covered in snow!
Those are actually half-wave rectified, whereas the diagram he showed demonstrated full-wave rectification. Basically, only the positive half of the AC current passes through, rather than flipping the negative half to positive. You can't see the flicker like that on full-wave rectified strings, even though they are zeroing out at 60Hz
@@SepticFuddy I have thought of that. A vid years ago by AvE (watched his vids for a short while till I got tired of his pottymouth) showed each half of a string flipping between the 2 sides of the AC. My main thought is that the LEDs come on only when reaching a certain voltage, so it's only the tops of the sine waves that activates the LEDs. I guess I have enlightening to do.
I love LED bulbs, but the LED Christmas lights just seem so off, so cold. I prefer the houses with incandescent Christmas lights. When I am walking my dogs, I will just stand there and nostalgically watch them. Oh and don't get me started on those Christmas projected laser lights.
CFL bulbs also bleach fabrics and paint. We took pictures down from a wall that had a CFL lamp in front of them, all the pictures left a ghost because of the exposure to the CFL UV output. We also had a CFL catch fire.
Ah but you see, with a frame rate of 60hz, the shutter speed had to be at least 1/60 of a second. That made the lines appear stationary always. I think the pattern is pretty clearly stationary between shots. Aside from that, I shoot in 4k for editing purposes and don't have a camera capable of 4k60, and to be honest I generally prefer the more cinematic 30p to the soap opera 60p anyway.
Cool/daylight are ideal for work. I install daylight bulbs in my home office after finding myself exhausted 1/2 way through the day under warm bulbs. That said i love warm bulbs for relaxing, entertaining.
This is true. The thing that I think a lot of people don’t understand is that different color temperatures are better for different applications. It’s when they are used in the wrong applications that it becomes a problem. Think an entire house lit by 6500K lighting, even the living room and bedroom. Or an office lit by 3000K lighting.
Having viewed dozens of your videos since this one was made, I gotta say, you've done very well in sharing knowledge. I'm glad so many subscribers have found you. Thank you for raising the understanding level of a small percentage of the population. I prefer science based factual evidence, not illusion - so I enjoy this channel. Thanks, TC!
I am so happy I found your channel! It’s AMAZING content. I love this treasure trove of greatness. ONE BURNING QUESTION. I have a severe adversion to certain color temperatures in the LED bulbs. I miss my incandecant bulbs warmth and color. Halogen has always appealed to me as well. Ibe switched 100% of the bulbs in my house to LED. I’m not happy with the various brands I’ve found. I want first and foremost warmth, no strobe, and dismantle. COULD YOU PLEASE give me some specific brand models to try? The light in my home has a dramatic effect on my mood. (I suffer from OCD and anxiety) Consistent colorvyemperature throughout my home would make me happy. Thanks for your work!!!!!
Try the c by ge smart bulbs they have tuneable white light so you can set them from 2000k-6500k but cost $15 a bulb. Or there are ones by Phillips. I use the great value daylight LEDs in my house I have the warm look daylight is brighter and a cleaner looking light.
I have 1 LED bulb. All my others are CFL. LED bulbs are just starting to move into the home here in the UK. Most people seem to just get the much cheaper CFL's for the moment plus there is no reason to buy a new bulb unless you have a dead CFL which tends to take years to happen. Anyway. With the LED bulb I have vs the CFL's all I see is the lack of warm up time. I have not noticed any flicker. To be honest I generally never have noticed flicker from anything around 50Hz or above. Even 25fps video looks ultra smooth to me. My old CRT was at 60Hz and i never had eye strain or flicker. 75Hz was possible if I installed the CRT drivers but I just never bothered lol. So many people complain about flicker. I wonder why I dont see it? I also have no trouble with Magic Eye pictures (it automatically turns 3D when I see it) and I cant get enough of 3D movies. No headaches or anything (unless my glasses are dirty). I have a 3DS and was surprised to find out that people actually TURN OFF THE 3D. I never do and usually have the slider at 80% and was pretty annoyed that after spending £40 on pokemon moon I found out it was 2D only :-o
I've been using LEDs for 5 years for my home lighting. There's no realistic CFL option when the whole house is wired with dimmer controlled downlighters. However the prices have dramatically improved, from £20 a bulb to £3 a bulb. As for flicker, cheap Chinese and the current crop of clear filament style lamps are terrible. Branded ones are much better, and even the Amazon basics give a good dimmable light. 5 years ago I spent hundreds of pounds trying to find GU10 lamps that didn't flicker like crazy, I can't understand how some people can't notice it. Even if the bulb isn't visibly flickering it feel like walking through a dodgy disco with strobe lighting.
I love the cold white LED bulbs! Everything looks so much better and, as my apartment balcony door faces North and no actual sunlight ever enters my room, during the day having the main ceiling light on gives me the illusion that the sun is coming in.
Nostalgia is joining your dad after he wakes up on a very cold morning, while he grabs his coffee and cigarette, goes into the garage and flips on the the 1980's fluorescent tube lights and having them flicker and start super dim from the cold.
Wow, I just had a really powerful flashback.....without any potentially illicit substances, depending on where you live - I need a minute to recover from that...I miss my Dad, though he didn't smoke, the rest was true.
I am guilty of loving those pure-white CFLs, I have a photography lamp with a huge one just for my room XD Maybe that's just my astigmatism making me want really even, bright lighting.
I have a terrible astigmatism and I do everything I can to avoid white/blue lights. I even have "flux" on my PC and phone to bias the color spectrum down to about 2500k and that has helped my eye pains and strains immensely!
fisqual Huh, for me its more about the glare, and the "starbursting" effect. A really bright white light that isn't directly in my vision helps a lot. I do agree that computer screens, etc can be really bothersome if the surrounding is dark. I just don't get the same effect from darker "warm" lights.
@@Yophillips3272 same, lol. I even have to turn the volume down a lot, when I watch a RUclips video that features a CRT with headphones, cause even through a microphone and speakers I can't take the CRT whine, lol
I love watching old videos of popular channels when the maker talks about how many subscribers he has. It's awesome to look now, 4 years later and a entire 1 MEEELION subscribers more ... Love the channel now in the future...
35.000 subscribers in 2017, less than 3 1/2 years later, it's over a million. Well deserved, those videos are not only informative, but very entertaining with their querky host. Wish you many more successful years!
It's becoming increasingly apparent that using an archaic receptacle for lighting is seriously due for a revolutionary change. We should perhaps redefine our industry standard for light fixtures that accommodate a universal ballast/driver, and allow hot-swap of purely LED bulbs. The artistic variation of lamps going into the next century have an incredible potential.
Cool idea. What voltage will your universal ballast output? 200V for filaments? 12V for COBs? 30V for other COBs? something in between? Or will it be a constant current source? What current will it provide? 100mA for 4 filaments in parallel? What if I want two filaments in parallel? Or 8? Or a COB with dozens of LEDs in parallel, drawing up to several amps?
It shouldn't be to hard to set up auto detection circuits. Or heck even a way for the bulb to signal it's capabilities to the socket. Every usb device and the ram in your computer does the latter.
+Kasey Boles Cool. Of course now you need a driver per bulb because each bulb may have different requirements. Also the driver will have to be intelligent and be able to produce a wide range of output voltages/currents, making it a lot more expensive. Since the driver is usually the part that fails first in LED bulbs, that doesn't seem like a very smart move.
My thinking was having a versatile driver/ballast in the fixture and at most a very simple circuit or data chip to tell the driver how to operate. This would of course drive the fixture price up a tad (and be an excuse to raise it even further). But by making it long lasting and setting some basic standards to limit the possibilities to a large sub-set of anything goes. This is mostly off the top of my head, but considering how ram stick come with a simple little chip listing several known good timings and with USB devices and Ethernet able to readily self configure communication speeds and many other examples of this sort of thing it shouldn't be all that hard. This is all just brainstormed, but considering I can buy a $12 ic that can be set up to handle a half dozen different computer buses (USB, Ethernet, can, etc.) as a single chip buyer and prices drop fairly fast in bulk I cannot imagine something for this application wouldn't be simpler and cheaper, especially in lot sizes major manufacturing would require. All that said for more basic scenarios is could be trivial to have a simpler system where a bit of cleverness like you see in how stereo jacks work just fine in mono sockets and vice versa, or even other ways electrical backwards compatibility with various connector form factors has been achieved, such as three way bulbs and sockets.
What you're proposing doesn't really solve any problems (the-now more expensive-driver is still going to fail first, so you'll just save a couple LEDs) and-at least at this point-very anti-consumer. Right now I can buy any LED bulb from any manufacturer, screw it into my existing fixture and it will work. With your proposed system I first have to buy a new fixture and when the driver in it fails, I'm locked in with the manufacturer of that fixture for replacement (FYI this is already happening, only manufacturers don't bother with selling spare parts-when the fixture fails, you have to buy a new fixture).
What about the bad light quality caused by uneven distribution of wave lengths across the visible spectrum by LEDs and CFLs? (worse in cheap LEDs as they produce roughly 3 wave lengths) Incandescent light bulbs are horrible at producing visible light only, which is why their spectrum is spread more evenly across a wide range, way beyond the visible spectrum even. As a result, we get better color information under incandescent light than with CFLs and LEDs. In fact, with CFLs it's possible to create a material that's completely black under CFL light, while it's white under incandescent or sunlight.
Donnie Depends highly on the bulb. The very best LEDs can produce light that's even better-quality than incandescent bulbs, although these are still somewhat rare and expensive. Many LED bulbs settle for being *almost* as good as incandescent bulbs (and usually far better than CFLs). They usually achive this by coating the LED with some kind of substances, such as phosphors, that will absorb the wavelength produced by the diode and re-emit light at different wavelengths. Obviously you need a blend of a bunch of these to get high quality white light, which is why I think the best bulbs are still expensive.
There also are some higher-end CFLs that produce very high quality light. But as with the LEDs, theyre rare and expensive. Its more common with Fluorescent Tubes.
+techmage89 Nope. Incandescent bulbs are essentially black body emitters. Nothing can produce better light than a black body emitter, that's the ideal basis to which we compare all other sources of light. LEDs can come close to incandescent bulbs (who knows, maybe one day they'll actually be able to match them), but they can never beat them. That's just physics.
As a newly graduated electrical engineer I’ve got some insight on this. I suspect the cause of the flicker is that as you mentioned with LEDs a small change in voltage will cause a massive change in current and thus light output. So even a slight flicker in the voltage will cause a noticeable change in the light created by the bulb. The driver probably does a decent job of creating DC, just that the ripple gets amplified a lot by the bulb when the current isn’t regulated. The regulation can actually be done cheat and easily with a single current limiting resistor which would almost eliminate ripple current, but the voltage drop of the resistor would lower overall efficiency. I could be wrong, but I suspect some LED bulbs are more efficient than others, and that the less efficient LED bulbs will produce almost no strobing effect, with the more efficient ones will. That’s just a guess though. I haven’t looked into how things are actually done to know for sure. This is mostly based on my knowledge of what can be done and how LEDs work.
I discovered the flicker on my retro style LED bulb by filming them with my 240 fps slow-mo phone camera. Then I filmed an old style carbon thread filament bulb and discovered it too flickers with the 50 Hz DC outlet by the same amount. That made me content with my LED bulbs.
The main difference I think is that incandescent filaments heat up and flicker in a softer/slower fashion. This helps the trick our eyes even more with persistence of vision as they look like they are dimming but not going right off. LED flicker is harsh because it can go from on to off much faster .... think TosLink :) Incandescent like a sine wave, LED like a square or sawtooth wave.
For me it has always been the harsh yellowish light of incandescent and most compact fluorescent lamps that caused me a great deal of headaches. I grew up in the 1980s - 1990s with pretty much constant headaches and it wasn't until I was able to start buying my own lighting that I discovered the "daylight" fluorescents and my headaches went away, except when I'm in places with that antiquated fire light. For a long time now I've been using "daylight" LED strip lighting for much more even lighting and I think it's great, especially since there's no flicker since it runs off of 12 Volts DC. Recently I was given some cheap LED bulbs and when I tried one I got an instant severe migraine, it was one of the "warm white" (extremely yellow) bulbs. I have no idea if it flickered since just a split second of that horrible yellowish light caused me so much pain, I couldn't possibly experiment with it.
I was impressed on the improvements made to CFLs over a decade's time, as I recall 20 years ago when they were first widely available and affordable, they didn't throw out the brightness of an incandescent bulb; although the CFLs of 20 years ago were marketed as equivalents to incandescent brightness. Going back 20 years there was a demonstration display of CFLs to incandescent bulbs of equivalent brightness, where flipping a switch would light up the incandescent bulb; flipping another switch would light up the CFL next to the incandescent. To this day I still recall being able to closeup stare straight into the lit CFL with eyes wide-open; where the equivalent 60 watt incandescent had a brightness several levels higher than the CFL, almost blindingly bright, where I had to squint my eyes to view it. But, years later the brightness of the CFLs improved immensely.
You didn’t take into account the Flourescence lights work by illuminating a gas and creating Pure UV light, then the phosphorous coating converts the UV light to a visible wavelength and overtime the phosphorous coating wears down. When the coating ages it starts allowing UV light through which by itself will cause eye damage.
@Rick Delair Not all LED bulbs flicker. If you are affected by flickering lights, then you should avoid filament LEDs - they tend to flicker badly (as was said in the video). As for conventional LEDs, always buy good quality ones from good manufacturers, not cheap ones. Also, as a response to Light on the Inside's comment, the eye damage is caused by UV radiation, but not because of the phosphor degrading. Even a new fluorescent lamp will emit low levels of UV light. I'm assuming (correct me if I'm wrong) that the reason for this is microscopic scratches/imperfections in the phosphor coating. Because the tube shape is so complicated, the phosphor coating does not get applied evenly to all parts of the tube, so some parts get too much and others get too little.
fisqual I have a set in my garage, just adding a single bridge rectifier out of something I pulled apart made the flicker much better. I had to rotate 1/2 the led's though as they are often wired in 2 opposite polarity strings.
Cheap store-brand LED Christmas lights are typically half-wave rectified, meaning they flash 60 times per second, rather than 120 (and they are off more than 50% of the time). I absolutely cannot stand them. Some more expensive strands use full-wave rectifiers and do not visibly flicker to my eyes. You can often distinguish them just by looking at the plug. Crappy flickery strands have a pass-through plug like incandescents use, but good LED strands have a larger plug (presumably with a sizable capacitor in there). Last year I learned I can easily distinguish them from better non-flickery LED lights by recording slow-motion video with my phone. With the phone recording 120 frame-per-second video, the difference is obvious. Oddly, when recording 60fps video, terrible flickery strands may appear *off* on your phone screen even though they're *on* to your eyes, because the frame rate syncs with the flicker and the shutter is only open while they're off.
I thought I was the only one that hated being behind Cadillacs with the long strip LED lights. Especially if there is one in the other lane and I am only seeing it in my peripheral vision.
"To my subscribers: I'm so thrilled this channel has surpassed 35 thousand." Me: Checks number of subscribers in 2019. 35 thousand... plus FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND. Or, 435k. You've gone a long way, dear sir. Congratulations, and wishing you all the future success!
i am a terrible person and prefer halogen bulbs. i have some CFLs left but i never use them as they take 15 minutes to be bright enough. what i don't like about the fluorescent tubes is they look like they are a good light source but they are not, reading/working under them is terrible. the only thing they are good for is lighting up hallways.
The build up of light is painful... I forgot what kind of bulbs I have, but I'd rather get a headache than use slow-starting bulbs. Though I only get headaches when I can see the bulbs from the corner of my eye and I kinda make sure I'm either facing away from them or I have a lampshade.
4000k LED for work is perfect. It's not quite the bright white you get with 6000k or above, but it looks like white light. It's perfect really, better than incandescent or fluro for work. 3000k LED for spaces like bedrooms, lounges and hallways. It's slightly more yellow than incandescent, but only slightly. And flickering is only a problem with poor quality LEDs. Since decent ones are getting stupidly cheap now, it makes no sense to buy anything else but good quality LEDs. The only exception I would make is halogens for light fixtures that have pretty glass or crystal, because no LED will make that pop like it should. Edit: the 2800k ones that are becoming common are slightly more yellow than incandescent, NOT the 3000k ones. I prefer 3000k to 2800k, but 3000k seems to be getting harder to find on the shelves, as is unfortunately 4000k. Not happy really, we are getting forced to choose between 2800k, which is too yellow, and 6000k, which is too white. You would think with the amount of control available with LEDs that the market would favour more choice not less.
Not qulified but, Basicly that driver in that filiment style bulb. Is likely a capacitive dropper ( capacitor used like a resistor with out the heat) that limits the current then is rectified. And if your lucky is also filterd with a small cap. But liky you said not a big enofe one. The schmatic in the wiki is what most of theses style blubs use. Just replace the parts after r3 with a string of leds.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitive_power_supply The other option that is unfortnatly becoming popular is a small chip from china that switches leds on in series. So wheen the ac wave is at say 6v it switches 2 leds on thenat 50v it switches say 15 leds in series, till all the leds are in series when it reaches 120v. It flickers relly bad but its incredably small, and very effecent. Thers also classic ac to dc power supplies (like your laptop or phone charger) but there not very comon in bulbs due to size, they are more relaiable though. Theses guys make most of the chips you will see in led bulbs or there clones. www.bpsemi.com/
EE here: King of KYA, you are absolutely correct and kudos to you for the great explaination. I also didn't know about the switching chips you mentioned in your second paragraph so thanks for that! LEDs operate most efficiently at a very specific forward voltage. (This varies from LED to LED but is usually less than 4 volts.) Since an inadequately filtered rectified sinusoid will vary in voltage, this would definitely help with efficiency at the cost of much increased flickering. But better filtering with a larger capacitor is a slightly more expensive way to solve this issue. One more thing that is relevant: many of the LEDs in LED light bulbs actually consist of several LED elements in a single package. This allows a greater forward voltage drop across one small component which saves space and cost.
......other option that is unfortnatly becoming popular is a small chip from china t I believe this was one option explored by an AMERICAN chip manufacturer and then copied.............
I don't think I'll be able to buy a new car unless they can figure out how to dim the LEDs without PWM or at least in a way I can't see it. Dashboard illumination is pretty much all LED now. It's fine at full brightness but when it dims as you turn on the headlights then it becomes annoying. Tail-lights of new cars are all really annoying to me too. Somehow the backlight on my laptop is fine but the Samsung tablet my dad gave me I can see the flicker. So I know it's possible to do it other ways. Interestingly at Costco the other day I did see a filament type bulb that wasn't too bad, it seems they managed to cram a big capacitor in there somehow.
I use LEDs as my light source while I am not at work (under florescent light), and have chronic migraines. I don't care about light tone as much as whether I can see with the light. If I can see, It will do. But I've noticed lately that in my home space (not work), I have been getting headaches that are only alleviated when I turn off my lighting, after only a few hours of having my lights on. Usually after I get off work, I avoid turning on my lights to give my eyes a break, or I use green light (in the form of an Ally lamp) to help with migraine light therapy. This video helped me to understand that it could also be the slight flickering of the LEDs that cause this. I use straight up LED lights, so they're not fancy bulbs or anything. They are likely to have this problem, and it explains why I feel headachy after only a little bit if I brightly light up my room.
Almost all of the light fixtures in my house use LED bulbs except for the counter top lights which use those tiny bulbs (they're not LED but they're not florescent or incandescent either) and the light fixture in my bathroom which uses traditional incandescents, and the small amount of space you mentioned must have been why I had to change the one bulb in the light above the kitchen table twice. The counter top lights are a different story because it was always this one bulb on the my right hand side above the computer that kept going out. Me and my dad were forced to believe that there was a loose wire in the lamp
Way back in 1976 I started a job as an artist for a custom silkscreening shop. After a few months I thought my eyes were going bad. I had terrible eyestrain, and even when I wasn't at work my eyes could hardly focus enough to read. Then someone suggested the twin-tube fluorescent lights I worked under might be the problem. So I removed the tubes and just used my incandescent desk lamp. Very soon my vision returned to normal.
Later we replaced the old fluorescent fixtures with new ones, and I never had any trouble with them. To this day I don't know if the old fixtures had a defect that caused them to flicker at an abnormal rate, or the newer ones just didn't flicker as much.
"You actually read all this? Dang." Of course I did. Why wouldn't I?
That's what I thought too :D
He got the demographics that pause for that sort of stuff haha
I'm just happy he didn't make that explanation last for only one frame, making it nearly impossible to pause it.
XD
i'm like a vampire, but the only attribute I have is to compulsively count stuff and read signs and texts on the back of everything I buy..
so yes, I obviously read it..
I'm watching this for the first time in July 2023. Your sub count is 2 million. It just warms my heart to see you making this announcement about quitting your day job and how you hope it will all turn out... I'm so glad you took that leap, and I'm so glad it worked out.
"I'm so thrilled that this channel has passed 35 thousand [subscribers]. It still doesn't quite seem real" *checks and sees 1.23m subscribers" Come a long way in four years, Alec. Kudos.
*1.6m
@@coolest10293 *1.66m
@@refindoazhar1507 Indeed. This guy is a flippin' genius with his vids.
@@refindoazhar1507 *1.67m
@@Jarran2R *1.68m
I agree so much about cold-white lighting being dreadful, especially at home! It took me almost 15 years to convince my parents to ditch the old circline fixtures in the living room, where they firmly only installed 6000K cold white circlines all these years, I always mentioned that it felt like i was still working at the factory, instead of being inside my home.
Finally this winter both light fixtures just straight up cooked themselves to death (all the plastic they were built off became so brittle they couldn't clip a circline anymore), so with very little money we switched to classic E27 fixtures and "wrongly" bought powerful OSRAM Led, all warm-white. My parents were really happy and convinced that now our living room looks more like a warm, cozy room than a cold, hospital-like ward.
Thank you for not dumbing this down. As an almost-electrical engineer (I switched my major to software), I appreciate the gritty details of bridge rectifiers, voltage drops, filter capacitors, and all the other electronics-geek goodies you packed into this video. Cheers!
Matt Whitlock Jesus man. Im software changing major to electrical. Any tips?
Don't run out of money. I went from Comp Sci to EE at a more expensive school because the coursework in comp sci at that point was full of stuff I already knew, some I knew was way outdated. should've stuck it out considering I was also pretty poor and couldn't afford the new school for long enough.
Same here, I did the more practical side of electricians basics with the theory required for that it still makes sense :D
Matt, are you sure you're into electronics? You never mentioned a *FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER!*
Just kidding, happy new year in advance, all 😊
Oh man i laughed way harder than i should when your old Ikea lamp started to cough like an old man xD
Oh man same here
Me too
I laughed on the HNNNNGGGGHHHH
1:45
Funniest way i've ever spotted flicker from LED lamps: Peeing. Yes, peeing.
The stream of ..err ...drops... appeared to be going UPWARD from the toilet ... THAT was trippy lol
Must now go for owe at night, for um, research purposes.
k...?
That...sounds...painful, just imagine your urine going back from where it came from.
For me, I wave my hand extremely fast in front of the light and observe the shadow.
Same, bought two cheapo dimmable LED filament bulbs in China from aliexpress and they have no flicker. I bought a fancy LED light fixture from Ikea or some store like Ikea and it's a headache-inducing abomination.
"There's virtually no reason to hold onto the incandescent lamp anymore."
Idk, LEDs take a lot longer to make brownies in an Easy-Bake oven with.
Neither to light a kitchen oven:.I've never seen a led or cfl bulb capable to withstand to 300° (572K) in the oven.
Lmfao I'm dead 😂😂
Use flood light/halogen bulb :D
Strong enough LED's require active cooling you know.
I'm pretty sure you could ACTUALLY bake something with LED's.
@@LetoZeth Wow. That must be expensive as hell if it can do that. Is it an industrial LED?
I am extremely sensitive to the pulsing/stroking of florescent and LED lights. I've known this for years and could not believe other people could not see it. When I was a kid my school's florescent lights used to make me almost sick from kind of vertigo. Like when you are in a dark room with a strobe light to long you can get the same ill feeling. When computers became a "thing" with CRT monitors I could alwasy see the monitors set at 60hz from across rooms. I could pick out a monitor in a sea of CRT's in a computer lab that was set to 60hz. Again, most people told me they could not see this. Sometimes others can see if if they look at the CRT out of the corner of there eye, look above the monitor at a point.
I could also tell when the schools upgraded to electronic ballasts in their florescent lights. The flicker was almost gone.
Then came LED. At first most where great. Then I started to notice some flickered. People told me I was again crazy as LED lights didn't flicker.. I was like no.. I'm totally sure this thing is flickering.. later to find out by making them cheaper they now flicker.
I could also tell a 75hz CRT.. though it was harder. I could not "see" it from across a room like 60hz. I'd have to change 75 to 100 or have 2 side by side to tell the dif between 75 and higher.
A doctor I see for ADD and other mental fun said in passing while listing symptoms others have "sensitive to florescent lights" I stopped him dead.. wait.wait.. no kidding! Told him how I've always known I was way more sensitive then others and he said yep.. this would help explain it.
Yes there is indeed a giant gap in available LED bulbs nowadays. Lots of them flicker like hell, even "good" ones like Osram. It's basically a gamble what you get since even for the same bulb they might have changed the electronics over the years. This is why I do not want LED in my room. I use fluorescent tubes with a good ballast at 40 kHz. They are even cheaper, last longer, and you can easily switch the color temperature in a minute by just switching a $5 tube.
The ones that I've found that I can't notice any flicker are Philips filament style (labeled flicker free on package) and the newer Cree LED's that they sell at Home Depot. I tried the camera trick like in this video and I can't notice any flicker with both of them, so I feel the claims are correct. My bedside lamp I use a Philips filament style and it seems fine. My utility and laundry room still have some dirt cheap ones from Ace Hardware. They make my rolling shutter go crazy. The whole house was filled with them when I moved in and 2 of them have already stopped working. I replaced all the lights that I use often like the kitchen, living room lamps, and bathrooms with the Philips and Cree right away, they're still working great.
Like you, I can notice flicker more than the average person at least. I too could easily see when CRT's were at 60Hz, I always bumped mine to 75 as it drove me nuts. LCDs were a blessing when they came out as even at 60Hz, it was much easier on the eyes. I now have a 144Hz monitor and I'll never go back. At least for my main monitor. My secondary is still just a 60Hz one.
I don't 'see' the flicker but the spectrum and PWM of LEDs triggers migraine headaches for me. Also, I can 'hear' the whine of a CRT and flourescent ballast, and although people say you lose that ability as you age, it seems my sensitivity to that is even stronger as I age. I can also hear a router.
@@andrewt9204 same here. I could only use CRTs at 85 Hz or more, the 60 Hz gave me instant headache. Also for the LED bulbs, the best ones I have are Phillips. I have various filament bulbs of various CRIs and age and they are all great! So far, only one or two broke prematurely, they are flicker free and somehow only Phillips manages to give the 2700K bulbs the right amount of red to make them look almost like incandescent bulbs, all the other manufacturers produce bulbs with a strong yellow cast, even at CRI 90±. And don't get me started on Osram! As a German I thought I could get superior German engineering for the premium price they're asking. I could not have been more wrong. Color cast, flicker, premature death, and flicker. Did I mention the flicker? So much flicker. It's really sad, because they made the best CFL tubes!
I have a similar experience, although far less extreme than you. I mainly see flicker in small lights (specifically back lights of cars), and I have also noticed that nobody else appears to see them. I also sometimes see it in Christmas trees. When visiting some people a while ago I noticed that all the lights in their living room did this, and I saw it in someone's car dashboard as well. I mainly notice it when my eyes are moving, because then I see patterns of dots and stripes. At a previous job I sometimes felt very tired, and I think that was caused by a combination of fluorescent lights (at 50 Hz) and monitor (at 60 Hz). At some point I just removed the lights above my head and that fixed it. I'm happy with this video and the responses here, because now I know what to look for when buying new lamps!
Amazing that green light I saw when turning off CLF's messed with me for years, I finally know why! Keep up the great work!
Your videos are absolutely top-notch. I love that you eagerly talk well over the pointy little heads of typical youtube viewership. You don't dumb anything down, ever -- which is a testament to your own intelligence, and really draws me in. I love learning about new topics by immersing myself hardcore into stuff I don't yet understand. It's the only way to learn. Trying to learn English via baby talk will only teach you baby talk. Learning by listening to experts talking to experts will stretch your brain and stimulate genuine curiosity. I learned in Tae Kwan Do as a kid that in order to break wood with your hand, you have to aim _past_ the wood, not at the wood. Your videos pull my mind way past the wood. You're great. Thanks for your truly superior content!
My thesis advisor once said to me, "If you actually understand, you can explain well."
Mr. TechConnection _definitely_ understands his stuff :-)
He does dumb things down at times but he makes sure to "ramp up" to more technical explanations. Helps me understand things.
It's out of my hands, I'm just a clock.
I keep all my old cfl's for use in the bathrooms. It's nice they start up dimmer, when turning it on in a dark house.
They are toxic as well especially if they break. They contain mercury in them it even says on the packaging if it breaks leave the house for an hour to air out. I changed all my lights to daylight LEDs. I even have one in my fridge. Works great
install exhaust fan with light and nightlight, as nightime/pee usage lol. I have LED A19;s in open bottom globe fixture as primary bath light. the combo exhaust has 60watt LED equivalent as it's primary bulb and 7 watt incandescent nightlight(through opaque lens) your choice of brightness, dull glow to blinded :))
@@TheCowboy4000 That's not true. The amount of mercury they have isn't enough to cause permanent damage to a person unless you purposefully try to breathe in as much as possible. For the longest time, there were several (full size) fluorescent bulbs in our basement that had been smashed apart and never cleaned up. Also, it would be important to note that I was around 4 to 6 years old when they were like this and I was frequently in that room because it was where our train layout was.
@@TheCowboy4000 That was more a problem with older lamps, the mercury - REALLY old ones, you could see a mercury "blob" in them almost - hy the time the glass breaks, the mercury is scattered to the four winds already, it's THAT little in there now...they can make them using so little mercury now, that it's almost none - I'd still let it air out a bit and use caution, but NOT so much for the Mercury as much as the Phosphors...
What you want to watch out for in modern lamps is the Phosphors, those are more toxic than the tiny "whiff" of mercury needed for any tube or compact fluorescent light made in the last 6-7 years to work. That's more why they're dangerous now
"I really don't know what I'm doing with this whole thing, but I guess I'll try Patreon if people want me to..."
Two years later, making $140,000+ from Patreon.
Couldn't be happier for you Alec, you deserve every penny of it!
lol I can't hear the word rectifier without hearing "FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER" in my head.
And sight of very dominant unibrow forming into your head
LOL you must have went to UNO
The unibrow
Same XD
Okay BOOMers
The voltage on mains supply is 120 Vrms which is ~169V peak, if you divide that by the 3V each LED requires you get ~56 leds, that is why each array has 27 or 28 LEDs not 20 as it was mentioned :)
Didn't even think about rms to peak. Awesome comment bro.
Depends on the LED driver, but nice try
VRMS is what the light sees over time and is the voltage that matters. The LED also only cares about average voltage.
Also as mentioned above, the LEDs never see direct mains AC. They only see whatever their driver supplies.
@@lunchie80 Most drivers use a rectifier and capacitor to keep it at peak voltage, and to prevent flickering.
@@lunchie80 Once you rectify AC, you're working with the peak voltage, and the filter capacitor serves to keep it near that peak voltage. The LED light output cares not about the average voltage, but rather the average current. However, the LED will not conduct at all until it reaches the junction voltage, and it will avalanche conduct much more current as the voltage goes above the junction voltage. That excessive current will heat the junction and cause the LED to fail prematurely. This means the LED string will be designed to run at the peak voltage of the AC supply, not the RMS. You can still use the RMS voltage to calculate the AC power, though, as the current flow into the system on the AC side will still behave according to the RMS value of the AC supply.
6:50 But is it a FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER!
paused video, went searching for this comment, upped it, resumed video playback
For some reason your reaction was really hilarious to me... so good job :D
oshit i was thinking of this and someone did it before me now i rage rip bye
It usually is a full bridge rectifier, you just don't have to shout it. And i know you're referring to electroboom, but i don't like his kind of humour.
Do I care that you specifically don't like this kind of humour? Not even a single bit and I wonder why you felt it necessary to inform me that you don't like it.
Once again, thanks for your analysis! I always blamed fluorescent lights for my headaches, yet it turns out that some CFLs in my house are NOT the problem.
Thank you very much for this video. I'm one of those persons who gets eye strains from flickering light.
I had found my nirvana with those high quality CFL bulbs, which had more Hg in the tube - so they started quickly in winter; and emitted constant, non fluctuating light.
Now those CFL have become unfindable, as they are being replaced with LED bulbs.
Now, the LED bulbs can be designed with different criteria in mind. Since power semiconductors rapidly become expensive when they have to manage higher currents, some designs use a large number of small LED in series, just as you show in your video.
Low current = cheap transistors, or better, cheap TRIACS.
The electrolytic capacitor in the circuit smooths the rectified AC for the own use of the chip, and not for the operation of the LED strings.
Thankfully, not all LED bulbs use that horrendous driver. Many good LED bulbs use one (or few) big LED, controlled by a constant current driver. The problem is, the manufacturer don't state it on the bulb package.
There is one 100% sure way to tell that a LED bulb has a constant current driver, thus emitting pure smooth light.
That "sure way" is when the bulb is marked for "110 -240 V" operation.
At home, I use OSRAM LED bulbs with this wide voltage range, and I am truly happy with the steady lighting they provide.
On the negative side of things, they are expensive, around $ 7 to $ 10 each, but they come with a lifetime warranty, which means the filter capacitor is properly chosen. To date, I never replaced any of them, while the cheapy cheapos LED bulbs lasts few months - at best.
Again, thank you for shining light on the dark design of these badly flickering LED bulbs.
Regards from the UK,
Watching this in January 2021. You're thanking your 35,000 subs in Sept. 2017. Now you have 1.06 million. Astounding!!!
That light turning on at 1:50 gave me a serious case of the chuckles
A lot of the time I tell people "fluorescent lights give me headaches" just because it's easier for most people to understand. When I say "I get headaches from cool lighting" I usually get looked at like I'm crazy and then have to explain color temperature to someone who has never heard of it before
Tydaze get yellow lenses. This has made a world of difference for me. No more tired eyes at work in front of a computer monitor, within reason, of course.
Have you heard of f.lux, or Night Shift/Light modes for Mac/PC? What those do is filter the blue out in your PC and shift things toward orange.
Yes, thanks, I do use f.lux all the time, and I don't know how I ever lived without it.
I’ve found the same. It’s usually cool lighting that gives me migraines.
Just went and downloaded f.lux on my PC. I use CF.lumen on my phone for the same purpose.
Technology Connections: "They have to be rectified into DC using a--"
ElectroBOOM: "*FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER!*"
Technology Connections: "No, a single diode rectifier"
ElectroBOOM: >:(
just heard the word rectifier and screamed in my head FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER
I like to find peoples of culture in the comments
@@Alex-rf1md Also at 9:37, I just heard ElectroBOOM going "Pulse, pulse, pulse, pulse"
@@Alex-rf1md hahaha glad to know I'm not alone xd
As someone who works in the Lighting (mostly nightclub/concert and theater lighting) I deal with this every day. I get asked if there are alternatives for Halogen lamp (those used for Ellipsoidal lights and PAR-Cans) by people who don't understand how it works. Although halogen lamps run hot, and consume lots of electricity, and like to go out with a bang (sometimes literally), they are not simply swap-able. Concerts and other events get recorded, and LED's have been known to produce that unwanted flickering. Professional LED's are designed to adjust for any inconsistency in the incoming AC power's 60 or 50 Hz. That requires a lot of electronics and usually a power conversion to DC or a phase change (less common) and require an active cooling solution, unlike Halogens that passively cool. LED's are great, but expensive to replace entire halogen based lighting. They do exist, but come at a steep price and many halls and nightclubs cannot bear the cost to replace hundreds of fixtures. That was a rant.....
"I'm the editor and this is my desk" .. I dunno why, but i died at that moment
R.I.P.
I hope you're better now.
Great research. Great explanations. Great video!
And, yes, I read the whole CFL starting process. Why not? :)
This is a perfectly good video with clear information and enjoyable content.
And yet his newer videos are so much better. It's really cool to see how this channel has come. I wish I'd found it sooner!
I'd give this video multiple likes if I could. It really showed me how this subject is more complex than I'd have guessed. I now realize how some LEDs are much better designed than others. Just putting 80 or so diodes in a series string-that just skeeves me out, and I never would have thought such a thing would be sold. Now I find myself wondering which of my LEDs have good designs, and which don't, and how to check them.
Dreamed of having a successful channel. Humble bragging about 35k subs, now you got over 1M subs. So glad your dream is a reality. We are all enriched by your existence on this medium. Hopefully 10M in a few more years.
This guy is well prepared and very humorous at the same time. Keep up the great work.
I was fully prepared for the "note from the editor's desk" to be him saying "I'm the editor, and this is my desk. *plays a random note on a piano* Thank you" and back to the video
Thanks a lot ! This was enlightening !!!
You earned a heart just for the pun
@@TechnologyConnections
I can't believe you'd make light of such a situation!
(Ok ok, don't ask me to pick a window, I'll just leave!)
excellent!!!
Why are you here speaking in english
A British study some 15-20 years ago showed that the reason fluorescent lamps cause eyestrain, fatigue and headaches while reading is because a flickering light source makes it more difficult for the eye to track lines of text on a page, compared to a constant light source. At a time before compact fluorescent lamps and LED lamps, the only choices for interior lighting were typically incandescent bulbs with negligible flicker and fluorescent tubes with noticeable flicker.
Your channel is so interesting dude! I never thought a 15 minute video about bulbs could be this entertaining! Thank you :)
I'll give up my oil lamps when they pry them from my cold, dead fingers.
You mean burnt to a crisp dead fingers. :-P
I don't think you'll have to. Electricity is just a fad. It'll never take off.
You'd better be using whale oil in them things, by cracky!
Here ye here ye
You kids and you dang fangled new technology. I still use vines wrapped around one end of a stick. Its called a dang ol' torch ya young'en whipper shnappers!!!
So much more info than other channels of the like. Been enjoying it!
"35k subscribers"
*2 years later*
451k subscribers
Damn, dude.
And he deserves every one. Its 584k as of right now. I know the basics of a lot of what he shares, but its when he gets into the gritty detail (with a wonderful sense of dry, deadpan humor and timing) that really draws me in. So much I didn't know, after all! Capricorn, by chance?
681k at time of writing, wow!
700k now (well, 699 and change, but let's round up, shall we)
*@Jackson Mccreery* 709k just a week after your comment.
@@BobWidlefish 711K now. Your comment was two days ago... That's a thousand subs per day. And you know what? He deserves every single one.
This is one of my favorite RUclipss of all time. Keep doing what you do.
So cool to see this video now, 3 years afterwards. He announced that he had 35,000 followers (now 860,000) and that he was starting a new Patreon account, and that he was essentially quitting his day job to do these videos for us full time. I just couldn't be happier that this has all worked out, for him, and for all of us. It is great to see the occasional corner of the Internet that is not polluted with idiocy, pandering, or catering to our intense over-subscription to digital junk food.
"I'm so glad we passed 35k"...a little different two years later. 475k
and just 3 months later another 100k more!!!
It's 2020 and it's over 600k 😁
Almost 700k
@@StarTrekerYT0 yeah, just round up that last 1k
@@karfsma778 You don't need to round up now, it's 701k.
Another negative for the CFL high frequency ballast operation is _significant_ radio interference, especially on MW and LW. Sometimes one CFL turned on can wipe out AM reception in an entire house, and even close neighbors.
Amateur radio operator here - I banned CFLs in my house for that reason. Horrid interference.
Amateur operator here. I have ONLY CFL's (except two bulbs) in my house. But I buy quality ones. No interference at all. But I have problems with a classic linear fluorescent light from the neighbour which causes a lot of interference on HF band.
Would this have a jamming effect on Wi-Fi signals too or is the frequency/power too low?
@@UNSCPILOT frequency is too low - this is MF/HF interference, Wi-Fi is SHF.
I've found electronic ballasts with bulbs that are failing to be the worst. The emit a large RF burst every 3 second when they try to start the lamp. I'm sure they probably emit the same burst when turned starting a good bulb too but I care less about that. I once wasted almost two days tracking down RF from a bad electronic ballast when doing photon counting at work.
Fluorescent tube lights flicker rates do bother some, me included. Some flicker at 60 Hz, especially when old. That causes headaches from retina flash, dry eye and fatigued vision. I have been sensitive to those lights all my life, from school thru college and now work life. My solution? I unscrew all the tube lights from the receptacles in my office and use dim natural light from window or in winter, just work in the natural dimness. Took a year before the cleaning people caught on and stopped re-installing or replacing the bulbs. Lol.
Finally last year, the lighting company came and installed new, energy efficient LED tube lights. No more headaches.
I got driven crazy in school with dodgy 50Hz tubes that were on the way out. I could see the bloody flicker, but seemingly nobody else could, and my complaints were ignored. Best I could do was sit on the other side of the room or wear sunglasses. No, taking the offending tubes out myself was not an option. The ceilings were way too high for that.
They probably installed low flicker LEDs. Quite a few people tend to be under the impression that all LEDs have really bad flicker, but it's primarily the cheap ones or ones with small drivers
@@exoticcar5482 I worked at a place where it seemed like the LEDs were putting out significant UV.
@@jeffkardosjr.3825 That maybe due to either the use of a high color temp or the phosphors are degrading and some of the UV from the LEDs themselves are coming through. And yes, FYI under the yellow phosphor are blue/UV LEDs
@@exoticcar5482 Yeah. It is a little wierd to describe. Like occasional dots or stars of a deep blue. Not directly on the lamps, but the area they lit.
I came here 4 years late, only because I'm just going through your videos that sound exciting to me. (New subscriber) At the time of this video, LED bulbs were fairly new, and color-changing ones were kinda expensive. Now I have a smart LED color-changing bulb that I bought for 5 bucks. A year later, still runs like a champ.
Also, I want to congratulate you for making over a million subscribers. At the time of this footage, you only had 35,000. So congrats again.
Now that I wrote this, I realize that you or your team (if you have one) probably won't even read this. Lol.
BRILLIANT CHANNEL!
I think you're delivery and knowledge is perfect but it's YOU were watching, all the best
That was... compact. 😉
🤮
COMPACT
He compacted a lot of compacts.
C o m p a c t
He did it! He said "bridge rectifier"! Big Clive would be proud!
You mean ElectroBOOM?
What's the significance? That's a commonly used circuit.
@@kaizenstateofmind Mehdi, the one who runs the ElectroBOOM channel, has a favourite phrase "full bridge rectifier". He always loves to dramatically echo-shout it whenever it comes up while speaking.
@@SreenikethanI it is a pretty dramatic name haha
I just want to hear FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER in the Unreal Tournament announcer's voice! :D
The real problem with CFLs was that even if you wanted to recycle them, most folk didn't have any idea where/how.
We were told they would be recyclable ..... no local recycle center would take them because they contained mercury.
@@jeffreymontgomery7516 Right, they are actually toxic waste.
@@jeffreymontgomery7516 Right? I ended up throwing away a bin of the damned things I'd saved while trying to find somewhere that would would take them for safe recycling.
Recycling was fantastic in theory but didn't work out in the boondocks. Or anywhere I lived really.
If you still have them, chances are your local Home Depot will recycle them.
Any company that accepts Laptops or Flat Screen TV, SHOULD, be accepting CFL as it's basically the same elements. Mercury Lamp inside the Laptop along with the circuit board in the CFL. BOTH, can be placed in the same Hammer mill for recycling
I learn something cool and new every time I watch your videos. I’m so glad its working out for you and I look forward for more knowledge! Keep up the great work!!!!
Congratulations on your success!! It’s crazy you’ve been doing this full time for 7 years.
You should see Bigclive.com's teardowns of these things... There are THREE common driver circuits in use.
1. The very flickery capacitive dropper, usually found on pound / dollar store bulbs... it does have a very rudimentary amount of smoothing, but that's only to protect the LED chain from switch on spikes. These are non-dimmable, and the massive spikes caused by a dimmer would probably burn out the inrush limiting resistor. Has significant capacitive power factor.
2. The "driverless" approach, where LED chains close to supply voltage are driven by a rectifier and current limiter - the dimmable version would tend to have an extra resistive load that is turned on when the voltage drops below the LED conduction limit. Excellent power factor.
3. Switchmode buck regulator - the least flicker, but can show a harmonic power factor like any non-PFC switchmode PSU
I guess Phillips Hue uses type 3? They're not actually dimmer switch compatible, and I guess you'd always need a driver for the RGB values?
I suggest you watch bigClive videos again, especially the ones with more sophisticated drivers.
.... very flickery capacitive dropper, usually found on pound / dollar store bulbs... it does have a very rudimentary amount of smoothing, but that's only to protect the LED chain from switch on spikes.
Nope. The smoothing cap is to bring it closer to DC, reduce flicker, and improve efficiency. A resistor is usually used to limit current surge.
@@kaitlyn__L Hue bulbs house tiny computers which happen to drive LEDs. It's like plugging your PC into a dimmer and expecting it to dim your monitor :)
@@SheaMcCombs but the monitor has its own microcontroller and driver handling the backlight. So your analogy is a stretch. Especially because the microcontroller inside a Hue bulb responds to other aspects of light switches. And I never said that I expected them to behave with dimmer switches, I factually stated that they don't work with dimmer switches. You can take your condescension elsewhere.
The cold-weather outdoor performance of CFLs really turned me off to them. I kinda liked them, especially IKEA ones, but once I put one outside for my backdoor light over the winter and it was dim as a half-wit, I kinda swore them off. LEDs are my faves now. They're bright and instant and work well even covered in snow!
You forgot to mention the flickery Christmas lights that drive you nuts when you drive past a house that's decorated with them.
I hate moving past rows of lights for that reason... I can see the dimming better than anyone I know and that drives me nutso.
Those are actually half-wave rectified, whereas the diagram he showed demonstrated full-wave rectification. Basically, only the positive half of the AC current passes through, rather than flipping the negative half to positive. You can't see the flicker like that on full-wave rectified strings, even though they are zeroing out at 60Hz
@@SepticFuddy I have thought of that. A vid years ago by AvE (watched his vids for a short while till I got tired of his pottymouth) showed each half of a string flipping between the 2 sides of the AC.
My main thought is that the LEDs come on only when reaching a certain voltage, so it's only the tops of the sine waves that activates the LEDs. I guess I have enlightening to do.
I love LED bulbs, but the LED Christmas lights just seem so off, so cold. I prefer the houses with incandescent Christmas lights. When I am walking my dogs, I will just stand there and nostalgically watch them. Oh and don't get me started on those Christmas projected laser lights.
This channel really can make you appreciate the ingenious engineering all around you.
CFL bulbs also bleach fabrics and paint. We took pictures down from a wall that had a CFL lamp in front of them, all the pictures left a ghost because of the exposure to the CFL UV output. We also had a CFL catch fire.
This video should have been a 60fps video...
Why?
Dmitry Shap because with 30fps, you can't see anything on the discs.
Ah but you see, with a frame rate of 60hz, the shutter speed had to be at least 1/60 of a second. That made the lines appear stationary always. I think the pattern is pretty clearly stationary between shots.
Aside from that, I shoot in 4k for editing purposes and don't have a camera capable of 4k60, and to be honest I generally prefer the more cinematic 30p to the soap opera 60p anyway.
30FPS is perfect for this kind of video, especially with the history that you go into, like its a movie theatre :P
Technology Connections I see, thank you for clarifying!
Cool/daylight are ideal for work. I install daylight bulbs in my home office after finding myself exhausted 1/2 way through the day under warm bulbs. That said i love warm bulbs for relaxing, entertaining.
This is true. The thing that I think a lot of people don’t understand is that different color temperatures are better for different applications. It’s when they are used in the wrong applications that it becomes a problem. Think an entire house lit by 6500K lighting, even the living room and bedroom. Or an office lit by 3000K lighting.
9:37
ElectroBOOM: "PULSE PULSE PULSE PULSE PULSE PULSE PULSE"
*"AYYYYIEEEE!"*
It's very cute to watch this now with him being excited about 35k subs. Congratulations on pasing 1.1 Million!
Having viewed dozens of your videos since this one was made, I gotta say, you've done very well in sharing knowledge. I'm glad so many subscribers have found you. Thank you for raising the understanding level of a small percentage of the population.
I prefer science based factual evidence, not illusion - so I enjoy this channel.
Thanks, TC!
Looking forward to receiving more stuff in my eye balls
I am so happy I found your channel! It’s AMAZING content. I love this treasure trove of greatness. ONE BURNING QUESTION. I have a severe adversion to certain color temperatures in the LED bulbs. I miss my incandecant bulbs warmth and color. Halogen has always appealed to me as well. Ibe switched 100% of the bulbs in my house to LED. I’m not happy with the various brands I’ve found. I want first and foremost warmth, no strobe, and dismantle. COULD YOU PLEASE give me some specific brand models to try? The light in my home has a dramatic effect on my mood. (I suffer from OCD and anxiety) Consistent colorvyemperature throughout my home would make me happy. Thanks for your work!!!!!
Try the c by ge smart bulbs they have tuneable white light so you can set them from 2000k-6500k but cost $15 a bulb. Or there are ones by Phillips. I use the great value daylight LEDs in my house I have the warm look daylight is brighter and a cleaner looking light.
I have 1 LED bulb. All my others are CFL. LED bulbs are just starting to move into the home here in the UK. Most people seem to just get the much cheaper CFL's for the moment plus there is no reason to buy a new bulb unless you have a dead CFL which tends to take years to happen. Anyway. With the LED bulb I have vs the CFL's all I see is the lack of warm up time. I have not noticed any flicker.
To be honest I generally never have noticed flicker from anything around 50Hz or above. Even 25fps video looks ultra smooth to me. My old CRT was at 60Hz and i never had eye strain or flicker. 75Hz was possible if I installed the CRT drivers but I just never bothered lol.
So many people complain about flicker. I wonder why I dont see it? I also have no trouble with Magic Eye pictures (it automatically turns 3D when I see it) and I cant get enough of 3D movies. No headaches or anything (unless my glasses are dirty). I have a 3DS and was surprised to find out that people actually TURN OFF THE 3D. I never do and usually have the slider at 80% and was pretty annoyed that after spending £40 on pokemon moon I found out it was 2D only :-o
I've been using LEDs for 5 years for my home lighting. There's no realistic CFL option when the whole house is wired with dimmer controlled downlighters. However the prices have dramatically improved, from £20 a bulb to £3 a bulb.
As for flicker, cheap Chinese and the current crop of clear filament style lamps are terrible. Branded ones are much better, and even the Amazon basics give a good dimmable light. 5 years ago I spent hundreds of pounds trying to find GU10 lamps that didn't flicker like crazy, I can't understand how some people can't notice it. Even if the bulb isn't visibly flickering it feel like walking through a dodgy disco with strobe lighting.
I love the cold white LED bulbs! Everything looks so much better and, as my apartment balcony door faces North and no actual sunlight ever enters my room, during the day having the main ceiling light on gives me the illusion that the sun is coming in.
My house came with CFLs in it and I changed them all out for LEDs because of the problems with CFLs mentioned in this video. Nice vid, great content.
Haha loved it the "You actually read this? DANG note"
I think you are trying to put Big Clive out of business, lol. Top notch video, thanks.
1:46 He Coughs While the Light Starts. 🤣
Yes. We heard that.
@@Anvilshock still funny though
I'm so glad you've come so far with this channel since you made this! Keep up the great work! I love this kind of educational stuff.
I don't know how I missed this video until 2019. Please keep making them!
Nostalgia is joining your dad after he wakes up on a very cold morning, while he grabs his coffee and cigarette, goes into the garage and flips on the the 1980's fluorescent tube lights and having them flicker and start super dim from the cold.
We have a fluorescent fixture from 1975. The original magnetic ballast had to be replaced, though, as it quit working.
Wow, I just had a really powerful flashback.....without any potentially illicit substances, depending on where you live - I need a minute to recover from that...I miss my Dad, though he didn't smoke, the rest was true.
I am guilty of loving those pure-white CFLs, I have a photography lamp with a huge one just for my room XD Maybe that's just my astigmatism making me want really even, bright lighting.
I work with computer graphics a lot, so I appreciate the "correct" color balance of a pure white CFL too.
I never thought about astigmatism as a reason for wanting the broad spectrum. Maybe that's the real reason I prefer then.
I have a terrible astigmatism and I do everything I can to avoid white/blue lights. I even have "flux" on my PC and phone to bias the color spectrum down to about 2500k and that has helped my eye pains and strains immensely!
fisqual Huh, for me its more about the glare, and the "starbursting" effect. A really bright white light that isn't directly in my vision helps a lot. I do agree that computer screens, etc can be really bothersome if the surrounding is dark. I just don't get the same effect from darker "warm" lights.
Its the same reason why people with astigmatism have way worse symptoms at night driving, etc.
my problem cfls is the high frequency ringing sound they make. drives me nertz.
Does it make your ears hertz?
I agree I can not stand the CRT TV as it hertz my ears with that high pitched frequency. It also drives me nertz.
Those old tv's are so loud, I don't see how I never noticed when I was a kid
@@Yophillips3272 same, lol.
I even have to turn the volume down a lot, when I watch a RUclips video that features a CRT with headphones, cause even through a microphone and speakers I can't take the CRT whine, lol
Hertz a bit, don't they?
I love watching old videos of popular channels when the maker talks about how many subscribers he has. It's awesome to look now, 4 years later and a entire 1 MEEELION subscribers more ... Love the channel now in the future...
35.000 subscribers in 2017, less than 3 1/2 years later, it's over a million. Well deserved, those videos are not only informative, but very entertaining with their querky host. Wish you many more successful years!
It's becoming increasingly apparent that using an archaic receptacle for lighting is seriously due for a revolutionary change. We should perhaps redefine our industry standard for light fixtures that accommodate a universal ballast/driver, and allow hot-swap of purely LED bulbs. The artistic variation of lamps going into the next century have an incredible potential.
Cool idea. What voltage will your universal ballast output? 200V for filaments? 12V for COBs? 30V for other COBs? something in between? Or will it be a constant current source? What current will it provide? 100mA for 4 filaments in parallel? What if I want two filaments in parallel? Or 8? Or a COB with dozens of LEDs in parallel, drawing up to several amps?
It shouldn't be to hard to set up auto detection circuits. Or heck even a way for the bulb to signal it's capabilities to the socket. Every usb device and the ram in your computer does the latter.
+Kasey Boles Cool. Of course now you need a driver per bulb because each bulb may have different requirements. Also the driver will have to be intelligent and be able to produce a wide range of output voltages/currents, making it a lot more expensive. Since the driver is usually the part that fails first in LED bulbs, that doesn't seem like a very smart move.
My thinking was having a versatile driver/ballast in the fixture and at most a very simple circuit or data chip to tell the driver how to operate. This would of course drive the fixture price up a tad (and be an excuse to raise it even further). But by making it long lasting and setting some basic standards to limit the possibilities to a large sub-set of anything goes. This is mostly off the top of my head, but considering how ram stick come with a simple little chip listing several known good timings and with USB devices and Ethernet able to readily self configure communication speeds and many other examples of this sort of thing it shouldn't be all that hard. This is all just brainstormed, but considering I can buy a $12 ic that can be set up to handle a half dozen different computer buses (USB, Ethernet, can, etc.) as a single chip buyer and prices drop fairly fast in bulk I cannot imagine something for this application wouldn't be simpler and cheaper, especially in lot sizes major manufacturing would require.
All that said for more basic scenarios is could be trivial to have a simpler system where a bit of cleverness like you see in how stereo jacks work just fine in mono sockets and vice versa, or even other ways electrical backwards compatibility with various connector form factors has been achieved, such as three way bulbs and sockets.
What you're proposing doesn't really solve any problems (the-now more expensive-driver is still going to fail first, so you'll just save a couple LEDs) and-at least at this point-very anti-consumer. Right now I can buy any LED bulb from any manufacturer, screw it into my existing fixture and it will work. With your proposed system I first have to buy a new fixture and when the driver in it fails, I'm locked in with the manufacturer of that fixture for replacement (FYI this is already happening, only manufacturers don't bother with selling spare parts-when the fixture fails, you have to buy a new fixture).
1:47 come on little CFL you can do it!
What about the bad light quality caused by uneven distribution of wave lengths across the visible spectrum by LEDs and CFLs? (worse in cheap LEDs as they produce roughly 3 wave lengths)
Incandescent light bulbs are horrible at producing visible light only, which is why their spectrum is spread more evenly across a wide range, way beyond the visible spectrum even. As a result, we get better color information under incandescent light than with CFLs and LEDs. In fact, with CFLs it's possible to create a material that's completely black under CFL light, while it's white under incandescent or sunlight.
Donnie Depends highly on the bulb. The very best LEDs can produce light that's even better-quality than incandescent bulbs, although these are still somewhat rare and expensive. Many LED bulbs settle for being *almost* as good as incandescent bulbs (and usually far better than CFLs).
They usually achive this by coating the LED with some kind of substances, such as phosphors, that will absorb the wavelength produced by the diode and re-emit light at different wavelengths. Obviously you need a blend of a bunch of these to get high quality white light, which is why I think the best bulbs are still expensive.
There also are some higher-end CFLs that produce very high quality light. But as with the LEDs, theyre rare and expensive. Its more common with Fluorescent Tubes.
+techmage89 Nope. Incandescent bulbs are essentially black body emitters. Nothing can produce better light than a black body emitter, that's the ideal basis to which we compare all other sources of light. LEDs can come close to incandescent bulbs (who knows, maybe one day they'll actually be able to match them), but they can never beat them. That's just physics.
how on earth can you make a video about light bulb tech and have it be this engrossing, informative, and entertaining?
As a newly graduated electrical engineer I’ve got some insight on this. I suspect the cause of the flicker is that as you mentioned with LEDs a small change in voltage will cause a massive change in current and thus light output. So even a slight flicker in the voltage will cause a noticeable change in the light created by the bulb. The driver probably does a decent job of creating DC, just that the ripple gets amplified a lot by the bulb when the current isn’t regulated. The regulation can actually be done cheat and easily with a single current limiting resistor which would almost eliminate ripple current, but the voltage drop of the resistor would lower overall efficiency. I could be wrong, but I suspect some LED bulbs are more efficient than others, and that the less efficient LED bulbs will produce almost no strobing effect, with the more efficient ones will. That’s just a guess though. I haven’t looked into how things are actually done to know for sure. This is mostly based on my knowledge of what can be done and how LEDs work.
Using a inductor does help more than a capacitor.
I discovered the flicker on my retro style LED bulb by filming them with my 240 fps slow-mo phone camera. Then I filmed an old style carbon thread filament bulb and discovered it too flickers with the 50 Hz DC outlet by the same amount. That made me content with my LED bulbs.
The main difference I think is that incandescent filaments heat up and flicker in a softer/slower fashion. This helps the trick our eyes even more with persistence of vision as they look like they are dimming but not going right off. LED flicker is harsh because it can go from on to off much faster .... think TosLink :) Incandescent like a sine wave, LED like a square or sawtooth wave.
This means just one thing: Your LED bulb is shit.
For me it has always been the harsh yellowish light of incandescent and most compact fluorescent lamps that caused me a great deal of headaches. I grew up in the 1980s - 1990s with pretty much constant headaches and it wasn't until I was able to start buying my own lighting that I discovered the "daylight" fluorescents and my headaches went away, except when I'm in places with that antiquated fire light.
For a long time now I've been using "daylight" LED strip lighting for much more even lighting and I think it's great, especially since there's no flicker since it runs off of 12 Volts DC.
Recently I was given some cheap LED bulbs and when I tried one I got an instant severe migraine, it was one of the "warm white" (extremely yellow) bulbs. I have no idea if it flickered since just a split second of that horrible yellowish light caused me so much pain, I couldn't possibly experiment with it.
We use the 5000K LED looking bulbs at my work. They mirror daylight very well, appearing like skylights in our ceiling. I think they look fantastic.
Color temps above 3500K are best for work office applications
I was impressed on the improvements made to CFLs over a decade's time, as I recall 20 years ago when they were first widely available and affordable, they didn't throw out the brightness of an incandescent bulb; although the CFLs of 20 years ago were marketed as equivalents to incandescent brightness.
Going back 20 years there was a demonstration display of CFLs to incandescent bulbs of equivalent brightness, where flipping a switch would light up the incandescent bulb; flipping another switch would light up the CFL next to the incandescent. To this day I still recall being able to closeup stare straight into the lit CFL with eyes wide-open; where the equivalent 60 watt incandescent had a brightness several levels higher than the CFL, almost blindingly bright, where I had to squint my eyes to view it.
But, years later the brightness of the CFLs improved immensely.
So awesome! Now 1.46 million subs. Congrats man, the channel is awesome
You didn’t take into account the Flourescence lights work by illuminating a gas and creating Pure UV light, then the phosphorous coating converts the UV light to a visible wavelength and overtime the phosphorous coating wears down. When the coating ages it starts allowing UV light through which by itself will cause eye damage.
@Rick Delair Not all LED bulbs flicker. If you are affected by flickering lights, then you should avoid filament LEDs - they tend to flicker badly (as was said in the video). As for conventional LEDs, always buy good quality ones from good manufacturers, not cheap ones. Also, as a response to Light on the Inside's comment, the eye damage is caused by UV radiation, but not because of the phosphor degrading. Even a new fluorescent lamp will emit low levels of UV light. I'm assuming (correct me if I'm wrong) that the reason for this is microscopic scratches/imperfections in the phosphor coating. Because the tube shape is so complicated, the phosphor coating does not get applied evenly to all parts of the tube, so some parts get too much and others get too little.
@Rick Delair Long wave UV isn't exactly fun.
You should mention LED Christmas lights. Those are THE WORST for flicker. I hate them so much, those cause me headaches.
I've been considering a way to make them DC so I don't have to suffer so much.
fisqual I have a set in my garage, just adding a single bridge rectifier out of something I pulled apart made the flicker much better. I had to rotate 1/2 the led's though as they are often wired in 2 opposite polarity strings.
Cheap store-brand LED Christmas lights are typically half-wave rectified, meaning they flash 60 times per second, rather than 120 (and they are off more than 50% of the time). I absolutely cannot stand them. Some more expensive strands use full-wave rectifiers and do not visibly flicker to my eyes. You can often distinguish them just by looking at the plug. Crappy flickery strands have a pass-through plug like incandescents use, but good LED strands have a larger plug (presumably with a sizable capacitor in there).
Last year I learned I can easily distinguish them from better non-flickery LED lights by recording slow-motion video with my phone. With the phone recording 120 frame-per-second video, the difference is obvious.
Oddly, when recording 60fps video, terrible flickery strands may appear *off* on your phone screen even though they're *on* to your eyes, because the frame rate syncs with the flicker and the shutter is only open while they're off.
How about the long, vertical LED taillights on Cadillac Escalades??
I cannot deal with driving behind one of those at night.
I thought I was the only one that hated being behind Cadillacs with the long strip LED lights. Especially if there is one in the other lane and I am only seeing it in my peripheral vision.
"To my subscribers: I'm so thrilled this channel has surpassed 35 thousand."
Me: Checks number of subscribers in 2019.
35 thousand... plus FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND. Or, 435k.
You've gone a long way, dear sir. Congratulations, and wishing you all the future success!
And now over a million! Bonkers!
I remember there being ONE specific store in my hometown whose lighting gave me a huge headache. Now I know why!
Good luck with the eventual weekly video! Ill be watching. Love the channel!
“You actually read all this?”
Yes, yes I did
i am a terrible person and prefer halogen bulbs. i have some CFLs left but i never use them as they take 15 minutes to be bright enough.
what i don't like about the fluorescent tubes is they look like they are a good light source but they are not, reading/working under them is terrible.
the only thing they are good for is lighting up hallways.
L.E.D.s :)
The build up is enjoyable for me.
SandyStarchild incandescent and led for life
The build up of light is painful... I forgot what kind of bulbs I have, but I'd rather get a headache than use slow-starting bulbs. Though I only get headaches when I can see the bulbs from the corner of my eye and I kinda make sure I'm either facing away from them or I have a lampshade.
4000k LED for work is perfect. It's not quite the bright white you get with 6000k or above, but it looks like white light. It's perfect really, better than incandescent or fluro for work. 3000k LED for spaces like bedrooms, lounges and hallways. It's slightly more yellow than incandescent, but only slightly.
And flickering is only a problem with poor quality LEDs. Since decent ones are getting stupidly cheap now, it makes no sense to buy anything else but good quality LEDs. The only exception I would make is halogens for light fixtures that have pretty glass or crystal, because no LED will make that pop like it should.
Edit: the 2800k ones that are becoming common are slightly more yellow than incandescent, NOT the 3000k ones. I prefer 3000k to 2800k, but 3000k seems to be getting harder to find on the shelves, as is unfortunately 4000k. Not happy really, we are getting forced to choose between 2800k, which is too yellow, and 6000k, which is too white. You would think with the amount of control available with LEDs that the market would favour more choice not less.
I think filament spaghetti is one of my new favorite terms.
They're one of my favourite new progressive rock bands.
@@skylined5534 for real?
@@robertoXCX
Yea man! 😂
Happy new year! 🍾
Don’t know why but whenever I hear “oh hello I’m the editor and this is my desk” always makes me chuckle.
I just really love this channel tbh
Not qulified but, Basicly that driver in that filiment style bulb. Is likely a capacitive dropper ( capacitor used like a resistor with out the heat) that limits the current then is rectified. And if your lucky is also filterd with a small cap. But liky you said not a big enofe one. The schmatic in the wiki is what most of theses style blubs use. Just replace the parts after r3 with a string of leds.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitive_power_supply
The other option that is unfortnatly becoming popular is a small chip from china that switches leds on in series. So wheen the ac wave is at say 6v it switches 2 leds on thenat 50v it switches say 15 leds in series, till all the leds are in series when it reaches 120v. It flickers relly bad but its incredably small, and very effecent.
Thers also classic ac to dc power supplies (like your laptop or phone charger) but there not very comon in bulbs due to size, they are more relaiable though.
Theses guys make most of the chips you will see in led bulbs or there clones.
www.bpsemi.com/
EE here:
King of KYA, you are absolutely correct and kudos to you for the great explaination. I also didn't know about the switching chips you mentioned in your second paragraph so thanks for that! LEDs operate most efficiently at a very specific forward voltage. (This varies from LED to LED but is usually less than 4 volts.) Since an inadequately filtered rectified sinusoid will vary in voltage, this would definitely help with efficiency at the cost of much increased flickering. But better filtering with a larger capacitor is a slightly more expensive way to solve this issue.
One more thing that is relevant: many of the LEDs in LED light bulbs actually consist of several LED elements in a single package. This allows a greater forward voltage drop across one small component which saves space and cost.
......other option that is unfortnatly becoming popular is a small chip from china t
I believe this was one option explored by an AMERICAN chip manufacturer and then copied.............
I don't think I'll be able to buy a new car unless they can figure out how to dim the LEDs without PWM or at least in a way I can't see it. Dashboard illumination is pretty much all LED now. It's fine at full brightness but when it dims as you turn on the headlights then it becomes annoying. Tail-lights of new cars are all really annoying to me too. Somehow the backlight on my laptop is fine but the Samsung tablet my dad gave me I can see the flicker. So I know it's possible to do it other ways. Interestingly at Costco the other day I did see a filament type bulb that wasn't too bad, it seems they managed to cram a big capacitor in there somehow.
Try tint film.
6:41 did you mean the FUUULLL BRIIDGE RECTIFIER!?
I use LEDs as my light source while I am not at work (under florescent light), and have chronic migraines. I don't care about light tone as much as whether I can see with the light. If I can see, It will do. But I've noticed lately that in my home space (not work), I have been getting headaches that are only alleviated when I turn off my lighting, after only a few hours of having my lights on. Usually after I get off work, I avoid turning on my lights to give my eyes a break, or I use green light (in the form of an Ally lamp) to help with migraine light therapy.
This video helped me to understand that it could also be the slight flickering of the LEDs that cause this. I use straight up LED lights, so they're not fancy bulbs or anything. They are likely to have this problem, and it explains why I feel headachy after only a little bit if I brightly light up my room.
Almost all of the light fixtures in my house use LED bulbs except for the counter top lights which use those tiny bulbs (they're not LED but they're not florescent or incandescent either) and the light fixture in my bathroom which uses traditional incandescents, and the small amount of space you mentioned must have been why I had to change the one bulb in the light above the kitchen table twice. The counter top lights are a different story because it was always this one bulb on the my right hand side above the computer that kept going out. Me and my dad were forced to believe that there was a loose wire in the lamp