It should be pointed out that cutting the power consumption in half does not cut the lumen output in half. The unmodified bulb converts a higher percentage of electricity into heat than the modified bulb.
I've always had an inkling that most lamp manufacturers were designing these things to fail. For one they absolutely grill the LEDs as you've seen for two they drive them right at their rated current. The funny thing is, they could actually score marketing points and *GAIN* efficacy by driving them at a reduced current. LEDs have an exponential efficacy curve that sharply tails off the closer you get to the rated current of the diode. There's a sweet spot below 80% and 60*c where depending on formulation of the diode and phosphors, the LED could potentially be capable of outputting north of 200 lumens per watt with that super long lifespan. and if they want to shorten the life of the lamps, just go cheaper on the capacitors lol
Great video 👍 most semiconductor wear mechanisms accelerate by roughly a factor of 2 every 10C so overall lifetime may be extended by a lot more than you estimate (2^4=16) although I do not know how phosphor ageing curves look. Also don't forget that led efficiency improves at lower powers so your light output will be more than half the original rating 😁. Winner winner chicken dinner
I figured the bulb companies would get fed up if everyone is modifying their bulbs to increase their lifespan. I wonder if they're burying the resisters deeper or putting a single resistor instead of two in order to frustrate the efforts of DIYers. Nice work. Thanks for sharing.
since people discovered the easy repair tweak by essentially soldering and shorting the one broken led diode to make the bulb glow the companies now put 12 volt led chips instead of seprate 3 leds to make the tweak useless as by shorting a single 12v the current gets too high and burns the other diodes
@@do2eazy363 the amount of people who would do this is very low. More likely, it is cheaper to use 3 LEDs in one package, because reduces the number of components the pick and place machine needs to place (also more LEDs per PnP reel).
I could imagine that being able to advertise higher lumen levels without including more LEDs (bigger number for the same cost) is another motivation for over-driving them.
@Logic44 It's available but only on 2 stores. Its at 180 l/w instead of the Dubai 210 l/w. The diy core pro bulb in the video is supposedly 235 l/w if it really is putting out 1521 lumens.
Superb video. A very simple hack for reducing bulb temperature is removing the plastic diffuser cap, or even drilling 2 holes into it (side and tip) for airflow.
And after drilling the holes in the aluminum part of the base attach some good finned heat sinks. This will allow you to "suck away" a LOT of heat. The bigger the heat sinks the better! I prefer this method to reducing the drive because I want to get the RATED Lumens from the bulb!
I'd love to kinda hack my philips 3452lm LED bulb in this way and also add a bigger filter capacitor and remove the way too weak inrush resistors because they keep making the whole bulb blinking sometimes and it ends up not powering up anymore at all because of that. Unfortunately, all the electronics are behind the LEDs board and they are completely covered in resin. You basically can't get to it without somewhat destroying the lamp. Sucks, I'd really love a reliable 3000+lm E27 bulb!
@John Doe but just by removing the plastic globe I am already somewhat destroying the lamp. And I got one more which is made out of glass and has the same issue!
Comparing these to some TCP brand 12W that I bought on clearance, the TCP have a a serious heatsink for the back section and they are heavy, don't know about the number of LEDs and the circuit, but they certainly take the heat dissipation a lot more seriously.
Nice!! I have seen many lamps like that and yea the LED's just burn out, sometimes shorting the bad one works (it makes the linear driver chip hotter so dont short too many out) I have Phillips 3 way bulbs which seem to have a good thermal design. It is actually a virtical + arrangement of the boards and they opened up the center with ahole at the top and vents down the side so it can have convection cooling. so far 3 years strong, but they arent on 100% of the time so still not over the 20k hours mark.
A lot of cheaper LED bulbs can often have accessible current-setting resistors, so a lot of off-brand ones can also be made into "doobie" lamps as Clive called them, it's just getting a nicer colour that is the issue in my opinion, everyone seems to stock only either the yellow 2700k bulbs or the blue-white 6500k bulbs, I prefer something around 3000-3500k myself, easier on the eye...
Snip out the current sensing resistor with a pair of cutters, saves faffing with the soldering iron unless you work at a bench like me with an iron always at hand.
The important thing to understand is how Humans see things. It's not just the LEDs becoming slightly more efficient. Firstly, the eye's response to light is logarithmic. It takes about 10 times as much light to appear twice as bright. However, that only applies when you can compare the two light levels... there's more! The human eye has "Auto Exposure" control, using a mechanism called the IRIS. No matter what the light level, the human eye automatically adjusts so that you can still see properly! These two mechanisms allow a human to see in light levels of 0.1 Lux to 100,000 lux without much difficulty. Your brain sets the "brightness level" using quite complex algorithms, but basically it uses averaging then sets "100% bright" to the highest light it can see anywhere, and "dull" based on the average of the *majority* of the areas it can see. 1. A 50% drop in measured brightness (Lux) is completely unnoticeable, providing that you don't see the transition occur. 2. If you increase the illumination level of an entire room, you will not notice any difference in brightness. In fact, it will cause the brightest area (eg: a task light) in the space to appear DULLER. 3. If you want some area in your house to appear "brighter", there is no need to add more lighting. Simply reduce the light levels in the surrounding and adjacent areas. To most people, the human eye works in counter-intuitive ways.... but actually it's very logical how it performs.
I was curious and popped oven a cheap "100" watt led and it looks somewhat like yours. I'm in the US, its a dollar general light bulb. Took a lot of work to get the bulb head off but i got it. I have three resistors labeled r1, r2, and r3. R3 is physically larger and has the number 564. The two other ones are about half the physical size, hard as hell to read but i see 13RO and 15RO. Does that sound right? almost identical to your board. Not sure how since I'm on 120 volt and you sound British and likely 240. Trying to learn more about LEDs. You can get import Dubai lamps now and a (allegedly) superior version off the shelf. I'm trying to make wide input LED DC bulbs or atleast 11-34 volt DC input bulbs for an off grid system. Those Dubai elements, the filament use almost half as much power as your stardard cheapo bulb. A huge savings. Ebay and amazon have filaments like them for sale but I dout they have the efficiency or quality so I might end up cannibalizing a store bulb.
I've done some simple experiments using a variety of unmodified LED 120v bulbs and a simple VARIAC. I simply started the bulb at full mains voltage (117-122) and slowly dialed the VARIAC back, watching the light output. There is a zone where as i'm lowering the voltage where the light output doesn't go down at all, than past that point, it slowly gets dimmer, than after that it nosedives. So what I do is I try to find the sweet spot which is just before the light starts to decline and than I make a note of the voltage o n the side of the bulb with a sharpie. On one bulb it was too hot to the touch running it at 120v. At night where I live it can get as high as 127!! But running it at 90v it was STONE COLD with a negligible loss in lumans. Instead of busting open these bulbs, I suggest people make a simple box with a common iron ten Watt 12v transformer inside, wire the transformer buck boost style to shave OFF 12v from the line and run your LED's off that. There is a cheap APC brand UPS that is power strip shaped with a 150w inverter inside. The SLA battery is a joke and the inverter is a joke. But its got a nice beefy 12v transformer in it. I scooped out the inverter circuit and wired it up in buck config, all the electronics in my bedroom are hooked to this "magic" power strip and the 105-110v is kind to everything its hooked to.
I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but I want to point out that this isn't very good general advice. These bulbs are built around constant current power supplies. By dropping their input voltage, you're forcing them into essentially acting as constant voltage supplies by removing all their voltage headroom. The voltages will vary with all different bulb models, and they're going to be very sensitive to factors like temperature and grid voltage variations. You're not going to break anything, but you're probably going to be seeing a lot of variability in how your lights operate.
We have an old 30W LED lamp from 2009 or so in our kitchen, from back when high-power white LEDs were an expensive novelty and it was marketed to us as a well-cooled, bulletproof bulb. Guess what: that bulb is still fine in 2023 and gets at least 3h of on-time a day. It was sold at 40-50€ if I recall correctly and that's the price we probably should expect to pay if they really were designed to last in the first place.
interesting video. thank you. curious, would the colour of the bulb top (this one being an opaque white) determine the kelvin of the final product? if you had an arts and craft clear bulb to replace it with would the colour temperature change much?
LEDs come in all kinds of colours. It is the chemistry in the LEDs that determine the colour. Not the plastics they are packaged in. The top is opaque to diffuse the light but probably does not change the light colour. (That would decrease the efficiency.) Cheers
I add 2k thermistors as inrush limiters to my led lamps if they are 10w or less, or 1k thermistor if they are 20w. they cost a few dollars for a pack of 10. Hopefully it helps
The Philips "Dubai" and "Ultra High Efficiency " both doubled the number of LEDs in each string AND reduced the driver-current, they didn't just reduce the Drive Current. So reducing the drive current on a "standard light" will reduce the heat but also increase the lifespan. However the light output suffers as well, not so for the "Dubai and Ultra Efficient" lights.
Lowering the drive current is functionally the same as increasing the number of chips; the end result of both actions is less power dissipated by each chip.
I think your estimates are quite reasonable. You are halving the LED current AND significantly reducing the junction temperature, both of which will increase the life on their own. If you ever need more light output there's nothing stopping you adding a second light fitting.
got some cheap tesco 14.5w (100w), led bulbs, 6 months later, one of them cracked, around the casing, they do get very hot, so took it back, normal thing, have you receipt, did you get it from us, tesco, no receipt, but told them to read small print on bulb, :), got new one, now going to hack this one to run on lower power
Nice hack! Did you reverse engineer the schematic (not necessarily Big Clive style 😉) so to see how the schematic is affected. Lasr week Big Clice showed the schematic of a led lamp of which the driver ic consisted of 2 current sources. Each with its own resistor. If this lamp uses the same stetup you might be able to lower the temp. of the driverchip by replacing both resistors with different values.
I have seen putting holes in the casing to disipate the heat build up I don't know how effective it is but when you thing the heat build up in a closed case you could expect a lot of heat ?
Do you think that led strips are better because they are more spread so have less overheating problems ? Should a led strip last longer than a light bulb ?
Now if only the lumen output can be measured, you could calculate the efficiency. I doubt that it would be near the Dubai or the new A-rated Ultraefficient LEDs. I think those also have better chips.
It's not just the LEDs becoming slightly more efficient. Firstly, the eye's response to light is logarithmic. It takes 10 times as much light to appear twice as bright. However, that only applies when you can compare the two light levels.... The human eye has "Auto Exposure", using a mechanism called the IRIS. No matter what the light level, the human eye automatically adjusts so that you can still see properly! These two mechanisms allow a human to see in light levels of 0.1 Lux to 100,000 lux without much difficulty. A 50% drop in measured brightness (Lux) is completely unnoticeable, providing that you don't see the transition occur.
@@johncoops6897 I mean if you use lights as work lights you need a lot of light output to avoid darkness in shadowy regions. You can then either just use multiple bulbs or just go straight to LED strips that last forever. Or LED tubes, I got some 7 years ago and they still perform like day 1.
@@kyoudaiken To prevent shadowing, it's better to use a large diffuse light source, so tubes (with diffuser) are best. Bright pin-points like LED tape are the worst choice. But you have got some concepts backwards... The brighter that you illuminate an object, the DARKER the shadows will become. This is because your eye's Iris closes in response to the brightest object in the field of view, and that reaction then causes the less bright areas to become even darker. For example, if you are walking through the forest at night, you can see into the shadows much better by moonlight than you can if you have a torch. PS: I am a lighting engineer, this stuff is my profession.
@@johncoops6897 Nice to know! With my setup at home I don't really have issues with seeing stuff. But I keep seeing YTbers reparing stuff and having a lamp on a movable arm and illuminating the device with like 1000lm directly from 4 inches away... Bad eyesight?
@@kyoudaiken - the amount of light required increases with the level of fine detail required. Lumens are not a measure of lighting intensity but it would be common to have a bright task light for fine work like SMD soldering. As you age you tend to find that focussing improves as light levels increase (to a certain degree). However vision is most improved by the level of contrast and direction the light is incident at. It's not about quantity, but quality of light that matters.
I have some 9w (supposedly 60w equivalent) bulbs in my house from various manufacturers. A real "dubai" lamp gets 60w equivalent from 3w power draw. I wonder what output these philips 13w bulbs manage if you replace the resistor and go all the way down to 3W? Maybe 4W? How cool do you think it'd run? How bright? And has anyone tried Big Clive's trick of using a capacitor to limit power on these bulbs?
It's not a huge difference. I have one that I brought down to 4.5 W, and it runs perhaps 5-8 C cooler. Light output does start to suffer a bit at that point though.
IKEA's current GU10 bulbs are similarly easy to open, the ones with the glass shell, not the plastic ones. They do have power components accessible from the top but I haven't tried modifying one yet. From a cursory look it doesn't seem like they're using two resistors in parallel for the current monitoring so you might have to replace the resistor with a different value rather than just removing one.
Put a "pot" in place of the fixed resistor and turn it up to the point where the brightness just STARTS to drop. The life of the bulb should increase significantly!
I have opened one of led bulbs i have...guess what? It was filled with tons of silicone and no resistors to be seen anywhere (probably deep under the silicone...how env. friendly!
You don't even need a soldering iron for this modification as you can also scrape the carbon layer from one resistor with a knife or similar tool. Anything goes so long as you don't damage the other resistor. I've found that some bulbs have the entire power supply on a separate board underneath the emitter PCB and those are much more difficult to modify as non-destructive disassembly is very difficult. Here in the U.S. I found a "75-watt" (13-watt) bulb from Walmart (Great Value brand) that is/was just as easy to modify as these Philips once inside, but the plastic cover is attached very well and requires a fair amount of force to remove. If you find a bulb that's easy to modify and with a color temperature that you like, I recommend buying a few extras as there's no guarantee the future models will remain the same; companies are constantly trying to increase profitability. You'd expect half the usable light with half the power, but 1) humans perceive light intensity in a logarithmic fashion, and 2) cooler LED's are more efficient. If you do want more light, running two 6.5-watt 'Dubai' bulbs will put out more light than one 13-watt normal one.
_"It's intentional design! All LED bulbs are built to overheat, overdrive and destroy their LEDs."_ There’s planned obsolescence for you - where manufacturers deliberately shorten the lifespan of their products using a variety of methods (in this case, over-driving the LEDs thus making them more likely to fail), meaning consumers become repeat customers earlier than they should, resulting in more profit for the company at the consumer’s expense…
i bought thousands of $ of led panel lights in both warm and cool white for my restaurant and home .. and they don't last more than 4000hrs cus they fail within a year of 8hr daily use and i don't even run them constantly i alternate between sets of lights . and even then 30% of them have failed and the drivers don't fail the leds fail. i bought same size and voltage leds from china and change the burnt out leds and cut a resistor in their driver to reduce the panels from 11w to 8w and apply proper thermal paste to the back. cfl lamps last much longer than these leds.
Watch ruclips.net/video/ISTB0ThzhOY/видео.html to find out how to lower the watts used by each lamp. They run thermally cooler, and there is also lower lumen output (not determined in video). However, the decrease in light output is a lot less than the decrease in electricity consumed, since less electricity is being converted to heat.
This civilization has become an abomination. All manufacturers could do 200+ lm/W easily and cheaply, by doubling the LEDs that are worth a couple cents, and driving them at low currents. Yet they're engineered to fail...
I got several lights and jesus the constructions is getting worse and the last nothing. It's a scan selling "25k hours" lamps and after 1-2 years its dead. Some i able to recovery just removing the burned led and sorting with soldering. This "hack" dont know, but almost all E27 came across doesn't have resistors in the LED PCB so the manufactures "fixed the exploit"... I prefer LED strips that's last much more and more easily to repair. I have a strip working for 10 years and used everyday at last 4 hours a day!
How long do you keep the same house, light fitting ,life style etc? I have my hallway and stair top light on for less than 1 hour a day (a lot less actually ) X 365 days X 100 years. I'll be long gone .
Honestly Philips bulbs are the absolute worst of all in the stores here by the lifespan. Rarely last more than 6 to 12 months before the die Cheap off brand with more light last many times longer
@@FFcossag Maybe, I had these for about 2 years now and so far I have exchanged 2 of them I believe. Anyway, when buying cheap tech I divide the price with the length of the warranty ...
In Germany the "bleeding heart" enviro-libtards have doubled the electricity price, I'm paying €0.63 per kWh (about 53 UK pence)... and the electricity is bound to be less clean (more CO2 intensive) this year. Brilliant. Zero foresight, do virtue signalling now push the costs downstream.
It should be pointed out that cutting the power consumption in half does not cut the lumen output in half. The unmodified bulb converts a higher percentage of electricity into heat than the modified bulb.
i tried it with my bulb and i lost only a third of it's lux
yup, that's what diminishing returns do
I've always had an inkling that most lamp manufacturers were designing these things to fail.
For one they absolutely grill the LEDs as you've seen
for two they drive them right at their rated current.
The funny thing is, they could actually score marketing points and *GAIN* efficacy by driving them at a reduced current. LEDs have an exponential efficacy curve that sharply tails off the closer you get to the rated current of the diode. There's a sweet spot below 80% and 60*c where depending on formulation of the diode and phosphors, the LED could potentially be capable of outputting north of 200 lumens per watt with that super long lifespan.
and if they want to shorten the life of the lamps, just go cheaper on the capacitors lol
Great video 👍 most semiconductor wear mechanisms accelerate by roughly a factor of 2 every 10C so overall lifetime may be extended by a lot more than you estimate (2^4=16) although I do not know how phosphor ageing curves look. Also don't forget that led efficiency improves at lower powers so your light output will be more than half the original rating 😁. Winner winner chicken dinner
"They are obsolete." == "They realized these bulbs could too-easily be improved by the users." Can't have THAT!
i doubt manufacturers will care about 0.1% of their customers modding bulbs.
It's literally "fixing and exploit" that's harm their earnings...
I figured the bulb companies would get fed up if everyone is modifying their bulbs to increase their lifespan. I wonder if they're burying the resisters deeper or putting a single resistor instead of two in order to frustrate the efforts of DIYers. Nice work. Thanks for sharing.
A single resistor from what I have looked at.
since people discovered the easy repair tweak by essentially soldering and shorting the one broken led diode to make the bulb glow the companies now put 12 volt led chips instead of seprate 3 leds to make the tweak useless as by shorting a single 12v the current gets too high and burns the other diodes
@@do2eazy363 All companies? Wouldn't that be collusion? Not that anyone is enforcing anti-trust laws these days.
@@do2eazy363 the amount of people who would do this is very low. More likely, it is cheaper to use 3 LEDs in one package, because reduces the number of components the pick and place machine needs to place (also more LEDs per PnP reel).
@@Max24871 i made a flashlight a using the 3v led chip from led bulb and it was god bright now i can't do it anymore
I could imagine that being able to advertise higher lumen levels without including more LEDs (bigger number for the same cost) is another motivation for over-driving them.
Overcurrent , overheating , yes , current sening resistor replace is simply and cheaper solution . Very good job .
Philips now has a Dubai-style bulb out in Europe, at 50000 hours and a 210lm/w efficacy, so even slightly better than the Dubai lamps.
Where can I buy it and what's it called?
@@TwinbeeUK it's called the Philips Ultra Efficient LED. It's the only Philips bulb to come in a green box.
If they don't come to the US, I'm gonna be PISSED.
@Logic44
It's available but only on 2 stores. Its at 180 l/w instead of the Dubai 210 l/w.
The diy core pro bulb in the video is supposedly 235 l/w if it really is putting out 1521 lumens.
@@jason200912 it's probably harder to achieve Dubai-level efficiency on 115V compared to the 230V found in Dubai and the EU
Superb video. A very simple hack for reducing bulb temperature is removing the plastic diffuser cap, or even drilling 2 holes into it (side and tip) for airflow.
And after drilling the holes in the aluminum part of the base attach some good finned heat sinks. This will allow you to "suck away" a LOT of heat. The bigger the heat sinks the better! I prefer this method to reducing the drive because I want to get the RATED Lumens from the bulb!
I'd love to kinda hack my philips 3452lm LED bulb in this way and also add a bigger filter capacitor and remove the way too weak inrush resistors because they keep making the whole bulb blinking sometimes and it ends up not powering up anymore at all because of that.
Unfortunately, all the electronics are behind the LEDs board and they are completely covered in resin. You basically can't get to it without somewhat destroying the lamp.
Sucks, I'd really love a reliable 3000+lm E27 bulb!
@John Doe but just by removing the plastic globe I am already somewhat destroying the lamp.
And I got one more which is made out of glass and has the same issue!
Comparing these to some TCP brand 12W that I bought on clearance, the TCP have a a serious heatsink for the back section and they are heavy, don't know about the number of LEDs and the circuit, but they certainly take the heat dissipation a lot more seriously.
Nice!! I have seen many lamps like that and yea the LED's just burn out, sometimes shorting the bad one works (it makes the linear driver chip hotter so dont short too many out)
I have Phillips 3 way bulbs which seem to have a good thermal design. It is actually a virtical + arrangement of the boards and they opened up the center with ahole at the top and vents down the side so it can have convection cooling. so far 3 years strong, but they arent on 100% of the time so still not over the 20k hours mark.
A lot of cheaper LED bulbs can often have accessible current-setting resistors, so a lot of off-brand ones can also be made into "doobie" lamps as Clive called them, it's just getting a nicer colour that is the issue in my opinion, everyone seems to stock only either the yellow 2700k bulbs or the blue-white 6500k bulbs, I prefer something around 3000-3500k myself, easier on the eye...
Then perhaps these 3000K CorePros might be worth investigating for you. The new 3000K ones MIGHT still use the same design ...
Snip out the current sensing resistor with a pair of cutters, saves faffing with the soldering iron unless you work at a bench like me with an iron always at hand.
Nice! ..and good to know. Totally makes sense too that they'd want them to have a shorter life and sell you replacements.
The important thing to understand is how Humans see things. It's not just the LEDs becoming slightly more efficient.
Firstly, the eye's response to light is logarithmic. It takes about 10 times as much light to appear twice as bright. However, that only applies when you can compare the two light levels... there's more!
The human eye has "Auto Exposure" control, using a mechanism called the IRIS. No matter what the light level, the human eye automatically adjusts so that you can still see properly!
These two mechanisms allow a human to see in light levels of 0.1 Lux to 100,000 lux without much difficulty. Your brain sets the "brightness level" using quite complex algorithms, but basically it uses averaging then sets "100% bright" to the highest light it can see anywhere, and "dull" based on the average of the *majority* of the areas it can see.
1. A 50% drop in measured brightness (Lux) is completely unnoticeable, providing that you don't see the transition occur.
2. If you increase the illumination level of an entire room, you will not notice any difference in brightness. In fact, it will cause the brightest area (eg: a task light) in the space to appear DULLER.
3. If you want some area in your house to appear "brighter", there is no need to add more lighting. Simply reduce the light levels in the surrounding and adjacent areas.
To most people, the human eye works in counter-intuitive ways.... but actually it's very logical how it performs.
I was curious and popped oven a cheap "100" watt led and it looks somewhat like yours. I'm in the US, its a dollar general light bulb. Took a lot of work to get the bulb head off but i got it. I have three resistors labeled r1, r2, and r3. R3 is physically larger and has the number 564. The two other ones are about half the physical size, hard as hell to read but i see 13RO and 15RO. Does that sound right? almost identical to your board. Not sure how since I'm on 120 volt and you sound British and likely 240. Trying to learn more about LEDs. You can get import Dubai lamps now and a (allegedly) superior version off the shelf. I'm trying to make wide input LED DC bulbs or atleast 11-34 volt DC input bulbs for an off grid system. Those Dubai elements, the filament use almost half as much power as your stardard cheapo bulb. A huge savings. Ebay and amazon have filaments like them for sale but I dout they have the efficiency or quality so I might end up cannibalizing a store bulb.
I've done some simple experiments using a variety of unmodified LED 120v bulbs and a simple VARIAC. I simply started the bulb at full mains voltage (117-122) and slowly dialed the VARIAC back, watching the light output. There is a zone where as i'm lowering the voltage where the light output doesn't go down at all, than past that point, it slowly gets dimmer, than after that it nosedives.
So what I do is I try to find the sweet spot which is just before the light starts to decline and than I make a note of the voltage o n the side of the bulb with a sharpie.
On one bulb it was too hot to the touch running it at 120v. At night where I live it can get as high as 127!! But running it at 90v it was STONE COLD with a negligible loss in lumans.
Instead of busting open these bulbs, I suggest people make a simple box with a common iron ten Watt 12v transformer inside, wire the transformer buck boost style to shave OFF 12v from the line and run your LED's off that. There is a cheap APC brand UPS that is power strip shaped with a 150w inverter inside. The SLA battery is a joke and the inverter is a joke.
But its got a nice beefy 12v transformer in it. I scooped out the inverter circuit and wired it up in buck config, all the electronics in my bedroom are hooked to this "magic" power strip and the 105-110v is kind to everything its hooked to.
I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but I want to point out that this isn't very good general advice. These bulbs are built around constant current power supplies. By dropping their input voltage, you're forcing them into essentially acting as constant voltage supplies by removing all their voltage headroom. The voltages will vary with all different bulb models, and they're going to be very sensitive to factors like temperature and grid voltage variations. You're not going to break anything, but you're probably going to be seeing a lot of variability in how your lights operate.
You're going all Big Clive on us. ;o)
I know, right? Before you know it I'll be growing a beard.
@@FFcossag And talking in a strange accent? ;oD
We have an old 30W LED lamp from 2009 or so in our kitchen, from back when high-power white LEDs were an expensive novelty and it was marketed to us as a well-cooled, bulletproof bulb. Guess what: that bulb is still fine in 2023 and gets at least 3h of on-time a day. It was sold at 40-50€ if I recall correctly and that's the price we probably should expect to pay if they really were designed to last in the first place.
Old heat Bulbs consume 50 bucks a year in light, so durability prices aren't really a concern when it pays for itself
looks like the Bigclive video (3 years ago) has set off a bit of a trend.
interesting video. thank you. curious, would the colour of the bulb top (this one being an opaque white) determine the kelvin of the final product? if you had an arts and craft clear bulb to replace it with would the colour temperature change much?
LEDs come in all kinds of colours. It is the chemistry in the LEDs that determine the colour. Not the plastics they are packaged in. The top is opaque to diffuse the light but probably does not change the light colour. (That would decrease the efficiency.) Cheers
This is very interesting! I'd love to see more about this topic! :)
So what's stopping you?
@@choomanfoo Being a mindless consumer unless someone I like brings up the issue :D
Good work mate, thank you!
I add 2k thermistors as inrush limiters to my led lamps if they are 10w or less, or 1k thermistor if they are 20w. they cost a few dollars for a pack of 10.
Hopefully it helps
I love your IBM keyboard
@FFcossag you should do a short video on how the newer 2700k lamps are made , maybe the current setting resistor are under the pcb
It's a single resistor on a PCB in the base. Not worth trying to modify, too much work.
Very cool stuff. Thank u
Good observation
The Philips "Dubai" and "Ultra High Efficiency " both doubled the number of LEDs in each string AND reduced the driver-current, they didn't just reduce the Drive Current.
So reducing the drive current on a "standard light" will reduce the heat but also increase the lifespan.
However the light output suffers as well, not so for the "Dubai and Ultra Efficient" lights.
Lowering the drive current is functionally the same as increasing the number of chips; the end result of both actions is less power dissipated by each chip.
I think your estimates are quite reasonable. You are halving the LED current AND significantly reducing the junction temperature, both of which will increase the life on their own. If you ever need more light output there's nothing stopping you adding a second light fitting.
got some cheap tesco 14.5w (100w), led bulbs, 6 months later, one of them cracked, around the casing, they do get very hot, so took it back, normal thing, have you receipt, did you get it from us, tesco, no receipt, but told them to read small print on bulb, :), got new one, now going to hack this one to run on lower power
how appropriate that the planned obsolescence bulbs are called CorePro, which sounds like Corpo.
Nice hack! Did you reverse engineer the schematic (not necessarily Big Clive style 😉) so to see how the schematic is affected. Lasr week Big Clice showed the schematic of a led lamp of which the driver ic consisted of 2 current sources. Each with its own resistor. If this lamp uses the same stetup you might be able to lower the temp. of the driverchip by replacing both resistors with different values.
I didn't reverse engineer it more than necessary. In this lamp though, the resistors are just wired in parallel.
Funny design. (To high power dissipation for 1 resistor?) Now I have to dig up the datasheet of the driver ic to find out what's going 😉
They usually do that to cut down on BOM costs, and to make it easier to use the same PCB for different power bulbs.
I have seen putting holes in the casing to disipate the heat build up I don't know how effective it is but when you thing the heat build up in a closed case you could expect a lot of heat ?
Do you think that led strips are better because they are more spread so have less overheating problems ? Should a led strip last longer than a light bulb ?
Yes! Spacing the LEDs farther apart is going to allow them to run cooler.
Dubai has a 5 year exclusive deal since 2017 so I guess we might have those dubai lights here soon
available here in Germany now... about 10 Euro for an 8W bulb.
Now if only the lumen output can be measured, you could calculate the efficiency. I doubt that it would be near the Dubai or the new A-rated Ultraefficient LEDs. I think those also have better chips.
I have some older GU10 LED bulbs and they have lasted an insane amount of time. New ones fail almost as fast as halogen .
5600VB NL is (or was) the Philips/Signify postal box postcode here in Eindhoven
I think the brightness decrease is not linear, in fact at 50% of the current the brightness may still be 60% or even more!
It's not just the LEDs becoming slightly more efficient.
Firstly, the eye's response to light is logarithmic. It takes 10 times as much light to appear twice as bright. However, that only applies when you can compare the two light levels....
The human eye has "Auto Exposure", using a mechanism called the IRIS. No matter what the light level, the human eye automatically adjusts so that you can still see properly!
These two mechanisms allow a human to see in light levels of 0.1 Lux to 100,000 lux without much difficulty. A 50% drop in measured brightness (Lux) is completely unnoticeable, providing that you don't see the transition occur.
@@johncoops6897 I mean if you use lights as work lights you need a lot of light output to avoid darkness in shadowy regions. You can then either just use multiple bulbs or just go straight to LED strips that last forever. Or LED tubes, I got some 7 years ago and they still perform like day 1.
@@kyoudaiken To prevent shadowing, it's better to use a large diffuse light source, so tubes (with diffuser) are best. Bright pin-points like LED tape are the worst choice.
But you have got some concepts backwards... The brighter that you illuminate an object, the DARKER the shadows will become.
This is because your eye's Iris closes in response to the brightest object in the field of view, and that reaction then causes the less bright areas to become even darker.
For example, if you are walking through the forest at night, you can see into the shadows much better by moonlight than you can if you have a torch.
PS: I am a lighting engineer, this stuff is my profession.
@@johncoops6897 Nice to know! With my setup at home I don't really have issues with seeing stuff. But I keep seeing YTbers reparing stuff and having a lamp on a movable arm and illuminating the device with like 1000lm directly from 4 inches away... Bad eyesight?
@@kyoudaiken - the amount of light required increases with the level of fine detail required. Lumens are not a measure of lighting intensity but it would be common to have a bright task light for fine work like SMD soldering. As you age you tend to find that focussing improves as light levels increase (to a certain degree). However vision is most improved by the level of contrast and direction the light is incident at. It's not about quantity, but quality of light that matters.
I have some 9w (supposedly 60w equivalent) bulbs in my house from various manufacturers. A real "dubai" lamp gets 60w equivalent from 3w power draw. I wonder what output these philips 13w bulbs manage if you replace the resistor and go all the way down to 3W? Maybe 4W? How cool do you think it'd run? How bright?
And has anyone tried Big Clive's trick of using a capacitor to limit power on these bulbs?
It's not a huge difference. I have one that I brought down to 4.5 W, and it runs perhaps 5-8 C cooler. Light output does start to suffer a bit at that point though.
IKEA's current GU10 bulbs are similarly easy to open, the ones with the glass shell, not the plastic ones. They do have power components accessible from the top but I haven't tried modifying one yet. From a cursory look it doesn't seem like they're using two resistors in parallel for the current monitoring so you might have to replace the resistor with a different value rather than just removing one.
Put a "pot" in place of the fixed resistor and turn it up to the point where the brightness just STARTS to drop. The life of the bulb should increase significantly!
Do you glue the bulb covers back on?
No, they click in place pretty firmly even without the glue.
I have opened one of led bulbs i have...guess what? It was filled with tons of silicone and no resistors to be seen anywhere (probably deep under the silicone...how env. friendly!
You don't even need a soldering iron for this modification as you can also scrape the carbon layer from one resistor with a knife or similar tool. Anything goes so long as you don't damage the other resistor. I've found that some bulbs have the entire power supply on a separate board underneath the emitter PCB and those are much more difficult to modify as non-destructive disassembly is very difficult.
Here in the U.S. I found a "75-watt" (13-watt) bulb from Walmart (Great Value brand) that is/was just as easy to modify as these Philips once inside, but the plastic cover is attached very well and requires a fair amount of force to remove. If you find a bulb that's easy to modify and with a color temperature that you like, I recommend buying a few extras as there's no guarantee the future models will remain the same; companies are constantly trying to increase profitability.
You'd expect half the usable light with half the power, but 1) humans perceive light intensity in a logarithmic fashion, and 2) cooler LED's are more efficient. If you do want more light, running two 6.5-watt 'Dubai' bulbs will put out more light than one 13-watt normal one.
I burn holes in the diffuser with a soldering iron to cool them down
That will do nothing.
@@FFcossagwhy not? Allowing air movement is better than nothing, no?
_"It's intentional design! All LED bulbs are built to overheat, overdrive and destroy their LEDs."_
There’s planned obsolescence for you - where manufacturers deliberately shorten the lifespan of their products using a variety of methods (in this case, over-driving the LEDs thus making them more likely to fail), meaning consumers become repeat customers earlier than they should, resulting in more profit for the company at the consumer’s expense…
what about drilling some ventilation holes on the socket ?
Yeah you can get these bulbs, but they arent phillips with the same type of circuit, not sure if phillips still do this, they might
i bought thousands of $ of led panel lights in both warm and cool white for my restaurant and home .. and they don't last more than 4000hrs cus they fail within a year of 8hr daily use and i don't even run them constantly i alternate between sets of lights . and even then 30% of them have failed and the drivers don't fail the leds fail. i bought same size and voltage leds from china and change the burnt out leds and cut a resistor in their driver to reduce the panels from 11w to 8w and apply proper thermal paste to the back. cfl lamps last much longer than these leds.
Watch ruclips.net/video/ISTB0ThzhOY/видео.html to find out how to lower the watts used by each lamp. They run thermally cooler, and there is also lower lumen output (not determined in video). However, the decrease in light output is a lot less than the decrease in electricity consumed, since less electricity is being converted to heat.
Neat mod
This civilization has become an abomination. All manufacturers could do 200+ lm/W easily and cheaply, by doubling the LEDs that are worth a couple cents, and driving them at low currents. Yet they're engineered to fail...
I got several lights and jesus the constructions is getting worse and the last nothing. It's a scan selling "25k hours" lamps and after 1-2 years its dead.
Some i able to recovery just removing the burned led and sorting with soldering. This "hack" dont know, but almost all E27 came across doesn't have resistors in the LED PCB so the manufactures "fixed the exploit"...
I prefer LED strips that's last much more and more easily to repair. I have a strip working for 10 years and used everyday at last 4 hours a day!
How long do you keep the same house, light fitting ,life style etc? I have my hallway and stair top light on for less than 1 hour a day (a lot less actually ) X 365 days X 100 years. I'll be long gone .
I just think it's unnecessary to ruin things needlessly.
Many cheaper bulbs in the states have the same or similar design with the current setting resistors.
typical led bulbs never last more than 2 years in 24/7 fixtures....i have replaced all back to CFL's
Wh6 put the diffuser back ?
Because the LEDs are live and might kill you if you touch them.
i cut mine with snips
The eu should have made these in effecient light bulbs illegal 40 years ago
Honestly Philips bulbs are the absolute worst of all in the stores here by the lifespan.
Rarely last more than 6 to 12 months before the die
Cheap off brand with more light last many times longer
Measure the lumens to see if you can call it a Dubai bulb wtf
That has nothing to do with the concept. What makes a Dubai bulb is the fact that it's built to drive the LEDs gently so that they last a long time.
SLAVA UKRAINI !! 💙💛
Funny thing: cheapo 3€ led light bulbs sold locally have a 3 year warranty ;)
They count on slippage (no one will bother) and few runtime hours per day. They won't last more than 10 000 hours or so, just like these ones.
@@FFcossag Maybe, I had these for about 2 years now and so far I have exchanged 2 of them I believe. Anyway, when buying cheap tech I divide the price with the length of the warranty ...
10,000 hours is a long time that's 9-10 years at 3 hours use a day.
You turn most of your lights on at home only 3 hours a day? Must live somewhere sunny and go out in the evening.
Mehr Kühlung wäre "die richtige Lösung" gegen schnelle Degeneration "dunkler werden" der LEDs und zeitigen Totalausfall ....
Even at full power, my Tapo RGB x5 are way too dim to compete with an old style incandescent
Of course! You cannot compare kiddie's coloured playground lights to normal incandescent bulbs.
I don't imagine they're built to do that.
@@FFcossag 804Lm and 8.7W x 5 and it was quite dim. Each meant to replace 60W Incandescent
Uhm.... Is this real!?
How is going the prices for energy over there?
yes, it's real.
@@antibrevity I think he's asking about their energy crisis or w/e. But while it's not about saving energy, it is a bonus side effect.
The energy prices are better now than around christmas - though that's liable to change any time given the current situation in Europe.
In Germany the "bleeding heart" enviro-libtards have doubled the electricity price, I'm paying €0.63 per kWh (about 53 UK pence)... and the electricity is bound to be less clean (more CO2 intensive) this year. Brilliant. Zero foresight, do virtue signalling now push the costs downstream.