fluorescent flicker - LEDs rule

[Killed_by_Death]

I was playing last night & the light started to flicker with the beat.

After a few seconds, it gave up for good.

It had a nice dark mark right near the base, so I knew it was shot.

I put in LED replacements & it made a massive difference.

Either the previous ones were falsely advertised, lumens-wise, or these LED ones are just inherently brighter.

I wish I'd had these installed when I was doing some soldering work recently.

 

[twinjet]

Bright idea, eh?

 

[bholder]

They also don't have the 60hz flicker which drives me nuts at times - modern LED screens don't have the issue, but back when we had CRTs, a CRT with a refresh rate of 60hz under fluorescent lights was very nearly seizure-inducing. My boss didn't understand why I needed a monitor with an 85hz refresh rate...

And LEDs are way more efficient than even CFLs, and last longer too - I've converted almost everything in my house now.

 

[Immigrant]

I love LED lighting.

Watch for the K rating. If bright white is your thing, the higher the better. I use 5000K LED R20-type in the room I manicure bud in, and use LED grow lights. LED lighting technology has come a long way in recent years. I could do surgery under the 5000K lights, but I won't use them in every room. Too un-warm.

The pricing has come way down also.

 

[DigMe]

The only thing about LED's is that they use PWM to control brightness/efficiency. This means that the power to the LED "pulses" at a certain frequency. What this means in real life usage is that if the frequency is too low it can actually be observable but usually it's observable in the peripheral vision - which can be kind of maddening and it can really be pretty bothersome if it's bad enough or if a person is particularly sensitive to it (some eyes are more sensitive than others to PWM). I have uninstalled LED lights before because the PWM was bad. Philips does a good job of controlling this in a lot of their bulbs. Some of the off-brands don't. If you're wondering if this happens with your LED bulbs then you can look near the bulb with it just at the edge of your peripheral vision. THen look away then back and see if you can detect a flicker (kind of a subtle strobing effect). If not then it's probably not an issue. It really bothers me when it is observable. We have an LED air-freshener/night light thingy in one of our bathrooms that pulses badly but I'm not usually in its presence long enough to be bothered by it.

Overall I do prefer warm LED over most CFL bulbs but only if they're high quality with no detectable PWM.

 

[DigMe]

Yeah, only 8.5 watts to produce 800 lumens. I was told that they could be made to last forever, but they're engineered to fail after a certain amount of hours.

The LED itself should never go out but they're usually rated for so many hours (in the high tens of thousands). The rating means that after that many hours the LED should be measurably half of its original brightness.

I'm kind of a recovering flashlight addict. That's why I know all this sheet.