this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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I've been in the industry for over a decade and I find it fascinating how much lighting has changed in that time. When LEDs were first available, they were $60+ per bulb. Now you can get multipacks for under $10. Also, CFL bulbs were almost universally hated by everyone (and for good reason) now we no longer sell them. We strictly sell LEDs for regular lighting and we still sell incandescent specialty bulbs. Also, when LEDs first arrived there was a lot of distain for them, especially by the elderly. They wanted their energy wasting incandescent bulbs dammit! It seems the majority of them have come around because they've learned that LEDs are better.
Is there a brand that's better for LED? I get migraines and the stroking effect of LED bulbs can be a trigger.
LED christmas bulbs particularly bad. It felt like walking into a rave at the Christmas store.
Yeah, many of those christmas lights use pulse width modulation to control brightness and it is very noticeable. I hope that gets changed over for an analog voltage dimmer soon.
Also, cheap ones run directly on AC, so they flicker at 60 Hz (50 in Europe) because the current is only flowing for half the cycle.
How do high-end home LEDs get around this? Do they have a battery that caches the current between cycles?
When my wife and I bought our place, we renovated and made all lights LED. The overheads in the living room and kitchen are quite bright and steady, so they must avoid this somehow.
A bridge rectifier flips the negative current to positive, so instead of a sine wave you get a series of humps. Then a capacitor acts as a battery like you describe to smooth out the dip between humps.
There are half wave rectifiers and full wave rectifiers. The former only converts the positive AC to DC and shuts off for the negative half (causing flickering). The latter will convert both positive and negative halves to DC and don't flicker.
Well, LED lights are half-wave rectifiers that light up, so you wouldn’t add one. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a half wave rectifier referred to as a bridge rectifier.
Ok, I get the gist. Thanks!
FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER!!!11