I had planned to make this a more formal posting with photos of some bulbs I had bought at Home Depot along with the prices and receipt. No Can do. You see, we are on the “Last Call” for Real Light Bulbs ™.
As this is a bit rushed, photos or links to vendors will follow later, perhaps in comments. Ditto links to my prior comments / articles.
The Ban On Bulbs
So for some historical only context:
Up until recently, the Bulb Ban was only for Incandescent Bulbs over 40 W and under 150 (or so). Also, you could buy CFL Compact Fluorescent bulbs. Each has their best use, BTW. Plus, there were Halogen Bulbs in that 40+ to 100 Watt equivalent (that are basically incandescent bulbs inside a halogen gas filled capsule so you get 100 W of light for 72 W of actual electricity).
But now they are going to flat out ban the incandescents and the halogens are going with them. It also looks like CFL bulbs are on the chopping block because of Meh… Mercury.
So “Get ’em while you can!”. Today at Home Depot, the Halogens were all on the Clearance Counter. No longer back in the Industrial section… So buy now or you are going to be SOL.
But but bu… LED Bulbs are SOOOooo much more efficient!!! Save the Planet!!! Why am I evil and using IC Bulbs and “planet killing” Halogens?
Why?
Because I don’t do PC and I’m not interested in Woke Manipulation.
Because there is more to life than being cheap. LED Bulbs emit excess blue. Worst in the “Daylight” type, but bad enough even in the 2700 Kelvin “yellowish” ones. (I covered this in an earlier posting on LED Bulbs). Spouse and I get sleep disturbances with all LED bulbs. Found this out when I converted the whole house to them as an Early Adopter. Then had to take them all out a couple of months later when I figured out why none of us were sleeping well.
Then there is the fact that LED Bulbs seem to have a much brighter point source. LED headlights and tail lights in cars are painful to look at at night for some of us (so now I drive at night with yellow “sunglasses” on… so I can see better). Finally, some, perhaps all, LEDS actually strobe. Supposedly faster than humans can see, but it makes my eyes feel tired and uncomfortable. You can see this in EwTube videos of cars with their headlights on. The flicker rate of the headlights strobes with the shutter rate of the camera and you can see the flicker. Photographers now buy “flicker meters” to find out if any given bulb is going to screw up their photos…
In short, LED Bulb aesthetics suck, and their health impacts suck. There is more to life than cheap electricity bulls for lighting. (And, frankly, lighting is the least of my bill. All Electric Kitchen, 2 x refrigerators, 1 chest freezer, and the household AC all dominate the bill. Lighting is near nothing.
But enough about me ;-) I already have a “lifetime supply” of IC bulbs, Halogen bulbs, and CFL Curly Bulbs. I also have an “emergency supply in depth”, in that I have a selection of 3-Way and “Rough Service” along with some Very High Wattage bulbs. We’re talking 150 W, 200 W and even a couple of 300 W bulbs. Why? More on this below, but a 200 W bulb run at 100 W light output level will not “burn out” for decades…. Not very efficient, but that will be my last line of defense against painful, uncomfortable, horrible color and insomnia inducing LED bulbs.
Oh, and a couple of decades ago I remember seeing CREE being pushed as the next great investment by and for Democrats. They were the first LED maker of note. I didn’t know at the time that it was because they planned to ban the competition… but that’s what the Dems did. No “free market” for them. That, alone, is enough to be pissed about it in my book.
What Can You Do?
You can likely still order some from Amazon as a last resort, but also check your local hardware stores. Do not bother with Walmart, they have already purged their stock. It’s all LED now for them.
A month ago, both LOWE’s and Home Depot had Halogen Bulb sections. Home Depot is now on clearance, so you might get a good deal if any inventory is left. At mine, 60 W equivalent were sold out and only 100 W equivalent and 40 W were left. ACE hardware I’ve not checked, but last time I was in, they had some nice “Industrial Packs” of some kinds; and some 40 W “appliance bulbs” (that are ideal in one of my bathroom ‘tulip shape’ fixtures.
BTW, I have a couple of 24 packs of the “130 V Industrial” bulbs – 60W to 100W. These are basically a 120 V bulb with a built in dimmer being designed for 130 V that moves their lifespan from 1000 hours to a few thousand hours.
What to buy? Depends on what you want to do.
IF you are someone the LED bulbs do not bother, and don’t care about the aesthetics, only buy what has some special use for you. A favorite antique lamp you want to have look antique. A bulb for your toy “oven” that uses it for heat. A 300 W bulb for that chicken brooder…
For folks that DO want choice and prefer a smooth spectrum light color (CRI Color Rendering Index near 100) or who are kept awake by LED bulbs (or where they make your eyes fatuge, etc.); your options are now limited.
Best – if you can find them:
Halogen bulbs of your preferred brightness. These are more efficient than incandescent bulbs (IC Bulbs). So look for “Lumens”. In General, they put a “Watts Equivalent” on the box, so the 72 W bulbs will say “100 W Equivalent”. Or about 1200 lumens. (if varies).
Halogen bulbs have all the qualities of IC Bulbs but at lower energy use. They do still get hot. The only real downside of Halogen Bulbs relates to how they work. The Halogen gas in them (Iodine, Bromine, Chlorine, whatever) will react with hot but not glowing white tungsten and scavenge it off the inside of the bulb. But, when that product gets to the white hot filament, it will break down and deposit the tungsten back on the element. This lets you run the bulb brighter for any given power level. You can even dim them on a dimmer some… BUT if you dim them too much then we get back into the “scavenge” instead of “deposit” mode and you rapidly chew up the filament… So dim about 1/2 way is fine. 1/4 bright might work. But dim them to a dull red (as, say, you thought you turned it off but not quite….) and the bulb is rapidly “toast”. That’s the downside / quirk.
Regular IC Bulbs, you can dim down to nearly dark and no bad thing happens (other than using electricity and not getting much light). Lifespan goes up exponentially. This means an IC bulb on a dimmer running about 1/2 power can last decades to centuries. (There is a light bulb in a fire house on the East Coast USA, New Jersey?, that has been running consistently for 100 years plus. No magic here, just made with a thicker than ideal filament so it is really running at 1/2 volts or so from the ideal. What this means is that if you buy a DIMMER (either in the wall or one of the “lamp dimmers” you can just plug a floor lamp into) and then put a 150 W IC bulb in your lamp, but run it at 100 W or 60 W levels, you can make that bulb last a very very long time. Thus my small inventory of 200 W and 300 W IC bulbs. That’s my last resort. At present I’m running mostly Halogens dimmed about 10%. I’ll swap to higher wattage halogens dimmed 20% to 40% when I get about 1/2 to 3/4 through my Halogen inventory. Saving my real IC bulbs for last.
Figure about a 2 year to 3 year lifespan for a regular IC or Halogen in “normal” uses. Longer in closets with 10 minutes on time in a month… Then figure out your expected remaining years needed, divide, and that’s your buy quantity.
CFL Curly Bulbs: These give the efficiency of LED Bulbs, but I can no longer find those that work on dimmers. Finding ones that were “dim-able” was always hard. This is because you need to keep a high voltage arc going to make the mercury vapor in them glow (in the ultra violet – that stimulates the phosphors on the glass part to glow in 3 colors and make it look white). So even the dim-able ones only work for about 1/2 dim, and you do not get any increase in life span. So, OK, you will only find “regular” CFLs and only for a while.
I like them in outdoor lights that are on all the time (due to their 10,000 to 20,000 hour lifespan and low energy use) and in places like hallways and the kitchen where you don’t want Instant Bright on a midnight walkabout… They start off at about 1/4 brightness and slowly reach full power over a couple of minutes. Ideal for a quick run to the “Little Room” at 2 AM without being blinded, but in 10 minutes, bright enough to clean by… Most are good for a lifespan based more on “On / Off” cycles than hours. About 10,000 cycles+. So best used in places like porch lights that are turned on for a long time. Closets that get turned on, then off in 2 minutes are the worst place for them. I have them in ceiling fixtures in my laundry, kitchen, and hallway (that all do not have dimmers on the switch).
Usual expected lifespan in use is about 5 to 10 years, so I have at least 2 for each socket I have put them into. Hopefully the electronics in them do not degrade over a decade time frame… The CFLs and regular Tube Fluorescents make up about 1/2 of my total lighting. (Kitchen, Laundry, Garage, hallway, yard lights). IC or Halogen in bedrooms, living room / den, and dining area.
Note that GOOD CFL bulbs with a CRI over 80 will make eggs look right and tomatoes nice and red. Cheap CFL Bulbs with horrid 75 or so CRI will give you “Green Eggs and Ham” and dead washed out reds. Take a Chef Boyardee can and hold it under different kinds of bulbs and watch the colors shift…
The Basic Set
Those bulbs listed above are my “basic set”. I have a fairly large, probably “lifetime supply” sized inventory of IC bulbs in various sizes, and Halogens, and CFL bulbs. In regular lightbulbs shapes and in PAR Parabolic Aluminized Reflector bulbs (aka flood lights).
The Hail Marry Set
For “That Day” when those run out and I just can’t get anymore, I have 2 “Fall Back” inventories.
1) High Power / Rough Service bulbs. These are 150 W to 300 W. Since even when dim they are sucking a lot of that power, not efficient At All. BUT, when I want a 60 W IC ambiance or a 100 W IC Ambiance, one of them running on 1/2 dim will do nicely, and will likely last for 50 years+. I have about a dozen of these. Probably “overkill”, but I want to be sure it is never a problem to have nice light that I like.
I have a 150 W one of these in the ceiling fan fixture in my office as a test case / technical demonstrator. Usually run about 75 W worth, I can (briefly so things do not overheat) run it on high to find something in a dark corner. Had to change the glass bowl to a bigger one as these bulbs are physically larger than regular E19 size. (E for Edison, number is bigger for bigger bulbs).
2) 3-Way bulbs. I only have 2 “3 Way” floor lamps at present. It looks like these are “on the way out” too, since for a long while trying to get a 3-way CFL or LED bulb was impossible to extremely hard and expensive. I also have about 2 dozen 3 Way bulbs in various sizes. Today I bought about 1/2 dozen “30, 70, 100W” bulbs. (Only thing still available at that Home Depot). I have several 50/100/150 W and even some that top out at 200 W. The reason is simple. First, I can keep using my 3-way lamps. Second, when the low setting “burns out” the high setting still works fine in a Regular Edison Socket…
so I can run a 30 / 70 / 100 as a 30 W ambiance or night light, and then when that burns out, the bulb becomes a 70 W ‘regular bulb’. The “high value” is both filaments. The middle one is what you get if the low end dies. So a bulb that is x/ 100 / y becomes a 100 W bulb. (which could, then, be put on a dimmer and last a decade if needed…) So I have several 50 / 150 / 200 W bulbs. Run as a 50 Watt almost all the time. When that eventually burns out, it is a nice 150 W bulb in a regular lamp. On a dimmer at 75 W to 100 W brightness, that is good for many many years of regular use.
A Word On Dimmers
Those of us attempting to make a 20 year (or hopefully longer…) inventory without filling the garage with IC bulbs and Halogens, will find the Dimmer our best friend.
They can replace a wall switch, or you can get a “dimmer on a rope” for floor lamps. Like Christmas Tree light strings, these have a plug that has a socket on the back side of it. Lamp plugs in the back, then it plugs in the wall. There’s a kind of an “extension cord” sort of wire that runs about 6 feet and has a slider on the end. The slider adjust the brightness of the bulb.
ALL my bedrooms have had the wall switches replaced with dimmer switches, as have the bathrooms. By keeping these dimmed about 10% all the time your IC and Halogen bulbs will last a LOT longer. Though I sometimes turn them up 100% for cleaning and such. The Living Room and Den have a floor lamp each and a table lamp each. These are on ‘lamp dimmer’ cord things. I keep them about 10% dimmed, and just switch them on and off as usual. Sometimes I run them very dim for “mood lighting” or when the monster movie on the TV benefits from the near darkness ;-)
“Someday”, if my hall lights start to run out of CFL bulbs… I’ll convert those switches to dimmers too. (Hopefully never needed, but I’m ready if it comes to that). Ditto the Laundry and the fixture over the kitchen sink. The Main Kitchen lights are regular Tube Fluorescent. I replaced the 3 x 4 foot LED fixtures with 3 x 4 foot T8 fixtures of 2 bulbs each. That’s 6 total T8 bulbs. Tube Fluorescent bulbs are measured in 1/8 of an inch… so a T8 is 8 x 1/8 inch or a 1 inch tube. The familiar old fat tubes are T12 or 1 1/2 inch tubes. Today I bought an extra set of bulbs for the T8 in the kitchen ceiling and the 3 x T12 “shop lights” in the garage. Why? Because if they have come for the mercury in the CFL bulbs, the tubes can’t be far behind. I’ve already seen “drop in” T12 LED bulbs… Since these usually take about 10 years to burn out, I figure one spare set is enough… 20 years for the ones in place and the replacements? Yeah, that puts me at 90 and unlikely to care anymore…
In Conclusion
Hopefully sometime in the next decade sanity will return and we will allow a free market in bulbs once again. I learned all the benefits and detriments of each bulb type (as a Director Of Facilities) along with several other industrial types of lights (High Pressure Sodium, Low Pressure Sodium, High Intensity Metal Discharge and more). EACH is best at one thing or another. FORCING everyone into a One Size Fits All “solution” may benefit the Insider Trading Crowd making the laws to ban the competition, but it does NOT improve one’s life or the aesthetics of our lives.
So starting about a decade ago, I “took action” and now I have about a refrigerator sized “Light Bulb Mountain”. Well, a little refrigerator ;-) Plus a load of dimmers, both installed and a few spares. (When you can no longer get a 300 W bulb, they will not be making 100 W to 600 W dimmers…)
Our life is pleasant. Our light is pleasing and not harsh. “Midnight Runs” to the little room or down the hallway are comfortable. We have 7 W night lights (and spares for them too…) along with the dimmers in bedrooms and baths. I can “mood light” the media centers and I can run a dim table lamp in the bedroom if the spouse is trying to sleep.
Life is good. And I can keep it that way for a decade or two to come.
But now time is very short. This is the Last Call! for IC, Halogen, and CFL bulbs. Get them while you can. And their dimmers too.
In about 6 months I’ll post a followup of some kind to see if there are any survivor edge cases. Like, maybe, 200 W or 300 W “industrial” bulbs… I noticed they were not on the “Clearance” shelf…
Here’s Fran of Franlab talking about it and giving some advice. She does interesting technical stuff including restorations of various old electronic tech:
A bit more “bought in” to the “save the planet” and “efficiency uber alles” stuff than me, but still, a lady with clue.
Musings from the Chiefio 
For what this is worth,
two things,
-1- I noticed many years ago ( and this seems to be getting worse every year ) that on new cars that have LED beams, they are extremely blinding yet do not provide more light …I do not know the technical terms, but if you stare at the LED light, it seems about 5 times brighter than a regular incandescent beam, so you would think they will provide about 5 times more light or light up the road 5 times further away… but when you look at how much light they provides on a dark road, it is the same or less than the good old incandescent lights
The ratio of how blinding they are to how much they light up a dark road is very bad, compared to good old incandescent headlights ( that some cars still have; I can see them from a mile away, they seem yellowish from afar, yet they light up as much of the dark road as those blinding LEDs)
I have no idea if anyone has done research and compiled numbers on that but I am sure, as in 100% sure, the fact LED headlights are extremely blinding has increased ( to a degree) the number of road accidents at night.
maybe the guy driving that Mercedez or that Cadillac with his super LEDs can see you, but you are so blinded you cannot even see the road, the stop signs, the pedestrians etc etc
Once last thing about LEDs on cars; I added 4 LED lights to my car below the bumper, they are good at making light colored objects or reflective objects visible but not so good at making totally dark things more visible…on a country road that has no street lights, the trees and the road are not all that visible they remain quite dark, but anything light colored, like a white fence, or anything reflective like a speed sign is quite visible…We have deers here, they tend to jump in front of cars, if one is looking straight at my car i will see his eyes, if he is not looking at me the LEDs will not let me see the dear until it is too late…but the good old incandescent headlights that are still on my 13 year old car do show me the deer that is in the dark.
LEDs on cars are not that great.
-2- In summer in my small home I use LEDs in almost every room, because they produce very little heat…
but in winter I replace them all with good old incandescent bulbs…the reason is that they provide heat on top of light…Yes they use more watts than the LEDs but those watts are not wasted they provide heat…
Call me crazy but I once tested a 300 watt heater inside my oven with the door closed, waited about 10 minutes, noted the temperature in the oven with a thermometer…then after waiting for the oven to cool down I placed 3 x 100 watt light bulbs, closed the door waited 10 minutes and it turned out they provided a couple more degree F than the heater !
The incandescent light bulbs thus do provide a lot of heat in your home in winter, the energy they use is not wasted; that heat means your heating system works a bit less hard at keeping the house warm.
I think LED’s have gotten better over the years. I prefer them now to fluorescents, both CFL and tube.
But I have a couple of fixtures that were designed for clear glass 40w halogen bulbs. I doubt an LED will ever look or light right in them. When they disappeared from the big box stores, I was able to find a case from an ebay private seller. At least a decade’s worth. Didn’t think about dimmers, that is worth considering. It’s all so tiresome.
Couple obs.
Went into a Harbor Freight a month ago and the newly installed LED lighting system caused a more than slight disorientation when I walked in out of the sun into the store.
Similarly, my local Wallyworld had the same impact when they upgraded their lighting a month ago. However, they adapted their output and today I had no issues. No BS.
The color matters for sure.
My 2 cents :-)
Note: That said, we have shared how to build just about everything on this site.
Who can share how they are building light bulbs?
Add in that many LED bulbs are cheap trash and do not last long.
Also, the trend in LED fixtures is to non-replaceable. The LED is built-in.
Finally, LED requires special dimmers and even so they do not dim very well.
For a good technical history of the incandescent lightbulb:
He mentions (and shows) the Millennium bulb a couple times.
One thing he does not mention is that the inrush current when turning on a cold bulb is often the failure point.
Quite a few years ago, while standing on a stool, trying to replace two florescent tubes in the washroom I thought the hell with this.
I put in a “50,000 hour” light that is about 6 inches across and an inch thick.
I’ve recently noticed either dirt or deterioration in the cover, with about 1/3rd of the area partly dimmed. Back on the stool!
That light partly illuminates the kitchen, so I leave it on during the night for a quick run to that part of the house. After many years and 8 hours/day, I’m happy with that purchase.
Here in the UK we were subject to the EU ban on incandescents. My understanding was that Philips and Osram (maybe others too) knew that the Chinese were planning to flood the market with cheap IC bulbs so lobbied the EU to ban them. Purely a commercial decision and nothing to do with ‘saving the planet’.
CFL’s were the first replacement as you said but then Halogen and now LED, but CFL’s are becoming rarer (partly due to the mercury – “don’t go near one when if it breaks” is the advice).
As Thomas Sowell said, their are no solutions, only trade off’s.
I purposely put IC bulbs AND fluorescent tubes in my workshop to counter strobing, which terrifies me when working on my wood lathe. Can’t replace them when they die here in Aus. Should I sue the loonie green lefties when my hand disappears?
Seems likely to me that the strobe effect of car LED headlamps would be the current control using PWM (pulse-width modulation), since that’s more efficient than using a resistor.
Oncoming LED headlamps also blind me, and the reason is that the lamp diameter is physically smaller for the same amount of lumens – the intensity is much higher. This has been officially encouraged, given that needing larger headlamps limits the aerodynamics of the front of the car. A mistake, as I see things. I try to not look directly at them, since they leave a blind spot for some seconds in my eyes. This even applies in full daylight, and I notice it more with motorbikes where the headlamps seem to be even smaller than cars.
The problem in driving an LED is that if you change the voltage a small amount, the current (and power) changes by a large amount. Variations in the manufacture means that you can’t just put in a precise voltage to achieve the power required, and you need a current limit one way or another. Cheap way is using a ballast resistor, which reduces the efficiency and produces more heat to get rid of, and still leaves some variation of brightness with voltage and a difference between individual LEDs in the package. A better way is a current-limiter for each LED, though again they’ll produce extra heat. Thus you end up with PWM with a choke (inductor) as the optimum method, which produces an amount of flicker depending on the parameters chosen. A small inductor with high frequency will have a higher switching loss, but less visible flicker.
Here, I’m mostly using LED lighting in the house. The filament type (COB strings that look pretty much like a Tungsten filament) seem to work well for me. I’ve also found out they can take a wide range of input voltage and still work OK. A storm a few weeks ago resulted in a very variable supply for around 6 days before being fixed, where what should be 220V was in fact around 50V and varying. Some things worked, some didn’t. Incandescent bulbs glowed a dull red, but the LEDs lit up OK unless the voltage was at the low end when they flashed.
If you want flicker-free LEDs, use DC and a ballast resistor. Also good to have a large-enough diffuser for the light to reduce the areal intensity. To vary the brightness, just have a variable DC supply.
It is possible to use an incandescent filament and get around the same efficiency as a LED by having a coating on the envelope that reflects the infra-red (IR) back to the filament but lets visible light through. Would likely cost more to make than an LED though.
Some years ago, a friend had installed CFL lights in a whole wing of his house,and called me in because he thought there was a problem with the wiring since none of them worked. Turned out that screwing in a normal bulb showed that the wiring was OK, and that all 8 CFLs had died at the same time in a thunderstorm. Electronics is great most of the time, but has its limits.
Nice to have candles and oil lamps as backup for when the electricity fails, as well as LEDs running on battery.
And all this about relative Brightness form a such a small bright spot: ANYONE listen to the RADIO, especially AM / Medium Wave MW ? you often have to switch OFF the LED lights, and Fluorescent strips. Street lights also transmitted problems. and that’s Light in another spectrum.
@Ossqss:
“are building light bulbs” … so now, or IC bulbs then?
IC Bulbs are just a curled coil of tungsten (yes, curled twice…) inside an evacuated glass bulb. Details like thickness matter… but it is late 1800’s early 1900’s tech.
Now? A full wave bridge rectifier, then an inverter of low power, transformer to get the desired voltage, the an optional other rectifier to the SC diode (or similar material) that makes blue / UV. That, then, irradiates the phosphors on top of it to down shift those high energy photons to enough {green / yellow / red / etc.} to make the bulb look “white”.
I suspect some cheaper LED bulbs now just use enough diodes to match 120 VAC and just slap them across the mains voltage (go ahead and let it flicker at 60 Hz…) and then coat the thing with phosphors to spread the monochrome LED light out to “white”-ish…
@Liberty:
Better, yes. Good enough, not yet. Give me a 90+ CRI, NO flicker of any frequency, and no excess blue: I’ll buy and use them.
Hopefully that will come after a decade or so of Aw Shits from the present crop.
@Canadian Friend:
I think, without proof, that the “blinding” is due to the Point Source being brighter and being brighter when on, to make the average light is what is desired / measured. And the “imperceptible” flicker being too bright at peak and black in the valley. How you feel depends on the peaks. How you see depends on the valleys…
My solution is egg yolk yellow “sunglasses” worn at night. The “Blinding Blue” headlights become a vague light green. IC bulbs easy to see by.
@Saighdear:
Yeah… as a Short Wave Radio Listener guy I noticed the AM interference across a lot of spectrum fairly early. Now, in a 2001 Mercedes, the Dash Instrumentation makes AM noise. Only strong local stations can be heard without a “blip blip blip” noise unless you turn off the engine and wait 30 seconds for the electronics to decide their job is done. (It leaves the radio on until the door is opened,,). One of my favorite channels is like that. I can only listen to it with the engine off and the instruments powered down unless I’m close to the station.
The amount of “radio hash” produced was horrible when (decades ago…) I first put in CFL & LED bulbs. I’d run around and turn them all off when I wanted to do SWLing… Then came the street lights… So now I think one would need to find an isolated mountain top.
BTW, there’s a “movement” of sorts by car makers to eliminate AM in car radios. The “conspiracy theorist” explanation is that it is an attempt to crush “Right Wing Talk Radio” that dominates AM. I suspect it is just to eliminate complaints about all the RFI (Radio Freq. Interference) the car itself makes. Which is easier? Find and fix all those LED lights and instruments and the Car Area Network and… or just leave out the AM radio chip? That it would also kill off Talk Radio is just a bonus ;-)
Oh, and something in newer 18 Wheeler Trucks makes a holy racket on AM radio at night when they pass me… or I pass them.
@Col1664:
Yes, I suspect a LOT of it was an attempt to get the light bulb prices out of the “less than $1 / bulb” range. I “bagged” a whole lot of them at that price some many years back when I first saw this coming. Some as low as 50 ¢ each.
@Simon:
Nice explanation. Better than mine ;-)
On my “to do” list is to make a rectifier / filter / regulator to 120 DC and then see if LED bulbs will run on it. (I have about a dozen or two bought and then removed… so “free” if it fries them). IF I can get them to not flicker, then a diffusing cover takes care of point brightness (and if it is a light yellow will kill the excess blue).
That’s sort of my final Hail Mary Fix. I hope to never run out of “Light Bulb Mountain”, but if I do, that’s next… Oh, and maybe checking at pro photographer shops to see if they sell non-flicker lights with high CRI…
@Andysaurus:
FWIW, I have a couple of old cars that take the old round headlights. When the low beam would burn out, the high beam was typically “near new”. I hung two of them over my shop bench and ran them from a small battery / car charger set. Very nice IC Light. It is getting a little harder to find such, but the Halogen small bulbs in my 2000+ model year cars also makes nice clean light and they are still in stores.
I’d suggest starting to design a 12 VDC lighting solution rather than go LED and the hand….
Or look into the Pro Photographer non-flicker lights.
@John H:
I have a spherical front porch light with a CFL in it that I leave on all night every night. The glass bowl does not 100% seal to the base. Small moth like bugs (among others) get inside and die. About every 2 months there’s a 2 to 3 inch wide “puddle” of dead bugs in the bottom and I have to dump it… So much for “Put in 10,000 hour bulb and leave it alone for 3 years…”
OTOH: The small Florida lizards that decorate the outside walls and sidewalks of my home like the “Midnight Buffet” and the ones near the light have fat bellies ;-)
@YMMV:
Yup. I had 3 big ones in the kitchen (4 foot long) and 2 round ones (over the sink and in the laundry) that are basically plates of LEDs. It is getting hard to find / buy Edison bulb base fixtures, but I got “enough” to replace them. I’ve saved them for use in a hydroponic grow build (plants don’t mind LED lights ;-0 )
I still have one such plate of LEDs in a living room ceiling fan. Don’t know how to work on ceiling fans as we didn’t “do” them in California. Home Depot seems to be almost all LED Plate fans now, so even “replace the whole thing” is an issue… So “someday” I need to find out how to take it apart and see if a normal light fixture can substitute. Lucky for us, it is kind of yellowish plastic in the cover and a dim light anyway… plus we rarely use it at all having put floor and table lamps in the room.
EM – bear in mind that rectified and smoothed AC tends to end up at the peak voltage, not RMS. Thus your 110V would give around 160VDC. Maybe start with a dimmer switch, then the bridge rectifier, then the LC smoothing. Should allow you to set the brightness, and a stop on the dimmer can limit the maximum voltage.
On the other hand, 12V LED modules are available, which makes it easier to run on battery. There are also tapes that run on 12V, where each section has 3 LEDs in series with a ballast resistor. Cut as many sections as needed to fill a lamp fixture, and wire them in parallel to your 12V battery. Flicker-free. If you want variable brightness, add in either a resistor or a buck/boost circuit (adds some flicker, but at maybe 100kHz so you won’t see that. Top limit for most people is around the 100Hz mark, though a few notice a bit faster flicker.
You might ask why people use PWM on LEDs when a voltage variation works. It’s because the perceived light output isn’t linear with power. You get more light out if you use 10 times the power for 1/10th of the time, though I can’t recall if that’s more actual photons or that the eye is non-linear.
@E.M.Smith – “Better, yes. Good enough, not yet. Give me a 90+ CRI, NO flicker of any frequency, and no excess blue”
Here’s one to consider:
90 CRI, flicker free to my eyes and are easily the best dimming LEDs I’ve seen.
But they aren’t cheap and can be hard to find.
https://www.lightingsupply.com/cree-a19-60w-p1-30k-e26-u1.aspx
@Liberty:
I’ll likely give one a try if I run into it, but for now, I’m set for lighting.
The “issues” with “buy to try” and “to my eyes” are simple:
1) You can NOT see the excess blue. There are 2 ways to make a “white” bulb. 3 separate LEDs each of a different color, blended to give the appearance of full spectrum light. But it isn’t. LEDs make very precise single colors. This causes a LOT of various items to “look different”. (Thus my “use a Chef Boyardee Can” test – the particular colors on the can are both “known to people” and “the ones bulbs tend to screw up” (greens, yellows, reds). The other way is to make a very efficient single BLUE LED and then “down shift” some of that to other colors via a phosphor mix. That one tends to be dominant due to high efficiency. It also leaves a LOT of excess blue in the spectrum, but largely in a narrow peak that you can not discriminate. Yet the Suprachiasmatic nucleus of the eye detects and responds to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suprachiasmatic_nucleus
That’s the bit that tells you “The sky is blue it is MORNING WAKE UP!!” and not a reddish sunset. That’s also the reason there are blue light glasses to put on to overcome jet lag. That’s also the reason that many (all?) LED Bulbs cause insomnia. The only way to “see” it is to inspect the full color spectrum graph of the bulb.
2) You can NOT actually SEE the flicker. For some people they can sense something is wrong, have eye strain and discomfort. But you do not see it as ‘flicker’.
To “see” the flicker, buy a professional photographers “flicker meter” and it will tell you how bad the flicker is, what frequencies, and will it mess up your photo by strobeing with the desired shutter speed.
Unfortunately, I have “existence proof” of both those things sitting in a drawer. I have an entire “dresser drawer” of various LED bulbs I’ve bought, and tried, and rejected over the years. Precisely because the published spec numbers do NOT tell you what is needed.
So “someday” I hope the LED Bulb Industry recognizes these bad aspects of their products and fixes them. THEN publishes the %flicker and frequency, and prints the color spectrum graph on the bulb along with the CRI, and also states the “peak lumens” and the “peak lumens at the brightest spot” of the bulb and not just average lumens from the bulb over time…
Until then, it is DIY to search ALL the bulbs made with special equipment to try to find one that is not offensive. I found it a LOT cheaper to just fund Light Bulb Mountain… So when it runs down, then I’ll buy a flicker meter and look for published spectrum graphs (which are available but with a long search time for some).
Scroll down to “relative spectral power distribution” graph on about page 11 in this:
link: https://assets.cree-led.com/a/ds/x/XLamp-XPL.pdf
and look at the BIG blue power spike at about 430 nm in their “white” 2700 k emitter.
That, and the fact that you can not see it by looking, but it does effect your “wake up” sensor in your eyes, is the problem.
So, for ANY bulb, you need to find out the LED emitter in it, find the maker’s published spectrum (IFF they bothered), and then inspect it. That’s a big piece of work…
So “thanks for the recommendation”, but no, I’ll not buy one to “try it” and see if suddenly the spousal insomnia returns, and then add it to the LED drawer…
@Simon,
Likely both when it comes to mammalian vision, and there will be individual variations in things like color blindness and cataracts. (When I had mine removed, boy did I notice the difference, since they do one eye at a time.) Flip side of the flickering and too bright artificial lights. Some are sensitive enough to it that it induces migraine headaches in those who suffer from those, too.
About auto lights being blinding, part of that is that they’ve increased the lumens allowed, and the fresnel lens patterns have been changed (they want the side light be brighter, too). Some of the newer vehicle lights are so bright to me, that I can not look at them head on. The older, yellower lights are fine. Thus, I try to only drive in daylight, though that’s not always possible; particularly in winter. Summer max daylight here is a little over 14 hours. Winter daylight is roughly only 10 hours.
@Simon:
Yes, that is why I had “regulator” in my list of things … At one time I was Production Controller for Advanced Linear devices at a semiconductor house. There was a T03 package linear regulator series designed for power supply makers. Various volts, from 5 on up IIRC. Zener Diode to ground for overvolts protection is also helpful, though wasteful of power in overvolts situations… and severe overvolts can blow it ;-)
FWIW, one of the very first circuits I ever built was a 5U4 based TUBE power supply. Spat out 5 VAC, 5 VDC, and something like 400 VDC “plate current”… Lots of fun.
I’ve still got a couple of “parts boxes” with a host of power transistors, linear regulators, and all sorts of diodes “somewhere” in the “unpack me” pile… Though I doubt any of them are 120 VDC… I also have my “Design & Spec Books” for both the RCA Tube Family of devices and for semiconductors “of a certain era”… (I’m pretty sure the sample circuits and design process will still work… but getting particular devices has likely changed.) Ah, fond memories of a different me in a different era…
Now? Probably easier and quicker to just go to Amazon and order a DC Power Supply… with digital voltage readout and control…
But I’ll cross the “how to make LEDS livable” bridge when it becomes a necessity. I’ve got somewhere between 10 and 30 years of “good light bulbs & dimmers” to get through first. i.e. I’ve bought a lifetime supply… and maybe more than that.
Why don’t I care about the super-D-duper efficiency of LED Bulbs?
Because right now, we have about 250 W of electronic entertainment running. A 26 A, 240 V, 6,240 Watt AC running about 50% duty cycle, 2 Fridges at about 700 W each and a small chest freezer, plus a garage AC pulling 20 A @ 120 VAC (call it 2 kW). So just why ought I “give a damn” about the 29 W halogen bulb in my table lamp next to me, or the 42 W in the floor lamp, and the 13 W CFL in the stove keeping the kitchen good to navigate? Under 100W total for current lights. Somewhere near 5 kW for the rest of the house (assuming about 50% duty cycle on average for the compressor gear). 100 / 5000 = 2% of my usage is the lights. Half of nothing is still “just nothing”…
@CDQuarles:
It was a BIG improvement for me to get some “blue blocking” yellow colored “sunglasses” for night driving. Years ago these were hard to find, now they are all over the place and easy to order.
Night Driving went from “Oh Hell” and blinded by oncoming cars, to “Hey, that one looks greenish, I’ll bet it is a blinding blue one!” and comfortable night driving.
It is startling to see the ‘greenish’ lights, lift the glasses, see the blinding blue, and drop them back down to comfortable.
I now have 2 pair. One for the spousal car and one for when I’m going cross country. I’ll likely get a couple more so I can assure each car has one …
FWIW, it was about a decade ago, maybe 15 years, that I first started using actual light brown sunglasses at night. They worked, but it was hard to see by my own headlights when nobody was coming. The yellow lenses have me seeing better even in daylight. (Not sure why, but suspect the filtered out blue means a more precise focus of the remaining colors as there’s less chromatic aberration to deal with).
The yellow lenses really are a dramatic improvement for comfort in night driving. And safety too as I can now “see the road” again even with oncoming blue blinder people ;-)
@E.M.Smith
Thanks for the deep dive, that is interesting data on light spectrum and flicker.
There was a time pre-LEDs and almost pre-internet where I went to some effort to make my bedroom as dark as possible because of the blue light ‘wake-up’ effect. Helped a lot at the time.
Ge Reveal are now all led, no more incandescent (even for specialty bulbs!). I am fully stocked, yet you can still buy them on Amazon and ebay.
EM – here I have 4kW to run the whole shebang, and the water-heater takes 2.2kW of that so it runs overnight when it’s cheaper anyway. Thus I need to be a bit more careful about how much power each device uses, and any higher-power devices often need to be run serially rather than at the same time. Also important is that in Winter (November to March) the electricity costs 10 times as much on “red days” daytime as on the rest of the year at night. Thus reducing essential power used each day pays back rather quickly.
Fluorescent tubes depend on the mixture of phosphors to get good colour rendition. The phosphor-type LEDs would be the same. Thus it really depends on what the manufacturer decides to do – there could be some white LEDs with good colour rendition, just needs finding them. Otherwise, using RGB strings could work, though might be better using a 7-LED group to cover the spectrum smoothly. Since I haven’t seen any of those around, that’s a self-build option. Each LED power would need to be separately controlled, probably with PWM at a high frequency. That should then allow you to choose your spectrum from Dawn to midday to evening. Yep, not really worth doing until you run out of bulbs you like….
I repurposed a PC power supply to a lab supply. +/- 12, +/-5, and 3.3 volts. Later, just bought a variable one.
UV blocking clearcoat. Could be used to spray the LED bulbs I guess.
https://www.amazon.com (slash) Krylon-K01305-Coatings-11-Ounce-UV-Resistant/dp/B00397STRW
I may have to find some yellow glasses to use for driving (especially at night). I had to drive out of state for two family weddings this summer. Since I refuse to drive in a strange area at night nowadays, I added one or two days to each trip.
It was odd to be gone from work that many days at a time, but I thought it was worth it to make sure I was driving in strange areas only during daylight.
Why do they keep having weddings out in the boonies nowadays?!?!?
Oh, a friend who is a few years younger than I had her cataracts removed (one eye at a time, one week apart). She mentioned that before removal, her vision tended to be yellowish. That was what convinced her that she should go ahead and have them removed. After the first cataract was removed, that eye no longer had yellowish vision.
She said they had her eyes set up so one was better for distance vision, and the other was better for close vision.
Does anyone here have any tales they’d like to tell about having cataracts removed?
I forgot my rant: I hate LEDs so much!!!
Now they’re using them to light up stages for performances.
I was able to reason with the tech crew for a spring performance this year, but when I helped out a friend by playing for her young violinist I was again reminded that it’s time to either refuse to perform, or try to reason with the tech crew.
For the violinist, the rehearsal went well enough. They had the house lights on. But when the time came to perform, there was nothing but LEDs pointed straight at my eyeballs! I could hardly see the music in front of me!
Under those circumstances, the LEDs remind me of laser lights. They don’t spread worth a darn. That’s why they put multiple LEDs bulb in a large fixture. Each one is so concentrated and piercing, you have to use multiple ones to get any kind of spread.
Aargh! :-(
@Power Grab – I was so nearsighted that I could focus on dust particles on the back of my coke bottle lenses. My Rx was for glasses was a 7.5 diopter correction.
About 10-ish years ago, I was diagnosed with clear cataracts in both eyes. What the?!?! Clear cataracts?
The effect was somewhat amusing because they bent the light coming into my eyes much like a prism. So I was making an inordinate number of wrong number calls because I was hitting numbers on the phone pad below the number I was aiming for and could swear that I hit the right number as well as other hilarious (not) visual errors. Also, typos on almost every word since I don’t touch type. I’d hit the wrong key despite concentrating on hitting the right one.
Comes the time for cataract surgery and I discussed the options with the Doc. Since I was aging, he said that I was going to run up against presbyopia and if he made my vision 20/20, I’d still need glasses for reading, that or longer arms.
I was still working and my inspection duties required close visual work. Also, I worked a few hours per day at my computer.
He suggested I stay slightly nearsighted for the close work and with a focus that was just right for reading or working on a computer without glasses. And, that’s what I did. No matter my choice, I was going to wind up wearing glasses.
I’m about 20/30 in one eye and 20/40-ish in the other eye. I can actually drive safely without glasses now… in an emergency. I wouldn’t do it regularly.
This Doc waited about 4 weeks between doing each eye. He wanted the first eye to ‘settle in’ before operating on the other eye. That was his opinion of what was best practice for the best outcome.
I have been a very happy camper after the surgery and the decision to stay slightly nearsighted.
One other story. My older brother had cataract surgery on both eyes a few years before I did. The cataracts reformed behind the artificial lenses and he had to have a second round of cataract surgery. That’s the first and only time I’ve heard of that, although if I cared enough to do an internet search. I’d probably find out how often cataracts recur.
That’s all I’ve got. Hope it helps.
Oh… this was all typed out without glasses. Not having glasses while reading or commenting on blogs is, trust me, VERY nice!
@Power Grab: “Does anyone here have any tales they’d like to tell about having cataracts removed?”
I had some trauma induced cataracts in one eye after a few extreme eye surgeries. The improvement in color was one of the first things I noticed with the new lens. My other eye, my “good eye”, was quite a bit yellowish by comparison, even though it did not have cataracts. Conclusion? It is the age of the lens rather than the presence of cataracts which gives the yellow tinge.
I’ve had cataract surgery in both eyes. I too was near sighted and had lenses put in that kept me that way. There are epithelial cells in the eye around the lens that can grow back after the surgery. I’m wondering if that was the issue with your brother’s case. That can be dealt with by YAG laser.
The yellow eyeball lens is kind of like the plastic headlight lenses that get yellow and clouded from UV.
@jim2: “There are epithelial cells in the eye around the lens that can grow back after the surgery.”
Yes, I had that develop after my cataract implant, made things fuzzy and dim. YAG treatment was quick and painless, had better vision as soon as I got out of the chair.
I had cataract surgery a while back, both eyes, a week apart.
I had left it so long that they couldn’t use the normal (laser) measuring device to check out my vision for the replacement lens, so they had to do it with ultrasound. So the final results left me slightly nearsighted, but as I tinker a lot with computers, and solder and repairs on tiny things (and they seem to get tinier all the time), and read a lot, that worked out OK.
My remaining vision (before the surgery) was eight percent in my right eye, ten percent in my left eye (don’t know what that translates to in US terms, but almost blind is how they put it. Had I waited any longer, they might not have been able to restore my vision! One of the assistants said “I hope you’re not driving anymore!” to which I wanted to reply, “Oh, it’s no problem; if I hit something I just back up, and go on again :) “… they’d probably have sent me home for that!
The cataracts were so dense that they shifted everything toward brown, and drastically reduced contrast to the point I was having trouble sorting socks. My eyes really were in a bad way, and that the decline was getting faster and faster, it seemed.
One of the ophthalmologists said that the color spectrum post-op would shift toward blue, which seems to have occurred. Salads and food in general look a LOT different. And everything is SO BRIGHT. The first week or so I needed to wear sunglasses inside the house during the day (we have a lot of windows)(stuff it Habeck!) but that’s gotten a bit better.
I have prescription glasses and sunglasses (which I need to get “tuned” a bit) so I can drive, seeing far, FAR better than I have in years (probably, ever). Weird thing is, getting up in the morning and being able to see without glasses. Before, I had -9 diopter in both eyes, now it’s around 1.25 or so, which isn’t bad at all.
One thing I must say is, if you need to get the OP done, don’t delay! It’s not anywhere near as bad as it sounds. And, yes, sometimes the eye builds some tissue back up, which they can zap with a laser really quickly. I’m going in in September to get that done on my right eye. My wife also had the same thing (Nachstar, in German) after her cataract surgery, and it only took ten or 15 minutes for the procedure.
There are actually progressive lenses that they can put in, which are like the progressive reading glasses, but I didn’t want to do that… easier to just grab my driving glasses and deal with that, no need for reading glasses…
Speaking of lasers, the surgery can be done either with laser or the “old-fashioned” way. I chose the latter because the health insurance here doesn’t cover the extra expense (€1000 or so, per eye) and it doesn’t really make a lot of difference in terms of healing, etc.
I still remember the first thing my sister-in-law said after her cataract surgery. Looking at my brother: “Who is this horrible homeless man in here with me!!”
@ H.R., The True Nolan, jim2, Jeff:
Thanks for sharing!
I had never heard of clear cataracts….
My eye doctor has mentioned seeing cataracts in my eyes, but “they’re not bad enough” to do surgery on.
I guess my worst vision complaint is about LED lights in vehicles or on stage. But would having no hint of cataracts still cause my discomfort with LEDs?
My sibling said their doctor wants to do surgery. But the question of having one eye set for distance vision and the other eye set for close vision is a dilemma.
I’m not on Medicare because I’m still working full time and covered by my employer’s health insurance. I don’t know if it would be better to get it done before or after switching to Medicare. The question of how much of a deductible I would be on the hook for is a dilemma for me.
When I had my hysterectomy, I kept asking how much it would cost me. All they would say is, “Oh, we’ll bill your insurance.”
Well, I ended up owing two-three thousand dollars after insurance paid its share. It took me two years to pay that off.
Anyway, I’m not having serious issues as long as I can avoid LED lights to the extent possible. It was interesting to notice that when I went to rehearse with a singer earlier this year at her place, and since her piano was next to a large window, I had lovely diffuse sunlight to see by. I had no problems there!
I can see best to play while using incandescent lights or natural sunlight. I don’t have my own Incandescent Mountain…but I wish I did!
Even old-fashioned fluorescent lights don’t bother me as much as LEDs or CFLs. My kitchen has a double-tube fluorescent fixture on the ceiling. I am fine with its light.
@TTN, that’s about what I said when I looked in the mirror…
Suddenly I’d aged 50 years :)
Worse, the honey-do list got around 100 pages longer… how did all that stuff (crud, dust, cobwebs, etc.) get there…
@PowerGrab, best thing is just to get regular checkups to make sure that you don’t get into the situation I did… LEDs are a pain because they’re a point light source, even though the greens and the eco-loons say they’re the same or better than incandescents… nope…
As far as having the lenses set to two different strengths, for some people that causes headaches, other folks don’t seem to have a problem. I guess it would be a case of how different the prescriptions are. My vision was always terrible, but the same in both eyes, to the point that if I mixed up my contact lenses, it wouldn’t matter… but that’s rare, I suspect. The main thing is to decide which direction you want, and then get prescription glasses either for reading or driving. I like the fact that there’s something in between my eyes and the soldering iron or debris flying out of the PC (then again, I could use safety glasses…). For people who have never worn glasses, or always wore contact lenses, I guess it would be different…
I wonder if they still make the elongated bulbs for stand lights… I’d go nuts having to play with an LED equivalent to that… they never last anywhere near as long, and they’re not so easily dimmable… I’ve played in pits where the stand lights were all dimmable (usually by the conductor) so that they could go almost all the way off if needed…
@Power Grab – Cataract surgery is almost always just 10 minutes or so. It’s not an expensive surgery as surgeries go. They gave me a sedative that was so light I didn’t even know it was in effect. I was awake the entire time. There are videos you can watch and I watched a couple before having it done. The difference in color is striking. The blues were back. I do have other issues with my eyes (cloudy vision from vitreous humor detachment – not retinal detachment), but my vision was still much better after the new lenses were put in.
Hey jim2! What vision did you pick? Well, unless you were 20/20 before, then of course you’d stick with that.
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@Jeff – Oh yeah… It is great having some lenses between you and dust or other flying debris. What I liked about having a weak Rx for lenses was that I didn’t have to change to safety glasses. I just wore Rx safety glasses throughout the day when on the shop floor.
@jim2 – Sorry, I was reading from the bottom up and found upthread that you already answered my questions.
You’re psychic! You knew exactly what I’d ask before I asked it. 😉😁
The lens replacements today can correct for everything in one short procedure. Some insurance covers it. No BS.
5 or 10 years ago I might have agreed with you Chiefio. But modern lights certainly cause no problems to us or anyone I know. In our living room our lights totaled 400 watts now its 30watts with no difference in lighting capabilities.
As you know, over here in the UK we have 220 volts rather than 110V and I wonder if that has any effect on flickering etc?
Having said all that the question of electro magnetic interference generally is an interesting one what with all the gadgets we have, of which the most harmful are potentially computers, servers, mobile phones and 5G masts.
This latter even has the EU commission querying whether we need to examine the technology before we continue to roll it out. A weaker signal means many more masts are required and operating on a different frequency to other G technologies means we may be unleashing a whole unpleasant can of worms in our desperation to achieve the internet of everything.
Apparently 82% of the global population now have smart phones and check them an average of 56 times a day. No wonder social interaction is reducing and our knowledge on many things limited unless we can connect to the internet.
@Tonyb***
Interesting thought about voltage, but also the frequency is different. Most of the world runs at 50 Hz, whereas the US runs at 60 Hz.
Here’s an interesting chart to scroll through for a couple of minutes. It’s the voltages and frequencies of the power systems of the World by country.
https://www.generatorsource.com/Voltages_and_Hz_by_Country.aspx
I’d guess that you can’t take your LEDs and use them here in the States. I never thought about that, although anyone who travels to different countries knows, or finds out right away that they usually need a little plug and voltage adapter if their destination has a different power system than ‘home’.
And then there is the point 12-volt LEDs in cars don’t have the frequency issue, yet those LEDs bother some people. It’s all about the wavelengths of the light from the LEDs vs incandescent lights.
Like you, I don’t have a problem with LEDs. But then my vision sucks for more reasons than just those cataracts. Fluorescent lights can be bothersome for me, but LEDs are just peachy in my book. I generally prefer them for most lighting tasks.
There have been a lot of lighting studies for various reasons. I’m aware of some of them from my manufacturing background because lighting in factories is important for efficiency, quality, safety, and sometimes as part of a manufacturing process.
I don’t think any lighting study has results that are 100% the same for everyone. There is always a spectrum (ha! see what I did there? 😁) of responses by the people in the studies.
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After all of that babbling, I think that the differences in the effects of different light sources have more to do with the person than the particulars of the light source.
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***Sorry. I just can’t get used to your climatereason handle even though you have used it for a long time now.. You have always had much more to offer than just climate talk and I have read a lot of good stuff you wrote back when you always posted as Tonyb. Say the word and I’ll always use ‘climatereason’ if you prefer that I do so.
If you can search this site, you will find my reports about having cataracts removed and glaucoma surgery at the same time. The surgery was done one eye at a time, one week apart. After the first one, I really noticed the difference (the untreated eye was like a yellow filter and slightly washed out contrast). I remained slightly near sighted but also having corneal scarring from contact lens use decades ago, I needed the astigmatism correction, too. My spectacles were the cheapest I could get bifocals. Medicare has very low limits; but still, my vision is the best it has been in 6 decades. Like H.R., I was very strongly nearsighted, but I don’t recall them being more than 7 diopter lenses. I guess that I’m not the most nearsighted person in the world :), though I am not far off.
HR I generally post as tonyb but some sites just display my web site name. I do not know why. I prefer Tonyb
@Tonyb:
Your comment has “climatereason” in the name field and your site in the login / site field. There’s a “change” button below your login name in the comment box here, that might let you change it. It may just be that when you are logged in to WordPress it uses “Climatereason” if that is your login name, but when logged out it takes any other name you give it.
FWIW, I’m hopeful that over time the LED bulb makers will fix the problems in their tech. It ought not to be that hard. But for now, they like their blue spike.
Not everyone is sensitive to it, and I know that we, me and the spouse, are both overly sensitive to many things. (We like quiet, soft music, food not too spicy, etc. etc.). In psych terms, we are “Augmenters”. That’s official Ph.D. Psychology name for it, supplied to me by NASA ;-) Folks who’s nervous systems amplify everything a lot. (The opposite are “Reducers” who are starved for stimulus so seek out loud music, chaotic lighting, fights and adrenaline… ) At one time I could hear 22 kHz burglar alarms, 17 kHz flyback transformers on old Tube TV sets, etc. I see very well by starlight alone, but find daytime at the beach overwhelming without sunglasses…
So basically it doesn’t surprise me at all that things flickering “faster than humans can detect” end up being in some way sensed by me as eye strain and squirm, that ‘OK Bright spot’ of light is too bright for me, and that “daylight bright white” is not as comfortable as nice incandescent campfire color on a dimmer.
That’s why things like this ought to be left to markets not central authority mandates: because “one size mandated fits all” never does.
FWIW, even older T12 tube fluorescents used to feel somehow wrong to me. Sort of squirmy. That went away in the move from magnetic to electronic ballasts when the frequency went up a LOT higher than 60 Hz and the phosphors were never given enough time to fade before the next shot of UV showed up from the mercury vapor…
So I hope that, eventually, they will get a flicker rate closer to 10 kHz, a phosphor mix that fully dampens the blue spike (or they move it out to UV range and block it with some glass…) and a phosphor mix closer to 2700 K. Oh, and a nice big diffuser so you don’t get those blinding bright small LED dots… Someday…
@Tonyb – Yay! I prefer Tonyb, too. I was just worried about offending because some handles are preferred and were carefully chosen.
Digression Alert! Skip on by if you have no interest in other posters’ handles.
Jason Calley, who had to switch to The True Nolan, was someone I’d respond to by name. But then, people started shortening his handle to TTN, and I kind of like that; the letters are just a hard-hitting, yet pleasing rat-a-tat-tat. Whereas if I think of him as The True Nolan, then I am always waiting for his evil twin brother, The Fake Nolan, to show up 😉 But I never forget who is behind TTN.
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Then you should hear Ossqss’s story. Quite simple, but it’s a hoot!
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Rhoda Klapp has a clever, but interesting tale, too.
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H.R. stands for Highly Recruited. I used to post on the topic of multi-level marketing. That’s where you recruit a sales team who in turn can recruit sales teams and said sales teams can recruit sales teams on and on to infinity. Well of course that crashes in short order and instead of the recruits getting rich off the sales of their recruits they wind up being the marks, yet all the time they believe that they will someday be rich.
There was a particularly cynical and pernicious company that pissed me off. I was looking for work and they absolutely hid their multi-level structure as well as outright lying to me. It was a barely legal pyramid scheme. Anyhow, I washed my hands of them after the one group (alleged) interview I had with the company.
The geometric progression of people attempting to recruit other is so viral that by the next month in one 2-week period, I received 14 calls offering me a (non-existent) “job opportunity” with that same company. Thus, ‘Highly Recruited’.
I cost that company a LOT of recruits and sales (Recruits = Sales) warning about and explaining their tactics and it appeared the General Counsel of the company had a keen interest in knowing who I was. I think a SLAPP suit had my name on it. None of the blogs I posted on gave me up.
Though always posting as Highly Recruited, after a while, people started referring to me as ‘H.R.’ and I liked that well enough, so I started using it myself.
About 2008, I stopped posting on the multi-level marketing topic and the *ahem* shortcomings of that one company in particular and got interested in the “any day real soon now CO2-based runaway Global Warming” scaremongering. It smelled political and very fishy to me from the start because… AL Gore, and I knew the Earth’s temperature had never run away before when there were much higher levels of atmospheric CO2. I have learned a LOT about “Climate Science®” and climate science since then.
So I still post as H.R., short for Highly Recruited, wherever I comment on any blog just to let a particular General Counsel for a certain company know that I have not gone away. (Hi, Regena! I’m still out here on the interwebs. No, not posting about your company, but I still could,)
/digression
@H.R.: “So I still post as H.R., short for Highly Recruited”
Highly Recruited does indeed have a nice ring to it — But I think I shall start reading it as “Highly Respected”. :)
By the way, “The True Nolan” is, at least in part, done in memory of Giordano Bruno, AKA “The Nolan”. He was a great thinker, a great theologian, a darned good poet, and sometimes a great jerk! He was also one of the first people to support the heliocentric model of the solar system. He realized that the stars are other Suns, very likely with other planets and intelligent life. He thought that God has some plan to redeem ALL souls, that eternal damnation was not possible from a Loving Creator. Above all, he was a man who refused to support public narratives which he did not believe. In 1600 because of his various heresies, (and there were many!), he was given the distinction of being the last person burned alive at the stake in Rome. IIRC, his ashes were swept up and tossed into the Tiber.
@H.R.: “About 2008, I (snip) got interested in the “any day real soon now CO2-based runaway Global Warming” scaremongering.”
I still occasionally refer CAGW, (catastrophic anthropogenic global warming), enthusiasts to read some of E.M.’s early posts on the subject. I think I had read some of his comments at Watts Up With That so when he started his own blog is was a “be there or be square” moment. I remember reading some of his analysis of the great thermometer die off, the steady march south of the thermometers, and the removal of Bolivian data to be replaced by a coastal Peru station. One good thing from all that; it was good preparation to spot the COVID lies and propaganda years later.
Went through the recycle home store and they have a fantastic assortment of IC, CFL and even LED’s (which is strange). The best part was the price (10 for 1$). I tested and they all work. Scrupulously honest folks. Another odd thing is the amount of halogen floodlights (which I have). I think I’ve replaced 1 in the 16 years of owning this house.
@Erick:
What is a “recycle home store” and where do I find one?
@TTN:
Thanks for the props. “Back then” I was very interested in finding the truth of the technology. Then, once I found it and published it, discovered that “Global Warming” was not at all about “the science” or the truth. It was just a smoke screen over a Political Manipulation Operation. A money laundry scam.
It was at that moment that I stopped beating my head against “The Science” since it was clearly irrelevant. There was NO search for truth and no desire at all to stop spouting lies by the Warmistas. They were in a Political Fight.
Never bring logic and real science to a Political Fight. Complicated truth can never overcome “simple, obvious and wrong” arguments “for effect” and “for the money”.
That is when I first started to have some political articles.
@E.M.: “Never bring logic and real science to a Political Fight.”
That has been a hard concept for me to grasp. In spite of all obvious evidence, there is still a part of me that says “but they HAVE to understand once they see the evidence!!” It is difficult to understand just how very, very, little regard most people have for the facts.
The only thing I have tried that actually seems to have some effect on the die hard CAGW crowd is some sort moral argument. “Yeah, bio-fuels would be really good — but you understand that the “green corporations” are driving POC off their ancestral homelands to create the plantations. I just cannot be a part of something like that which kills innocent children and families.” Or maybe, “Yeah, wind generators are really great, but they are the largest killer of rare raptors on the planet. They kill more eagles, hawks, and ospreys than all other causes. Year after year! So sad to kill those beautiful birds. I just cannot support technology which kills so many rare birds.”
Ignore the science. Ignore the logic. Just pick some moral attack and hammer away. You don’t even need to call THEM evil for supporting the stuff. Just point to the damages done and say (sadly!) how YOU can never “be a part of a system that kills Grandma, destroys the fish, rapes the earth, pollutes the water, and causes all the baby cows to moo endlessly from the pain of reversed horn growth.” Sigh…
Perhaps the biggest motivator of the climate change hysteria, trans-everything craziness, anti-bail, defund the police, etc., is that it makes the proponents feel virtuous. Mega virtue signaling! Take away their virtue endorphin rush, watch them wilt.
“the biggest motivator of the climate change hysteria, trans-everything craziness, anti-bail, defund the police, etc., is that it makes the proponents feel virtuous.”
That’s a good point, for those being led by their nose-ring.
For those pulling on those nose-rings, there are the usual GEB motivations.
@YMMV: “For those pulling on those nose-rings, there are the usual GEB motivations.”
Amen!
https://www.homeresource.org/ Home/business deconstruction and resale. Missoula is a pretty small community, but some things completely undercut box stores. Tools, insulation, furnace filters, light bulbs, light fixtures, switches, cabling, electrical. You have to be a bit patient sometimes. I don’t mind. :) I’ve got 3 non-opening 36×36 windows I want to replace with a double hung windows for my back garage/shop. I’ve been waiting about 3 years. Also, I’ve got a lot of miscellaneous construction material from when I purchased the house. I think I’m going to drop it off as it will be nice to reclaim the space and it’s so inexpensive there. I don’t really have plans for a lot of it as well.
I recently made the mistake of seeing some of those rubber gasket roofing screws and *not* buying them (I’m re-paneling the top of the car port). Looks like I’ll be paying full price. Lesson learned.