8 ms·

LEDs from Dubai (2021)

91 points by WithinReason 4y ago

rektide 4y ago
It's so heartbreaking how many interesting possible things supply side will not make available.
blkhawk 4y ago
You can get these now in the EU
- B1FF_PSUVM 4y ago
  Title made it sound like the royal car license plate (just the single digit 1, I heard).
- morsch 4y ago
  Where?
  - Razengan 4y ago
    In the EU.
Synaesthesia 4y ago
But I CAN buy high powered LED grow lights.
adolph 4y ago
2021, cited source material comes from the always awesome Big Clive YouTube Channel. bigclivedotcom: The lamps you're not allowed to have. Exploring the Dubai lamps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klaJqofCsu4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klaJqofCsu4
- userbinator 4y ago
  Also previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27093793 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27093793
- rzzzt 4y ago
  Strangely only a single commenter addresses him as Big Clive. (I am not even sure what exactly strikes me as odd about this.)
convolvatron 4y ago
I've been derating leds for a while. no experimental log, but at 90% of input power they really don't seem to degrade at all over periods of many years, and they are a lot easier to thermally manage.
- the_pwner224 4y ago
  What's the context here? Are you somehow reducing power to standard 120/240v LED lightbulbs (how)? LED light strips? Custom designs using raw LED modules? iirc (and I may not be remembering correctly), heat is what causes the degradation. Cutting power makes the LED run cooler. For personal use at home it's important to buy high quality lightbulbs for this reason. Cheap ones will cut costs on cooling and fail prematurely or experience degradation if they don't fail. Better quality bulbs will last longer with less degradation. It can be hard to evaluate what's good; lots of companies will sell you cheap crap at inflated prices. Ikea uses solid metal bases on many of their bulbs which helps with heat (they use good CRI emitters too). I suspect weight might be a good heuristic to evaluate quality. Also avoid the high power ~1600 lumen ones, it's common for them to fail early even for the higher end ones, they just make too much heat to dissipate in the standard bulb form factor. Afaik Ikea eventually discontinued their 1600lm product, probably for this reason.
  - convolvatron 4y ago
    sorry yes, bespoke fixtures with commodity modules (mostly bridgelux - cheap and nice phosphors). as an aside, when are we going to get a usable DC power and control standard for lighting?
    - kjs3 4y ago
      USB? -48v? And there's a whole ecosystem of 12v stuff under the RV umbrella. Seems like what's lacking isn't a standard (or rather the basis for a standard), but a market leader to say "we're gonna back this". But you've got way more insight than I do and I'm undoubtedly underestimating the effort.
    - the_pwner224 4y ago
AnotherGoodName 4y ago
In related news the Bay Bridge in San Francisco will have lights out permanently from this weekend due to high maintenance costs of the LED bulbs. I wonder if they could just lower the brightness of the bulbs. https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/bay-bridge-lights-set-to-go-dark-in-just-days/ https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/bay-bridge-lights-set-to...
- the_pwner224 4y ago
  > “The hardware is failing at a rate faster than we can cost-effectively keep up,” Ben Davis, the founder of Illuminate, told KRON4 in January. > “It’s a challenge of the current lights. They’re good but they have to exist in an area that has rain, fog, high winds, grime 24/7, vibration, expansion and contraction,” Davis said. This has nothing to do with brightness or with the bulbs being LEDs. Their hardware is not properly suited for the environment it's being used in. If you put an Arduino in your car, don't be surprised when the non-automotive-grade electronics fail after a few years. The EEs must have not done a great job when initially designing this light project. From to the project's website (linked by your article): > They must be replaced with a new system that is custom engineered to perform in the harsh environmental conditions of San Francisco Bay.
  - pcl 4y ago
    In their defense, the original system was only supposed to be up for one maintenance cycle, but it was extended due to the massive popularity of the installation.
  - RC_ITR 4y ago
    This is so weird though, because the lights that line the catenary cable are older and not proposed to be turned off (and anecdotally are much less likely to be broken on a given night). Maybe it's the scale, relative inaccessibility, or remote control that's the problem. Honestly, I never loved the 'light show' effect anyway - maybe they should just light the suspender cables with normal lights and call it a day. EDIT: For reference, here is the bridge before Baylights: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Oakland_Bay_Bridge.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Oakland_Bay_Brid...
andix 4y ago
The biggest problem of LED bulbs is usually heat. The design is just not suitable for LED, it would be great if we get a new standard. First thing is voltage, 120/230V is not suitable for LEDs, if lamps would have an external 12V or 3V power supply a few centimetres away from the LED, this would be great. The second thing is, that lamps need some kind of (passive!) cooling solution, to remove the heat from the chip. A lot of lamps are more or less closed and heat up as a whole. This is really bad for all the electronics, and probably the main reason why LEDs fail early.
- lightedman 4y ago
  "First thing is voltage, 120/230V is not suitable for LEDs" Perfectly-fine if you put them in a series chain. In fact you reduce power losses at higher operating voltages.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  Aren't filament bulbs the next evolution for both heat and power supply? The filament design puts the heat generation away from the electronics, and the electronics themselves are simpler because each filament can run off line voltage (or something along those lines). But they have more of a flicker problem IIUC. The nice thing about newer filament bulbs is you can get 1600 lumen bulbs that are rated for enclosed fixtures now.
  - ars 4y ago
    Yah, filament bulbs are the future of LEDs they solve basically all the existing problems of LEDs - heat, point-source lights, directionality, driver-size. And they are cheaper.
    - inamberclad 4y ago
      Is this satire, or am I missing something?
      - rootusrootus 4y ago
ElfinTrousers 4y ago
This article didn't address what is, to me, the most interesting question: why can't you buy these outside Dubai? Anyone know?
- RALaBarge 4y ago
  I'm unsure if true but I remember hearing in this video that the King of Dubai funded the development of these bulbs and has them under contract.
  - kenmacd 4y ago
    They're under contract, but just as the "make them and we'll keep others from competing with you here", not "you can't sell these elsewhere". The only reason you "can't buy them" is because you wouldn't (or at least people wouldn't). You can't easily tell how good the LED setup is in the bulbs, and price isn't necessarily a good indicator, so you're unlikely to pick the more expensive item.
- darkhelmet 4y ago
  Think about it from the point of view of a manufacturer/distributor. Speculating a little: Suppose you decided to carry them and they cost more, both from a material perspective and a reduced repeat customer perspective. Cheap competitors in stores won't just go away and they'll be on shelves next to them. Brand recognition and/or loyalty will only go so far and way too many people will prefer the cheaper cost. So the manufacturer/distributor have to provide both or risk losing sales. Now there's an extra sku in the mix and I'd wager that even with brand recognition the cheaper ones will outsell the Dubai ones, which makes the distribution overheads even more unpalatable. And so on. I'm sure they've done their research and it doesn't add up from a business sense. It works in Dubai because the regulations eliminate part of the race to zero. Even selling them directly online is problematic because of distributor territory, exclusivity etc. If the manufacturer competes with its distributor network (that they rely on) then that doesn't end well either. I doubt it's any sort of conspiracy by 'big led' to keep you from buying them, but is more to do with mundane and unfortunate things like above. I still want them though.
rootusrootus 4y ago
Other reviews of these things say they aren't especially bright and have a very mediocre CRI. It's not clear that anybody outside of Dubai would want these anyway.
- 6stringmerc 4y ago
  Reminds me of Homer Simpson with a monocle sitting in a car twisting the steering wheel..."How does this compare with a train, which I can also afford?"
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Giorgi 4y ago
Well you could buy it but it is for 220v so... no use in US anyways
- lightedman 4y ago
  The power incoming to a home is 220/240 in the USA. You just split the phase at the mains box. I have several 220V-native light fixtures in my kitchen.
  - function_seven 4y ago
    I’ve never heard of 220V lighting circuits before. Is this something you did? Or a weird regional thing I’m not hip to?
    - lightedman 4y ago
      This lighting circuit was default in my apartment - the overhead lighting in the kitchen is induction.
w0mbat 4y ago
Early 2021 article.
bullen 4y ago
Follow up video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMc6mjE9Y1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMc6mjE9Y1s The real question is what is needed for these to be dim-able?
- Tijdreiziger 4y ago
  Dimmable LED lights are pretty common, including the filament variety. Various manufacturers sell them.
mlok 4y ago
I think it is these : https://www.lighting.philips.co.uk/consumer/ultra-efficient https://www.lighting.philips.co.uk/consumer/ultra-efficient Example : https://www.lighting.philips.co.uk/consumer/p/led-bulb/8719514343788 https://www.lighting.philips.co.uk/consumer/p/led-bulb/87195...
- schiffern 4y ago
  No that's a different lamp, but Clive did a teardown of that one too.[0] Compared to the Dubai lamp it still drives the LED filaments at 0.25 W each, but the driver circuitry is traditional and doesn't have the unusual features from the Dubai lamp. These include component-level redundancy and automatic brightness compensation (this breaks dimmers, so architects hate the bulb mandate). Nothing ruins a nation's (carefully cultivated) high-tech luxury image like all the bulbs dimming simultaneously with the grid voltage! [0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nMc6mjE9Y1s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nMc6mjE9Y1s

91 points by WithinReason 4y ago

rektide 4y ago

It's so heartbreaking how many interesting possible things supply side will not make available.

blkhawk 4y ago

You can get these now in the EU

B1FF_PSUVM 4y ago
Title made it sound like the royal car license plate (just the single digit 1, I heard).
morsch 4y ago
Where?
- Razengan 4y ago
  In the EU.

Synaesthesia 4y ago

But I CAN buy high powered LED grow lights.

adolph 4y ago

2021, cited source material comes from the always awesome Big Clive YouTube Channel. bigclivedotcom: The lamps you're not allowed to have. Exploring the Dubai lamps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klaJqofCsu4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klaJqofCsu4

userbinator 4y ago
Also previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27093793 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27093793
rzzzt 4y ago
Strangely only a single commenter addresses him as Big Clive. (I am not even sure what exactly strikes me as odd about this.)

convolvatron 4y ago

I've been derating leds for a while. no experimental log, but at 90% of input power they really don't seem to degrade at all over periods of many years, and they are a lot easier to thermally manage.

the_pwner224 4y ago
What's the context here? Are you somehow reducing power to standard 120/240v LED lightbulbs (how)? LED light strips? Custom designs using raw LED modules? iirc (and I may not be remembering correctly), heat is what causes the degradation. Cutting power makes the LED run cooler. For personal use at home it's important to buy high quality lightbulbs for this reason. Cheap ones will cut costs on cooling and fail prematurely or experience degradation if they don't fail. Better quality bulbs will last longer with less degradation. It can be hard to evaluate what's good; lots of companies will sell you cheap crap at inflated prices. Ikea uses solid metal bases on many of their bulbs which helps with heat (they use good CRI emitters too). I suspect weight might be a good heuristic to evaluate quality. Also avoid the high power ~1600 lumen ones, it's common for them to fail early even for the higher end ones, they just make too much heat to dissipate in the standard bulb form factor. Afaik Ikea eventually discontinued their 1600lm product, probably for this reason.
- convolvatron 4y ago
  sorry yes, bespoke fixtures with commodity modules (mostly bridgelux - cheap and nice phosphors). as an aside, when are we going to get a usable DC power and control standard for lighting?
  - kjs3 4y ago
    USB? -48v? And there's a whole ecosystem of 12v stuff under the RV umbrella. Seems like what's lacking isn't a standard (or rather the basis for a standard), but a market leader to say "we're gonna back this". But you've got way more insight than I do and I'm undoubtedly underestimating the effort.
  - the_pwner224 4y ago

AnotherGoodName 4y ago

In related news the Bay Bridge in San Francisco will have lights out permanently from this weekend due to high maintenance costs of the LED bulbs. I wonder if they could just lower the brightness of the bulbs. https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/bay-bridge-lights-set-to-go-dark-in-just-days/ https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/bay-bridge-lights-set-to...

the_pwner224 4y ago
> “The hardware is failing at a rate faster than we can cost-effectively keep up,” Ben Davis, the founder of Illuminate, told KRON4 in January. > “It’s a challenge of the current lights. They’re good but they have to exist in an area that has rain, fog, high winds, grime 24/7, vibration, expansion and contraction,” Davis said. This has nothing to do with brightness or with the bulbs being LEDs. Their hardware is not properly suited for the environment it's being used in. If you put an Arduino in your car, don't be surprised when the non-automotive-grade electronics fail after a few years. The EEs must have not done a great job when initially designing this light project. From to the project's website (linked by your article): > They must be replaced with a new system that is custom engineered to perform in the harsh environmental conditions of San Francisco Bay.
- pcl 4y ago
  In their defense, the original system was only supposed to be up for one maintenance cycle, but it was extended due to the massive popularity of the installation.
- RC_ITR 4y ago
  This is so weird though, because the lights that line the catenary cable are older and not proposed to be turned off (and anecdotally are much less likely to be broken on a given night). Maybe it's the scale, relative inaccessibility, or remote control that's the problem. Honestly, I never loved the 'light show' effect anyway - maybe they should just light the suspender cables with normal lights and call it a day. EDIT: For reference, here is the bridge before Baylights: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Oakland_Bay_Bridge.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Oakland_Bay_Brid...

andix 4y ago

The biggest problem of LED bulbs is usually heat. The design is just not suitable for LED, it would be great if we get a new standard. First thing is voltage, 120/230V is not suitable for LEDs, if lamps would have an external 12V or 3V power supply a few centimetres away from the LED, this would be great. The second thing is, that lamps need some kind of (passive!) cooling solution, to remove the heat from the chip. A lot of lamps are more or less closed and heat up as a whole. This is really bad for all the electronics, and probably the main reason why LEDs fail early.

lightedman 4y ago
"First thing is voltage, 120/230V is not suitable for LEDs" Perfectly-fine if you put them in a series chain. In fact you reduce power losses at higher operating voltages.
rootusrootus 4y ago
Aren't filament bulbs the next evolution for both heat and power supply? The filament design puts the heat generation away from the electronics, and the electronics themselves are simpler because each filament can run off line voltage (or something along those lines). But they have more of a flicker problem IIUC. The nice thing about newer filament bulbs is you can get 1600 lumen bulbs that are rated for enclosed fixtures now.
- ars 4y ago
  Yah, filament bulbs are the future of LEDs they solve basically all the existing problems of LEDs - heat, point-source lights, directionality, driver-size. And they are cheaper.
  - inamberclad 4y ago
    Is this satire, or am I missing something?
    - rootusrootus 4y ago

ElfinTrousers 4y ago

This article didn't address what is, to me, the most interesting question: why can't you buy these outside Dubai? Anyone know?

RALaBarge 4y ago
I'm unsure if true but I remember hearing in this video that the King of Dubai funded the development of these bulbs and has them under contract.
- kenmacd 4y ago
  They're under contract, but just as the "make them and we'll keep others from competing with you here", not "you can't sell these elsewhere". The only reason you "can't buy them" is because you wouldn't (or at least people wouldn't). You can't easily tell how good the LED setup is in the bulbs, and price isn't necessarily a good indicator, so you're unlikely to pick the more expensive item.
darkhelmet 4y ago
Think about it from the point of view of a manufacturer/distributor. Speculating a little: Suppose you decided to carry them and they cost more, both from a material perspective and a reduced repeat customer perspective. Cheap competitors in stores won't just go away and they'll be on shelves next to them. Brand recognition and/or loyalty will only go so far and way too many people will prefer the cheaper cost. So the manufacturer/distributor have to provide both or risk losing sales. Now there's an extra sku in the mix and I'd wager that even with brand recognition the cheaper ones will outsell the Dubai ones, which makes the distribution overheads even more unpalatable. And so on. I'm sure they've done their research and it doesn't add up from a business sense. It works in Dubai because the regulations eliminate part of the race to zero. Even selling them directly online is problematic because of distributor territory, exclusivity etc. If the manufacturer competes with its distributor network (that they rely on) then that doesn't end well either. I doubt it's any sort of conspiracy by 'big led' to keep you from buying them, but is more to do with mundane and unfortunate things like above. I still want them though.

rootusrootus 4y ago

Other reviews of these things say they aren't especially bright and have a very mediocre CRI. It's not clear that anybody outside of Dubai would want these anyway.

6stringmerc 4y ago
Reminds me of Homer Simpson with a monocle sitting in a car twisting the steering wheel..."How does this compare with a train, which I can also afford?"

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Giorgi 4y ago

Well you could buy it but it is for 220v so... no use in US anyways

lightedman 4y ago
The power incoming to a home is 220/240 in the USA. You just split the phase at the mains box. I have several 220V-native light fixtures in my kitchen.
- function_seven 4y ago
  I’ve never heard of 220V lighting circuits before. Is this something you did? Or a weird regional thing I’m not hip to?
  - lightedman 4y ago
    This lighting circuit was default in my apartment - the overhead lighting in the kitchen is induction.

w0mbat 4y ago

Early 2021 article.

bullen 4y ago

Follow up video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMc6mjE9Y1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMc6mjE9Y1s The real question is what is needed for these to be dim-able?

Tijdreiziger 4y ago
Dimmable LED lights are pretty common, including the filament variety. Various manufacturers sell them.

mlok 4y ago

I think it is these : https://www.lighting.philips.co.uk/consumer/ultra-efficient https://www.lighting.philips.co.uk/consumer/ultra-efficient Example : https://www.lighting.philips.co.uk/consumer/p/led-bulb/8719514343788 https://www.lighting.philips.co.uk/consumer/p/led-bulb/87195...

schiffern 4y ago
No that's a different lamp, but Clive did a teardown of that one too.[0] Compared to the Dubai lamp it still drives the LED filaments at 0.25 W each, but the driver circuitry is traditional and doesn't have the unusual features from the Dubai lamp. These include component-level redundancy and automatic brightness compensation (this breaks dimmers, so architects hate the bulb mandate). Nothing ruins a nation's (carefully cultivated) high-tech luxury image like all the bulbs dimming simultaneously with the grid voltage! [0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nMc6mjE9Y1s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nMc6mjE9Y1s