13 ms·

Or much shorter, around two years, if it was part of the Capacitor Plague. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague#Premature_failure https://en.wikipedi

Or much shorter, around two years, if it was part of the Capacitor Plague. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague#Premature_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague#Premature_fai... The normal lifespan of a non-solid electrolytic capacitor of consumer quality, typically rated at 2000 h/85 °C and operating at 40 °C, is roughly 6 years. It can be more than 10 years for a 1000 h/105 °C capacitor operating at 40 °C. Electrolytic capacitors that operate at a lower temperature can have a considerably longer lifespan. ... The life of an electrolytic capacitor with defective electrolyte can be as little as two years.

Workaccount2 2y ago
This is also why so many LED bulbs are shit, lots of heat in a small space full of electrolytic caps.
- magic_smoke_ee 2y ago
  Intentional planned consumption/obsolescence by design. This class of problem is where under-regulation and lack of standards benefits only sellers and cheats buyers. PS: Also, Amazon should be required to test all of the electronic, safety, and food products on its site such that they can prove safety and standards conformance.
  - Filligree 2y ago
    That, and customers insisting on preexisting form factors. Fitting the electronics and LEDs into the space of a traditional lightbulb comes with compromises, such as not having proper heat dissipation on either.
    - BlueTemplar 2y ago
      Yeah, you would think they would be two separate devices by now...
  - Workaccount2 2y ago
    I am assuming you are an ee (like myself)...I have never designed a product with a built in expiration, nor have I ever seen any app notes or write ups on the engineering of it - something engineers love to do. What I have seen done is cheaping out on parts in order to get the price as low as possible, because customers shop primarily on price. Not to lash out, but it kind of hits a nerve for me, because people think we design products to purposely fail. Hell no, we try really hard to do the opposite, but everyone just loves to buy the cheapest shit. The $25 LED bulb that will last for eternity will rot on the shelf next to the $3 bulb that will probably be dead in 6 months. And one more "they build these things to fail" complaint will be posted online.
    - belval 2y ago
      To be fair this is hardly limited to EE and is the issue with the race to the bottom in all product categories. Make long-lasting high-quality 100$ pants? People prefer spending 10$ on Shein. Additionally, the issue is that as a consumer, it's not easy to differentiate between quality markup and greedy markup. I don't see the cap manufacturer on the box so the 25$ light bulb might last 10 years or it might last 6 months just like the 3$ one. At least with the 3$ one I can come back and buy another...
      - robertlagrant 2y ago
        > Make long-lasting high-quality 100$ pants? People prefer spending 10$ on Shein. This is just fashion, right? As something becomes commoditised, it starts to become subject to fashion, which means cheap and looks fashionable is more important than durability. So you can buy one every year and keep up, and throw away the old one.
      - xp84 2y ago
        > as a consumer, it's not easy to differentiate between quality markup and greedy markup This is so true and insightful. Even plenty of so-called “luxury goods” are trash. And outside of luxury, it seems like most markets are dominated by roughly 90-99.9% products that are all identically garbage, just ranging from 1%, 2% up to 800% profit margins. So the person buying the high-end brand and the one buying from Aliexpress both have the same quality components (trash tier) and sometimes the same PCBs and designs. If you want a good quality refrigerator, you can buy a Viking or something for $9,000, or spend any amount of your choice from $800-5000 for something that will die in 2 years and be outside of warranty. It makes my blood boil, especially in areas like appliances, where the amount of waste, by tonnage, is super offensive.
  - andrewflnr 2y ago
    Please think for a moment not only about whether it's feasible for AMZN to run a safety testing program for all possible consumer products of our modern technological civilization, but whether you really want them to be in charge of it. Maybe they should just require certifications of testing in the jurisdictions where those products are sold?
    - gopher_space 2y ago
      Isn't faking certs already a problem?
      - andrewflnr 2y ago
        Probably. Is it a worse problem than Amazon inspecting themselves would be? Is it a worse problem than Amazon demonstrably already has with policing counterfeits? I'm just saying, you could hardly ask for a less-qualified authority for product testing. At least with independent certs it's vaguely possible to align the incentives correctly. With Amazon the incentives would be hosed from the start.
  - kube-system 2y ago
    > Intentional planned consumption/obsolescence No it isn't. It is simply optimization of price and the features/form-factor that many buyers have demanded. If anything, the lifespan of a ~$1.50 household LED bulb is quite incredible. I'm not sure exactly how anyone would be able to increase the lifespan at that price point and keep the traditional Edison form factor. > Amazon should be required to test all [..] products on its site such that they can prove safety and standards conformance. No, the manufacturers should be required to... the same way it works for literally every other product with safety regulations.
    - com2kid 2y ago
      > If anything, the lifespan of a ~$1.50 household LED bulb is quite incredible. I'm not sure exactly how anyone would be able to increase the lifespan at that price point and keep the traditional Edison form factor. I don't think I've had any last more than 5 years. If you bought a cutting edge LED bulb back in 2002 or so, those had a life expectancy of over 60 years, and the build quality was such that you could reasonably expect to get that. There are plenty of teardowns on YT showing how poorly even major brand name LED bulbs are put together.
      - kube-system 2y ago
        Yeah I would hope those bulbs were built pretty well, they were crazy expensive... expensive enough that they wouldn't be competitive in lifetime-per-dollar against today's crappiest bulbs even if they lasted a person's entire lifetime. > I don't think I've had any last more than 5 years. Do you shut them off every 3 hours? That's probably what the estimate on the box is based on. Run the same bulb half the day and you'll only get 2.5 years out of it. > There are plenty of teardowns on YT showing how poorly even major brand name LED bulbs are put together. I've seen them. And dissected my own. Still, at the price that modern LED bulbs are being made, I'm surprised they're built as well as they are. Brand name Sylvania bulbs are $0.79/ea in a bulk Amazon right now.
        com2kid 2y ago
        > I've seen them. And dissected my own. Still, at the price that modern LED bulbs are being made, I'm surprised they're built as well as they are. Brand name Sylvania bulbs are $0.79/ea in a bulk Amazon right now. LED bulbs aren't lasting any longer than incandescent bulbs used to. My house has 2 bathrooms, one had incandescent bulbs when I moved in and I didn't bother to replace them. Those incandescent bulbs have outlived multiple sets of LED bulbs in the other bathroom. I honestly worry about the increase in e-waste with LED bulbs vs the old incandescent bulbs. > Do you shut them off every 3 hours? That's probably what the estimate on the box is based on. Run the same bulb half the day and you'll only get 2.5 years out of it. Which given that LEDs should damn well last 20-30 years of always being on, this is all a farce. I can't even pay 2x the price to buy a bulb with an honestly stated lifetime on it. > Yeah I would hope those bulbs were built pretty well, they were crazy expensive... expensive enough that they wouldn't be competitive in lifetime-per-dollar against today's crappiest bulbs even if they lasted a person's entire lifetime. I bet they would be. Given LED bulbs last less than 3 years now, with some not even lasting 2 years, a 20-30 year bulb could cost 4x as much and be competitive. The real problem is that those long lifetime LED bulbs are not driven as hard, so the light output isn't nearly as high. AFAIK all research in the last 20 years has been into bright LEDs with meh lifetimes, so I wonder if it is even possible to mass produce long lifetime consumer LEDs anymore. (Except the LEDs in all my consumer electronics have no problems staying on for 5 years non-stop! Tiny output, long lifespan...)
- JJMcJ 2y ago
  Recently read that if you are going to be using an LED bulb in an enclosed space, buy bulbs designed for the high temperature, otherwise you WILL get premature failures in bulbs that will last for years in ordinary lamps. https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=led+bulbs+enclosed+fixture+rated&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=led+bulbs+enclosed+fixture+ra...
  - bmicraft 2y ago
    Alternatively, there are now much more efficient bulbs available. If they're passing A under the new EU Energy Label (from 2021) they'll barely be warm to the touch.

Workaccount2 2y ago

This is also why so many LED bulbs are shit, lots of heat in a small space full of electrolytic caps.

magic_smoke_ee 2y ago
Intentional planned consumption/obsolescence by design. This class of problem is where under-regulation and lack of standards benefits only sellers and cheats buyers. PS: Also, Amazon should be required to test all of the electronic, safety, and food products on its site such that they can prove safety and standards conformance.
- Filligree 2y ago
  That, and customers insisting on preexisting form factors. Fitting the electronics and LEDs into the space of a traditional lightbulb comes with compromises, such as not having proper heat dissipation on either.
  - BlueTemplar 2y ago
    Yeah, you would think they would be two separate devices by now...
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  I am assuming you are an ee (like myself)...I have never designed a product with a built in expiration, nor have I ever seen any app notes or write ups on the engineering of it - something engineers love to do. What I have seen done is cheaping out on parts in order to get the price as low as possible, because customers shop primarily on price. Not to lash out, but it kind of hits a nerve for me, because people think we design products to purposely fail. Hell no, we try really hard to do the opposite, but everyone just loves to buy the cheapest shit. The $25 LED bulb that will last for eternity will rot on the shelf next to the $3 bulb that will probably be dead in 6 months. And one more "they build these things to fail" complaint will be posted online.
  - belval 2y ago
    To be fair this is hardly limited to EE and is the issue with the race to the bottom in all product categories. Make long-lasting high-quality 100$ pants? People prefer spending 10$ on Shein. Additionally, the issue is that as a consumer, it's not easy to differentiate between quality markup and greedy markup. I don't see the cap manufacturer on the box so the 25$ light bulb might last 10 years or it might last 6 months just like the 3$ one. At least with the 3$ one I can come back and buy another...
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      > Make long-lasting high-quality 100$ pants? People prefer spending 10$ on Shein. This is just fashion, right? As something becomes commoditised, it starts to become subject to fashion, which means cheap and looks fashionable is more important than durability. So you can buy one every year and keep up, and throw away the old one.
    - xp84 2y ago
      > as a consumer, it's not easy to differentiate between quality markup and greedy markup This is so true and insightful. Even plenty of so-called “luxury goods” are trash. And outside of luxury, it seems like most markets are dominated by roughly 90-99.9% products that are all identically garbage, just ranging from 1%, 2% up to 800% profit margins. So the person buying the high-end brand and the one buying from Aliexpress both have the same quality components (trash tier) and sometimes the same PCBs and designs. If you want a good quality refrigerator, you can buy a Viking or something for $9,000, or spend any amount of your choice from $800-5000 for something that will die in 2 years and be outside of warranty. It makes my blood boil, especially in areas like appliances, where the amount of waste, by tonnage, is super offensive.
- andrewflnr 2y ago
  Please think for a moment not only about whether it's feasible for AMZN to run a safety testing program for all possible consumer products of our modern technological civilization, but whether you really want them to be in charge of it. Maybe they should just require certifications of testing in the jurisdictions where those products are sold?
  - gopher_space 2y ago
    Isn't faking certs already a problem?
    - andrewflnr 2y ago
      Probably. Is it a worse problem than Amazon inspecting themselves would be? Is it a worse problem than Amazon demonstrably already has with policing counterfeits? I'm just saying, you could hardly ask for a less-qualified authority for product testing. At least with independent certs it's vaguely possible to align the incentives correctly. With Amazon the incentives would be hosed from the start.
- kube-system 2y ago
  > Intentional planned consumption/obsolescence No it isn't. It is simply optimization of price and the features/form-factor that many buyers have demanded. If anything, the lifespan of a ~$1.50 household LED bulb is quite incredible. I'm not sure exactly how anyone would be able to increase the lifespan at that price point and keep the traditional Edison form factor. > Amazon should be required to test all [..] products on its site such that they can prove safety and standards conformance. No, the manufacturers should be required to... the same way it works for literally every other product with safety regulations.
  - com2kid 2y ago
    > If anything, the lifespan of a ~$1.50 household LED bulb is quite incredible. I'm not sure exactly how anyone would be able to increase the lifespan at that price point and keep the traditional Edison form factor. I don't think I've had any last more than 5 years. If you bought a cutting edge LED bulb back in 2002 or so, those had a life expectancy of over 60 years, and the build quality was such that you could reasonably expect to get that. There are plenty of teardowns on YT showing how poorly even major brand name LED bulbs are put together.
    - kube-system 2y ago
      Yeah I would hope those bulbs were built pretty well, they were crazy expensive... expensive enough that they wouldn't be competitive in lifetime-per-dollar against today's crappiest bulbs even if they lasted a person's entire lifetime. > I don't think I've had any last more than 5 years. Do you shut them off every 3 hours? That's probably what the estimate on the box is based on. Run the same bulb half the day and you'll only get 2.5 years out of it. > There are plenty of teardowns on YT showing how poorly even major brand name LED bulbs are put together. I've seen them. And dissected my own. Still, at the price that modern LED bulbs are being made, I'm surprised they're built as well as they are. Brand name Sylvania bulbs are $0.79/ea in a bulk Amazon right now.
      - com2kid 2y ago
        > I've seen them. And dissected my own. Still, at the price that modern LED bulbs are being made, I'm surprised they're built as well as they are. Brand name Sylvania bulbs are $0.79/ea in a bulk Amazon right now. LED bulbs aren't lasting any longer than incandescent bulbs used to. My house has 2 bathrooms, one had incandescent bulbs when I moved in and I didn't bother to replace them. Those incandescent bulbs have outlived multiple sets of LED bulbs in the other bathroom. I honestly worry about the increase in e-waste with LED bulbs vs the old incandescent bulbs. > Do you shut them off every 3 hours? That's probably what the estimate on the box is based on. Run the same bulb half the day and you'll only get 2.5 years out of it. Which given that LEDs should damn well last 20-30 years of always being on, this is all a farce. I can't even pay 2x the price to buy a bulb with an honestly stated lifetime on it. > Yeah I would hope those bulbs were built pretty well, they were crazy expensive... expensive enough that they wouldn't be competitive in lifetime-per-dollar against today's crappiest bulbs even if they lasted a person's entire lifetime. I bet they would be. Given LED bulbs last less than 3 years now, with some not even lasting 2 years, a 20-30 year bulb could cost 4x as much and be competitive. The real problem is that those long lifetime LED bulbs are not driven as hard, so the light output isn't nearly as high. AFAIK all research in the last 20 years has been into bright LEDs with meh lifetimes, so I wonder if it is even possible to mass produce long lifetime consumer LEDs anymore. (Except the LEDs in all my consumer electronics have no problems staying on for 5 years non-stop! Tiny output, long lifespan...)
JJMcJ 2y ago
Recently read that if you are going to be using an LED bulb in an enclosed space, buy bulbs designed for the high temperature, otherwise you WILL get premature failures in bulbs that will last for years in ordinary lamps. https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=led+bulbs+enclosed+fixture+rated&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=led+bulbs+enclosed+fixture+ra...
- bmicraft 2y ago
  Alternatively, there are now much more efficient bulbs available. If they're passing A under the new EU Energy Label (from 2021) they'll barely be warm to the touch.