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These LED light flickers actually trigger ocular migraines for me. I had tried to put in LEDs when the incandescent ban hit the US, and ended up with a Philips
by mtalantikite 1y ago
These LED light flickers actually trigger ocular migraines for me. I had tried to put in LEDs when the incandescent ban hit the US, and ended up with a Philips Hue system. I had 4 migraines in 3 days and had to send them back. I purchased as many incandescent bulbs as I could find, but they were somewhat impossible to find at that point.
I've got a couple bulbs from Waveform Lighting and they don't flicker, but I totally can tell the reds are off.
I really hate the LED transition. My building replaced all the outdoor lights with them, and now it's just too bright to sit on my stoop at night like used to be so common here in Brooklyn. My backyard neighbor put in an LED floodlight and now I have to buy blackout curtains. I drive rarely, but the oncoming headlights are blinding when I do. It's pretty depressing if I think about it too much.
- hedora 1y agoThe worst led bulbs I’ve ever seen were some overpriced name brand known for smart bulbs (probably philips). It physically hurt to be in the same room with them. My guess is that they forgot an IR or UV filter or something. Hyperikon used to make great, somewhat cheap bulbs, but went under during the pandemic. These days, I just get cheap 3000K, 90+CRI ones at the hardware store, and they’re fine. Watch out for idiocy like “smart” bulbs though. For instance, they have ones that change color temp if you rapidly flip the light switch on and off and back on. Also, make sure they are dimmer compatible. The ones that are not flicker badly (even at full brightness on our dimmers) and burn out after a few years.
- W3zzy 1y agoPeople just don't pay attention to colour temperature. Warm LED lights should be more common in stead of those filthy blue LED's
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- igor47 1y agoThat sucks; I feel your pain. I, too, strongly dislike overly bright lighting. I wonder if there's room to at least engage with the neighbor to talk about friendlier light options? You might also be able engage with these folks to see if there are efforts to improve the lighting in new York: https://darksky.org/ https://darksky.org/
- PaulHoule 1y agoMy take is that PWM dimmers are dramatically more energy efficient than the old rheostat dimmers people used to use. If you operate a transistor in a digital mode where it is either on or off it is close to 100% efficient, but if you operate it in a 50% power mode you have to send 50% of the power to a load and the other 50% to a resistor. Thus CMOS logic eradicated bipolar, switching power supplies replaced linear power supplies, a Class D amplifier can be a fraction the size of a Class A amplifier, etc. You could probably still reduce the flicker by either increasing the switching frequency or putting some kind of filter network between the switch and the load.
- mtalantikite 1y agoFor sure, they're definitely way more efficient. They just unfortunately give me migraines. I'd be open to trying some that have a filter network or some other smoothing on the flicker. But I've also never lived in a house that has dimmers (they've all been old homes in the north eastern US) and I never use overhead lighting, so it's not something I need or would miss.
- card_zero 1y agoApparently fourth-generation LED tube lights are designed not to flicker. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LED_tube#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LED_tube#History
- throwaway290 1y agoAside from that Wikipedia article, where 1 source is not available and the other one is in Finnish, there's pretty much nothing online. I googled for G4 LED tube PWM and got products that say they are G4 LED tubes that use PWM. Pretty sure 100% of LED products sold anywhere use PWM if you don't use them at full brightness. I sometimes walk around lightning stores with a slo mo camera and see PWM in every price bracket.
- Kubuxu 1y ago
- JKCalhoun 1y agoI wonder to the degree their effects are much worse than migraines. Perhaps irritability? Mental confusion? Anxiety? I'm spitballing here, but to be sure it seems like our world is somehow a place of more anxiety, irritation .... I would love for it to be something we could take control of.
- genewitch 1y agoi doubt it's the light bulbs. I posited the other day, by assembling a few different ideas, that Trauma Based Entertainment is to blame for this. something like 2/3rds of all Television programing is law-enforcement adjacent. True Crime is super popular on TV, law and order, NCIS, FBI this-and-that. And what's one of the largest advertising cohorts? Medicine for depression, anxiety, insomnia... it's nearly a closed loop; something i intuitively realized shortly after 2001/09/11 - by the end of that year i decided i would no longer have a "Television" attached to CATV/SAT/ANT service. I'm not sure if i am correct, i haven't really dedicated a lot of time to getting the exact numbers, talking to psychologists and sociologists and the like. But two people i know had "breakdowns" (grippy sock) in the last month and both of them always have true crime on TV in the background or listen to true crime podcasts. Shortly after that happened i was listening to the moe facts podcast where Moe used the term "trauma based entertainment" and something clicked - Moe didn't mention "it's because of pharma ads" - that's my own input after having worked for the largest television "broadcast" company in the world, just long enough to see the advertiser "dinner".
- RiverCrochet 1y agoThe only ones watching traditional OTA TV anymore are elders. That advertising cohort is why OTA TV ads are filled with pharmaceuticals and "you may be entitled to financial compensation" type ads, at least where I'm at. Traditional TV has been dying since Youtube and broadband. MTV plays Ridiculousness constantly because no one is actually watching it. > it's nearly a closed loop; something i intuitively realized shortly after 2001/09/11 - by the end of that year i decided i would no longer have a "Television" attached to CATV/SAT/ANT service. Curiously this is about the same time I decided to give up on TV and radio as well.
- oakwhiz 1y agoLights for high speed cameras use really good filtering on their PWM switching, or just linear power supplies. It would be nice to have a premium bulb that has longer life and much less flickering.
- bayindirh 1y agoPhilips' Eye Comfort series virtually have no flicker. I personally only use these series. They come in CRI>80 and CRI>90 variants. Latter one is also dimmable and comes with soft on/off. They are nice.
- CincinnatiMan 1y agoSoraa brand bulbs are a tier above Philips if anyone is interested in premium lighting.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mousethatroared 1y agoIf you're savvy with manufacturing, make yourself a left handed edison thread (I can't find them anywhere). Left handed incandecent lightbulbs are still legal Also, you can buy high wattage lights, and the three ways have lower wattage settings. Finally, outdoor and appliance incandescents lamps are very inefficient, but last forever.
- Zak 1y ago> I totally can tell the reds are off. How do the reds look to you? I looked at the photometric reports from a couple Waveform models on their website and the R9 (saturated red rendering) was in the 90s for both with tint almost exactly on the blackbody line. The 2700K did have a bit worse R9 than the 4000K so I could imagine it doesn't look exactly like an incandescent.
- mtalantikite 1y agoI mean I hate to be like "vibes", but, kinda vibes. There's just something about the light coming out of the Waveform LED I have in one lamp in my living room versus the incandescent I have on the other side of the room. Definitely not a scientific take! I did at one point randomly put the LED in different configurations when I first got it and my wife was able to pick out which lamp had the LED in it every time. They just have a different feel, even if the temperature rating is around the same as the incandescent and the R9 was the highest of the LEDs I evaluated. At least these Waveform LEDs don't give me migraines though.
- Zak 1y ago"Vibes" are fair. I just put flashlights with two incandescent-like LEDs (Nichia 519A and Nichia B35A in 2700K) and I can see a slight difference in how they render colors even though the spectrophotometer says all the major metrics are within a couple points of each other.
- catlifeonmars 1y agoWhat is the most logical explanation for the difference then?
- Zak 1y agoLooking closely at the measurements, when the B35A has an advantage on individual CRI samples, it's usually a larger gap than when the 519A has an advantage. They're both in the 90s for R1-14, and it takes a keen eye to tell the difference.
- ribcage 1y ago[dead]
- winrid 1y agoI have your problem. Philips makes no flicker LEDs, they don't have PWM like the Hue system, and good capacitors so no 60hz flicker. They're the "Ultra Definition Eye Comfort" models.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dotancohen 1y agoOn older LEDs you could replace the caps, but newer ones use SMT caps that require more than just a soldering iron. It makes a huge difference, and also eliminates the slight delay when switching the lamp on (though I don't recall experiencing this with recent LED lamps, even cheap ones).
- jalk 1y agosearched for images of "LED bulb teardown", the SMT components are not that tiny, so quite possible to solder with a regular iron. Am I missing something?
- Workaccount2 1y agoReally the worst part is that the bulbs are usually glued/ultrasonice welded, together, so you kind of have to destroy it to open it up.
- dotancohen 1y agoYou can cut them open with box cutters. You don't even have to glue them shut, just cut 270° and seal with electrical tape after. Ali Express has white electrical tape if you prefer.
- bondarchuk 1y ago>EyeComfort& LEDs have a high Colour Rendering Index, meaning that your home's furnishings appear in high definition and true colour. What is this world coming to, that you have to buy some top-range lamps just to see the inside of your own home in true colour...
- veltas 1y ago> I drive rarely, but the oncoming headlights are blinding when I do. I drive a shallow car with old lights, and once I was blocked on a street by a much taller car sitting in front of me with very bright LED lights, and I couldn't see a thing because of the glare. I was unable to manoeuvre out the way because of this. They sat there for a minute or so stubbornly refusing to move for me before finally moving out the way.
- Loughla 1y agoIt's super common where I live for teenagers who drive jacked up trucks to replace their headlights with super bright led lights. They don't adjust the angle of the beam, so they're just like brights all the time. It's miserable.
- ryandrake 1y agoAlso, more people seem to be driving with their bright lights on 100% of the time. I once rode as a passenger at night with an ex-coworker driving and I noticed he used his brights the whole time, even when there were oncoming cars. I asked him why and he looked at me like I was stupid and said “because they’re brighter and let me see better.” When I pointed out that they blind other drivers he just shrugged and said “fuck em, not my problem.”
- BoxOfRain 1y ago>My building replaced all the outdoor lights with them, and now it's just too bright to sit on my stoop at night like used to be so common here in Brooklyn. What I miss are the old low-pressure sodium street lights that used to be ubiquitous in the UK. Not everyone's cup of tea but they were highly efficient (outperforming LEDs for a surprisingly long time) and had this cool property of being so monochromatic they ate the colours out of everything. This made them useful for astronomers because their light was easily filtered, and reduced their impact on wildlife relative to harsh blueish LEDs. The main reason I like them is aesthetic though, they made night look like night rather than a poor approximation of day. Thankfully my local area have given up trying to use the really harsh white they put in initially, and have at least starting putting in warmer LEDs.
- xattt 1y agoSodium light story: my family went to Niagara Falls and took a tour of the tunnels behind the falls. The tunnels were lit by sodium lights that were not augmented by phosphors. It was so monochromatic that we thought we lost our shuttle bus stickers that were stuck to our shirts, and would have to walk around instead of being able to hop-on/hop-off. What a relief it was to emerge in daylight.
- albrewer 1y ago> This made them useful for astronomers because their light was easily filtered The wavelength is so specific that it can have all kinds of cool applications: https://youtu.be/UQuIVsNzqDk?si=R4VUDCfC6zcHd4XC https://youtu.be/UQuIVsNzqDk?si=R4VUDCfC6zcHd4XC
- danudey 1y agoI knew what this link was before I clicked it, and it's a must-watch for anyone who's interested in basically any aspect of film making, cinematography, or light science in general. Extremely cool topic.
- junon 1y agoI already know this is the Mary Poppins Corridor Crew video before clicking. Super cool video.
- christophilus 1y agoI don’t heave the migraines, but everything else you described is spot on. Sitting outside at night is much less enjoyable due to neighborhood LED lighting. If I could, I’d shoot them all out.
- jollyllama 1y agoThere is hope: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/3341 https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/3341
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- kstrauser 1y agoThat’s horrid. I can’t imagine going back to crappy incandescent bulbs today. We don’t need to import more disposable junk.
- jollyllama 1y ago> disposable junk On a long enough timeline, everything is disposable. And what is "disposal", really? How many LED bulbs are actually getting properly recycled, and isn't it true that the materials in incandescent bulbs are less harmful, relatively speaking, than those in LEDs?
- leakycap 1y agoI have never heard of anyone recycling an incandescent bulb, but recycling bulbs became a big deal with CFLs came out and most people seem to be in the habit in the area I'm in. Store have bulb take-backs for CFL/LED in the entryway, for example. I don't like LED bulbs, but I think they clearly win the disposal/economical argument against incandescent in every way. Unfortunately they blink and have poor color reproduction in many versions.
- jollyllama 1y agoI guess what I'm saying is, in the case that it's not recycled, are you better off with an incandescent in a landfill, or an LED in a landfill?
- leakycap 1y ago
- vitaflo 1y agoI have the same issues. I actually had to return an iPhone because the oled screens they use are so bad and gave me migraines. For bulbs tho I found this site that tests tons of them for flicker. https://flickeralliance.org/ https://flickeralliance.org/ It was a godsend and I was able to get some Ikea bulbs with zero flicker and they’ve been great. So at least my house isn’t a flickering mess. Now I just gotta figure out a phone that’s not garbage.
- prmph 1y agoDoes this also affect Macbooks?
- vitaflo 1y agoIn my testing no, the MacBooks are fine. It’s the phones that are a problem. Easiest way to tell is get a camera app you can set the shutter speed to 10,000 fps and point it at a screen. If there are black lines across the screen there is a PWM issue. The thicker and darker the black lines the worse it is.
- bayindirh 1y ago10,000fps, or 1/10,000 of a second? Asking because I don't have a Phantom at home.
- mdip 1y agoRight there with you. I just dropped an amount of money I'm unwilling to admit on replacement bulbs throughout -- only this time I was replacing WiFi RGBW LED bulbs in rooms that had lower-end bulbs (almost everything on the market). Incidentally, I went with LIFX -- I had purchased their bulbs back when they were the only realistic option besides Philips Hue for smart RGBW bulbs[0]. Still seems those two brands produce the most flicker-free variety. [0] LIFX was a handful of lumens brighter at the time and didn't have a hub requirement
- Melatonic 1y agoYou need high CRI lighting - that's the key to proper colors.