Having hit the point where tungsten and halogen bulbs are no longer generally available I am transitioning to LED bulbs, which need to be dimmable for the main living area.
With the pair of lights on one switch all is fine so far, but a single light has already failed.
These are LumiLife 13W allegedly 100W equivalent.
They dim OK, so I think the dimmer switch is OK (haven't checked the variant to confirm it is LED friendly but I think all the original switches were).
When I was buying no-name LEDs (because the brands were not selling 100W equivalent) the failure rates were relatively high, but in the last 5 years, don't think I've had any fail.
Over the last few years- I’m not sure exactly how many- I’ve been gradually changing to LED bulbs. I think I’ve swapped them all now, finding a couple of types took ages.
By coincidence, I’ve just compared a current estimated total annual electricity consumption with one from several years ago- probably when we had few, if any LED bulbs but a few CFLs. It shows almost a 15% decrease. We’ve not made any other changes I can think of, even with the recent price increases we refuse to live in the dark etc 😊
I’m surprised the change is so much and I suspect there is another factor. Of course, with the recent price increases we still pay more !
As an aside, I checked our estimated annual gas consumption compared to longer ago, before I think I installed a Hive controller. Again, even with recent price increases, we like to be comfortable. That said, soon after installing the Hive, I ‘tweaked’ the timings and temperature etc so we were comfortable but the system was on as little as possible, to match our life style ( we are retired ). The reduction is dramatic , over 25%. Of course, the year I used could have been a cold one but over the years, the consumption has been lower every year. ( Not a downward trend, just lower.)
Before I changed light fittings I had a couple of these (same brand same wattage) and one actually went bang with a tiny bit of magic smoke. Mine were fitted to existing downlights and ran quite hot. The downlights previously were fitted with the silvered type spotlight bulbs. Probably they are not suited to being fitted to fittings where there is no ventilation and especially if the base, with all the electronics, is uppermost.
The majority of my LED lights are now panel type fittings - mainly fairly cheap "designer" type in the main living rooms and bedrooms and not office ceiling panel types.
Whilst they might be LED friendly the dimmers also usually have a minimum load. It may be with two bulbs you exceed it, but with one you don't.
After trying many combinations I eventually gave up and switched the Philips Hue BlueTooth and use Alexa to control them. They can also be controlled from the phone app, but they dim nicely and I have five with no failures to date.
If you get the very expensive colour variant you can even simulate the orangy glow from dimmed incandescent.
Me neither, but my wife is happy.... ... actually given the expense of a divorce I probably am saving money
If the vendor is UK based you should be able to get a new for old out of them under consumer law. I remember in the old days with ordinary bl-bulbs if they failed shortly after purchase they got replaced by most stores. Customers matter. The few who try it on with an old bulb are thankfully not the normal trend. One batch labelled Tesla, very many years ago blew all the time and thousands went back. Brian
How future proof are such things as hive? Also does any data get exchanged over the internet to some big brother somewhere. I often wonder what might happen if Google and Amazon decided to invent a new system and make all their little devices obsolete, or start charging monthly costs for use of their servers. I think and hope it might spur appliance makers to make their devices more accessible in the first place. Brian
I'm trying to resurrect some Logitech programmable remote controls. They pulled out out he remote control marketplace over a year ago.
Unfortunately if you don't have the original remote control(s) to learn from you need their software and on their on-line data base.
Ignoring the problem of their software no longer being supported on later operating systems and the data base for equipment is unlikely to updated for equipment coming into the market place one lot of software for their older models can no longer connect to their data base. This is very unlikely to get fixed.
The software for the later model remote still works* but I wonder how long before there is a server problem that doesn't get fixed.
*Their software was that not that good is the first place but when installing their MyHarmony software it also installs the older software on the PC. This older software stops the newer software from working correctly and has to be uninstalled before the newer software connects reliably with the remote control. The new software warns that the older software shouldn't be running on the PC at the same time BUT then automatically starts it up every time the new software attempts to sync to the remote.
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