Sale of Incandescent Bulbs to End on Tuesday?

Aug 27, 2009 357 Replies

Not going to be much good in a lava lamp though are they?

LED's have certainly become more effcient recently. I was modifying the wiring to blue LED in an external HD case the other day as it lit the room up at night and was far to bright during the day. When fiddling the thing would glow dimly on the leakage current through my dry fingers. Even after the mod it's still a bit bright but is drawing a massive 60uA (micro amps) or 0.06mA.

particularly

The flicker annoys me as well along with the abrupt on/off edge as well. A filament lamp takes time to heat up and cool down, which is easier on the eye at night. It can't be beyond the wit of man to build such a fade up/down into the LED PSU.

I'm glad to say that the LED cats eyes seem to have failed, the flicker from them in your peripheral vision was horrendous.

While this would be nice for indicators, the "instant on" is actually one of the safety benefits of LED break lights... at 30mph, you can easily gain over a cars length in extra breaking distance as a result of the faster response.

Yup, especially bad as they illuminate on both sides, so you copped them in the rear view mirror as well.

I wonder whether they will insist on replacing those red bulbs fitted to coal fire effect electric fires with CFLs, despite their being wired in parallel with a 3 kW bar fire.

Ah, but you see, *I* am an expert driver whereas *you* are an incompetent idiot that clearly shouldn't be on the roads.

Don't take it personally, I just thought we could cut out the usual tedious guff that arises whenever somebody mentions driving on Usenet and get straight down to the name-calling.

In message , Brave New Britain writes

possibly caused by viagron absorption

It'd cut down on the wasted heat.

At 30mph, a car will travel approximately 5ft in the time it takes for an incandescent bulb to reach near-as-damnit full working output (90%).

Unfortunately, my attempts to determine how quickly an LED attains decent brightness (I know it's very swift) ended when google threw this page at me:

formatting link

:-(

I like my 100W lightbulb. My eyes strain with anything less, need a really bright light I do, and fluorescent lights give me headaches.

Sorry the position for obnoxious driving god is already taken by dennis on uk.d-i-y ;-)

In message , Simon Dean writes

There's no such thing as eyestrain.

Or as many have already found, a single 100W incandescent lamp!

SteveW

Slow fade should be easy to do by putting an electrolytic capacitor in parallel with the LED's, and isolating it from the preceding circuitry with a diode in series with the supply.

Steve Terry

Of course there is. It's when your eyes get tired from reading under a dim light.

Bill

This is rare so savour it, but I'm definitely with James on this one, There is no such thing as eye-strain.

I find two CFLs more than adequate and only use about 20W

It's the one that slowly comes on after the hoot - hit - brake sequence.

I find the same thing when driving over the newer pedestrian crossings (Puffins) as the red man flickers madly when caught out of the corner of my eye - personally I think it is okay on a straight road with a simple crossing, but dangerously distracting when the crossings are on a signal controlled junction, as the natural reaction is to turn your view towards the flickering light that has suddenly grabbed your attention. The question I have is why on earth have they not been designed to be switched at a rate that is impossible for the human eye to perceive.

SteveW

In message , Steve Walker writes

I notice those flickering too, only noticed it as a pedestrian though, never as a driver.

A similar thing is going on with tyre manufacturer's trying to push the EU into mandating the use of separate summer and winter tyres when many areas of the EU don't have enough serious winter weather to warrant this. Where I would store 15 extra wheels and tyres (18 if it applies to trailers too) is another matter! Of course once this comes in, expect to have legislation requiring tyres of more than a couple of years old to be replaced as well and many people will end up replacing partly worn tyres on a regular basis.

SteveW

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