[HN Gopher] LEDs from Dubai (2021)
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LEDs from Dubai (2021)
Author : WithinReason
Score : 62 points
Date : 2023-03-02 23:12 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hackaday.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (hackaday.com)
| bullen wrote:
| Follow up video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMc6mjE9Y1s
|
| The real question is what is needed for these to be dim-able?
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| Dimmable LED lights are pretty common, including the filament
| variety. Various manufacturers sell them.
| rektide wrote:
| It's so heartbreaking how many interesting possible things supply
| side will not make available.
| ElfinTrousers wrote:
| This article didn't address what is, to me, the most interesting
| question: why can't you buy these outside Dubai? Anyone know?
| RALaBarge wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| ElfinTrousers wrote:
| Thanks for the explanation. I want them too, but not enough
| to go to the trouble of setting up a mail drop in Dubai.
| w0mbat wrote:
| Early 2021 article.
| blkhawk wrote:
| You can get these now in the EU
| morsch wrote:
| Where?
| Razengan wrote:
| In the EU.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| Title made it sound like the royal car license plate (just the
| single digit 1, I heard).
| Giorgi wrote:
| Well you could buy it but it is for 220v so... no use in US
| anyways
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| But I CAN buy high powered LED grow lights.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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?"
| andix wrote:
| 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.
| thriftwy wrote:
| USB LED slot would be great.
|
| Tight enough to hold light bulbs, thoroughly time tested.
|
| USB power adaptors are super cheap and durable and the existing
| designs may be used.
| xattt wrote:
| How realistic is whole-home Thunderbolt for lighting and
| smaller appliances?
| JohnFen wrote:
| Whole-house 12/24VDC power wiring has been a thing for at
| least 50 years, specifically intended for lighting. It's
| never proven widely popular, but it's certainly a realistic
| option. Probably more so in new construction than
| retrofitting into existing buildings, though.
| vidarh wrote:
| The LED strip behind my TV is powered by the USB port on my
| TV. Most longer strips (5m-20m) use one of a small number of
| form factor strips and 12V or 24V supply. There are also
| quite a few USB powered lamps, but a bulb form factor would
| be interesting.
| userbinator wrote:
| _120 /230V is not suitable for LEDs_
|
| It is with many in series, which is how the vast majority of
| lamps are made today. This lowers the current and reduces
| resistive losses.
| Panzer04 wrote:
| It's not really very good to use them like that though -
| without a huge cap you'll get pretty prominent flicker - I
| expect it's probably just cheaper to stick in a cheap SMPS at
| that point if that's something you care about.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I thought most household bulbs chopped it down to something
| like 30-40V.
|
| Some lower spec lighting devices might take 120V and run LEDs
| in both series _and_ parallel, but as LEDs fail, the rest get
| more current, leading to more failure... positive feedback
| loops for the win!
| rootusrootus wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Is this satire, or am I missing something?
| ars wrote:
| ???? I'm not sure what you find to be satire?
|
| Have you used these LED filament bulbs? They are very
| good, the quality of the light is much better than the
| older style LED bulbs.
| amluto wrote:
| Without some kind of driver, the light flickers strongly
| at 120Hz. For sensitive people, the effect is extremely
| unpleasant.
|
| One can get perfectly nice drivers and perfectly nice
| LEDs for less than $25 all in. Sure, many people prefer
| paying less for a screw-base lamp, but the result is not
| as good.
| cornstalks wrote:
| I assume GP interpreted "filament bulb" as "incandescent
| filament bulb."
| rootusrootus wrote:
| It does seem that the filament bulbs check a lot of
| boxes. The driver is so small it fits in the socket
| itself. If they can put 1600 lumens in an enclosed
| fixture, it does suggest they do better with heat. My
| impression from buying a box is that these are a next
| generation bulb design, not quite holy grail but a
| significant step. No more buying bulbs where the bottom
| half the globe is plastic housing a bunch of driver
| electronics.
| cooppearson wrote:
| I believe they are referring to LED filament bulbs, which
| are designed to look like traditional filaments but have
| the benefit of separating the LEDs from the electronics.
|
| More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LED_filament
| kyriakos wrote:
| Which filament bulbs are you referring to? I was under the
| impression that filament was what we had before led bulbs.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| LED filament[0], not tungsten filament.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LED_filament
| coryrc wrote:
| The efficiency difference in a power supply running off 120V or
| 12V is not significant. The power supply is a negligible
| portion of heat output. They would last longer if separate
| though. Slim recessed LED fixtures have their power supply in a
| separate box.
|
| I.e. https://www.ledsupply.com/led-bulbs/slim-recessed-led-
| light (arbitrarily chosen, not an endorsement)
| adolph wrote:
| 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
| rzzzt wrote:
| Strangely only a single commenter addresses him as Big Clive.
| (I am not even sure what exactly strikes me as odd about this.)
| userbinator wrote:
| Also previously on HN:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27093793
| [deleted]
| convolvatron wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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?
| the_pwner224 wrote:
| Cool! Is this a commercial product that we can buy?
|
| I worked on a similar system a while ago for personal use.
| 300 watts of BLX COBs. Prototypes were good but they ran
| very hot (105 degrees) with the cooling system I had on
| them. Improving cooling and refining the design past the
| crude prototype would have made it too expensive to be
| practical for me, or for the market if I chose to sell it.
|
| I'm probably going to be building a new house in a few
| years, it'd be nice if I could run 48v wiring throughout
| the house with standardized connectors and control modules.
| The age of 120/240v with screw socket bases needs to end.
| But I doubt the industry will have standardized on a DC
| system by then.
|
| I wonder if there are any actively cooled fixtures on the
| market for standard lightbulbs. The common recessed in-
| ceiling fixtures are not great for thermals, the closed top
| blocks natural convection and traps hot air. A slow
| (silent) fan should do a lot to help with bulb longevity. I
| might end up doing a custom design for my house if there's
| nothing on the market.
| convolvatron wrote:
| not really. we used to sell them, but its a bit fussy.
| people had quite legitimate concerns about what to do
| when the modules went. margins are good, but not as high
| as fine art, and the labor is about the same for us.
|
| since our primary activity is metal sculpture....we
| really don't have to deal with cooling issues. 10-20
| pounds of metal, even steel, makes a _really good_ heat
| sink, even if it is isn't optimized for maximum
| convection. and now your light elements are little 3cm
| circles a couple mm high, and you can tuck them wherever
| you want.
|
| it wouldn't be too hard to make you own standard. the
| constant current drivers often have pretty wide input
| ranges, especially if you can stick with simple bucks.
| the part where I really kinda fell down was connectors
| oddly enough. 3 pins, moderate current, few cycles, low
| cost, high contact reliabilty. anyone with better
| connector-fu than me have a suggestion?
| the_pwner224 wrote:
| Just saw this other comment here.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35013509
|
| USB-C might work. USB PD supports 5a at up to 20v, looks
| like there's also a higher power 50v 5a spec coming up.
| But if you're using custom PCBs on both ends you don't
| really care about the PD specification, as long as you're
| using good quality cables you can treat the
| connector/cable as a dumb wire that supports sending 5
| amps down a few pins. The data lines may also be useful
| for sending back data from the emitter module, if you had
| any need for that.
|
| Desktop computers use the Molex Mini-Fit Jr connector for
| ATX and PCIe power connectors. 6-pin PCIe power cables
| should be easy to source on the market, you wouldn't need
| to get custom cables manufactured. Those can carry ~150w.
| Might also be possible to cheaply source cables with just
| a 2 or 4 pin connector?
| mindslight wrote:
| From what I've observed, I mostly attribute bulbs dying to the
| power electronics rather than the LEDs themselves. So unless
| they've beefed up the driver circuit on these bulbs, I would
| think they'd fail just as often?
| convolvatron wrote:
| I've primarily seen driver failures. from some vendors,
| really quite smelly and spectacular ones. but it does seem to
| correlate pretty strongly with particular vendors or designs.
| [deleted]
| the_pwner224 wrote:
| Yeah that's a very common failure mode. Like the LED itself,
| the power supply electronics are also intolerant to heat (see
| my comment on parent). So all the same principles apply.
| Companies which cheap out will use barely-adequate components
| in the power supply circuitry and skimp on cooling. The power
| supply will run hot and fail after a few months leading to
| total failure of the bulb, or if it manages to keep limping
| on, the LED will have noticeably degraded within a few years
| due to the heat.
|
| Reducing power will help a lot with this, less current
| flowing through the power supply and less heat generated.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| 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...
| renewiltord wrote:
| Man, these guys are always asking for more money. They want to
| take the cash and expand the installation. I really like the
| lights, but come on, you can't keep adding maintenance. It's a
| bad idea.
|
| It's okay for it to just live on in memory.
| the_pwner224 wrote:
| > "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.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > must be replaced with a new system that is custom
| engineered [for] San Francisco Bay.
|
| Other major port-cities around the world, with comparable
| climate conditions, have presumably transitioned to LED
| lighting over the past decade - why can't they save
| taxpayer's money by simply buying-up whatever Valencia or
| Singapore is using instead of having their own NIH Syndrome
| and insisting an entirely bespoke system just-for-them be
| used?
| nradov wrote:
| Did you even read the article? This is a public art
| installation funded by a non-profit. Not taxpayers. The
| installation was intended to be temporary and has already
| gone way past it's design lifetime.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| I did not read it, and it shows - I eat my words :)
| davidgay wrote:
| This is a decorative/art installation, not the bridge's
| engineered lighting. So whatever Singapore is doing is not
| relevant (except if it's also for similar purposes).
| ars wrote:
| These are LEDs to write messages and do colors, they are
| not for lighting.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| 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: htt
| ps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Oakland_Bay_Brid...
| pcl wrote:
| 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.
| skybrian wrote:
| These lights were originally a public art exhibit that was
| supposed to be for two years, and then was extended. [1] They
| aren't used for anything essential.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bay_Lights
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| We have a bridge with smart LED lights on in here in
| Montreal. They were put in 2017 with a promise that they will
| remain until 2027.
|
| Now I wonder if they will actually last.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Cartier_Bridge#%22Livi.
| ..
| the_pwner224 wrote:
| There's absolutely no reason they won't last if properly
| engineered. We have a very good understanding of how and
| why LEDs fail over time.
|
| If the lights need to last 10 years, then the mechanical &
| electrical engineers can make a design that will last 10
| years. That's not hard to do. The reason many LEDs,
| especially consumer LEDs, fail early is due to excessive
| cost cutting.
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