Yah. That was humor, the setup for the idea of an LED tube.

ak

 

I remember one story where they used old magazines for wiping at the outhouse. Outhouse?

I remember hearing an old country song where they sang about using an old Sears Roebuck catalog in the outhouse (rather like a permanent version of a portable restroom).
They sang you reached the "harness section" (horses) about the first of May.
Don't know if that was from starting at the front or back of the catalog.

 

I remember hearing an old country song where they sang about using an old Sears Roebuck catalog in the outhouse (rather like a permanent version of a portable restroom).
They sang you reached the "harness section" (horses) about the first of May.
Don't know if that was from starting at the front or back of the catalog.

In our outhouse, we count wait for the new Sears catalog so the old one could go to the outhouse. The soft (newsprint) index pages were the first to go - glossy catalog pages sucked. Both were better than the stick.
We had indoor plumbing (1-toilet/bathtub). The outhouse handled the surge demand - especially when we all had to make it to the school us at the same time.

 

Was that before or after you had electricity? Legitimate question.

After. This is an old google maps image of the old farm house. It's gone today but that single power pole is still there. We still own the land around it.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/H...78966880089184!8m2!3d31.0951837!4d-96.7138662

 

At my paternal grandmothers there was a 3 holer still standing. A Unisex Outhouse, I suppose you could call it Family Style from the days of at least 12 kids... Sadie had 12 brothers and sisters but only 3 children.

 

At my paternal grandmothers there was a 3 holer still standing. A Unisex Outhouse, I suppose you could call it Family Style from the days of at least 12 kids... Sadie had 12 brothers and sisters but only 3 children.

We would dig a new hole with the backhoe every year or two (depending how much use it got) and then pull it from one hole to the next. It was a 2 1/2 seater. The half was a kid-size hole. Sorry, no urinal - with all the boys/men working on the farm, it seemed any quiet space or open space or busy space or anywhere was fair game to take a leak.

 

Yup, it had the small seat too! The prissy girls were welcome to use the thunder jug under their bed if so needed.

 

LED lighting is a benefit in most, but not all, cases. The LEDs do not generate enough heat to melt the ice built up on an outside LED light, nor do they generate enough heat to kill bugs in my one post light, so I need to use some nasty bug spray on the bugs, which then I need to clean the glass.
So like many things, there is a time and a place where the older item is better. Not everywhere, but in a few cases. And when I need a self-adjusting load resistance the incandescent bulb is what works. the LED bulb does not serve the purpose at all.
It is a bit like screws and nails and the tools used to install them: There is a place for each and it is not the same place.

 

First of all, the great virtue of the incandescent bulb is its simplicity. Also as few materials make up the incandescent bulb, it is relatively cheap to manufacture and does not create tremendous waste when disposed of. Further it can be manufactured to operate directly on high AC voltage without any modification of that voltage.

The efficiency of LEDs is very beneficial, but the type of LED lamp that includes a rectifier and whatever else in the base of the lamp, greatly magnifies the amount of electronic waste in the world which is already too great. These type of LED lamp should be banned. Instead there should be only lamps where a replacement LED can be plugged into the still functioning power supply.

There has been an attempt to improve the efficiency of the incandescent bulb, but perhaps the research already done has not been fruitful.

https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/research-news/mit-builds-a-better-light-bulb-2016-01/

 

Of great value would be a standard that would allow manufacturers to start moving away from luminaires that require tungsten filament lamps forcing LED lamps to pretend to be them. If, instead, the power supply for the LED lamp was incorporated into the fixture where layout, heat dissipation, and component quality could be improved, much longer life LED lamps would be possible.

They would also be cheaper and when they failed the could even possibly be remanufactured since it would just mean desoldering the individual LEDs (trivial if you aren’t trying to preserve them) and soldering in new ones. It could all be automated reducing the waste to a few chips.

The problem with making replaceable-LED lamps is the same problem encountered when making them fit the filament lamp profile. You’d have to be able to replace the LEDs and the heatsink because the LEDs could not simply be plugged in without a very efficient heatsink incorporated. This is possible in principle but in practice there is no room for it.

This is vaguely similar to the old “Tensor” lamps that included a 12V stepdown transformer in the base so low voltage lamps could be used. If the lamp had to include its own stepdown hardware it would have been in a similar mess (though I don’t think there was any hope of a practical version of that at the time).

One additional benefit would be the innovation possible in the luminaires. If the LEDs were the only thing that needed to be at the working end a lot of new configurations would be possible. An interesting new direction for innovation.

 

Check out the "1000 bulbs" website for a lot of varieties of luminaires.

And mostly the failures that I see in LED devices is in the power supply section. The one exception is the one brand of LED tubes, which suffer from LED failures. And unfortunately in that particular package the LEDs are not able to be replaced. I can access them but not unsolder them.

 

If, instead, the power supply for the LED lamp was incorporated into the fixture

The LEDs could still screw/plug in, just with a different socket.
You could incorporate a simple handshake that could tell the fixture how much current the LED requires, to accommodate different wattage LEDs.
Perhaps some method could be incorporated to conduct the heat into the socket also.

 

LED bulbs are a bit constrained by having to work with a socket design that has been in use for over a century now. That and all the fixtures, globes, etc. in use were designed to work around it and their bulb size.

 

The LEDs could still screw/plug in, just with a different socket.
You could incorporate a simple handshake that could tell the fixture how much current the LED requires, to accommodate different wattage LEDs.
Perhaps some method could be incorporated to conduct the heat into the socket also.

The heatsink problem still remains if you try to reuse the traditional form factors.

But, your idea of one sort of intelligent exchange is a good one. Using something like SPI you could even provide functions like temperature sensing, color control, array control (turn on and off particular LEDs instead of just PWMing it), and things like that. You could even have it record run time on the lamp itself.

It could be pretty neat, something like a capabilities profile to let the luminaire know what can be done. You wouldn't have to buy lamps with all the abilities if you only needed simple stuff but if you wanted more features, you could do it.

To extend this to stretch the limit of this thread, the luminaire could also be intelligent enough to be a node in a home automation scheme instead of smart bulbs or simple outlet dimmers.

 

EE's need to stop believing the 20,000-50,000hr lifetime myth.
It's sad incandescent light bulbs outlast some LED bulbs. In testing, some cheap LED bulbs are running near 140°C and didn't even make 1,000hrs (source below).

They'll outlaw incandescent without mandating lifetime requirements or punishing the junk makers of LED bulbs, and right now LED bulbs are crap. My Cree and Philips LED bulbs all had short lifetimes.
There's so many LED bulb patents (with litigation) that you can't actually design a decent LED bulb with good heatsinking. Look at Feit, Cree, Philips etc all suing each other and the retailers Lowes, Home Depot as well.

Also surprising is LED bulb life is very dependent on on/off cycles, the thermal cycling is very hard on them for breaking bonding wires or cracking solder joints- cutting life to 1/3 compared to running long cycles (source below).
Big Clive did Youtube video of the long life Dubai lamp and the newer Philips long life filament lamp... but it's $8 which is absurd.

Source: Literature Summary of Lifetime Testing of Light Emitting Diodes and LED Products June 2021

 

The one problem that I see with having the power module in the fixture is that every brand would choose to have a different socket so that only their products could be used. Just like the battery powered tools today. Even those with the same voltage and identical quantities of identical battery cells make sure that they can only use one pattern of connector. And we know that our lawmakers will never ever do anything to prevent such proliferation of connector styles.
Of course there are also enough dumb buyers to allow that to work, so far.

 

The one problem that I see with having the power module in the fixture is that every brand would choose to have a different socket so that only their products could be used. Just like the battery powered tools today. Even those with the same voltage and identical quantities of identical battery cells make sure that they can only use one pattern of connector. And we know that our lawmakers will never ever do anything to prevent such proliferation of connector styles.
Of course there are also enough dumb buyers to allow that to work, so far.

Of great value would be a standard that would allow manufacturers to start moving away from luminaires that require tungsten filament lamps forcing LED lamps to pretend to be them. If, instead, the power supply for the LED lamp was incorporated into the fixture where layout, heat dissipation, and component quality could be improved, much longer life LED lamps would be possible.

Because of the influence of open source and various technical standards I believe that a consortium of manufacturers could agree on a set of standards for mutual benefit. While you might think a proprietary connector would be attractive to them for the reason you state, light bulbs are already standardized, this would just be an extension.

Examples like battery connectors for cordless tools come from industries that arose without standards and once the profit model focused on the battery systems it became practically impossible for manufacturers to cooperate on a standard. Another example of this is printer ink cartridges.

But the light bulb business is already mature and a manufacturer who defects from cooperation in standards is facing more risk than potential profit by creating an island for themselves. This effect can be seen in desktop computing when the various IBM clone manufacturers got together to define a new standard bus instead of paying the exorbitant license fees for MCA from IBM.

So I believe in a case like this one, an industry consortium is a likely scenario in the mature light bulb industry than a repeat of the drill battery scenario.

 

The one problem that I see with having the power module in the fixture is that every brand would choose to have a different socket so that only their products could be used.

Your right, I mean just look at how each company making fluoresent tubes has their own connector style and type. And don't get me started on how the companies making the fixtures have their own sockets.

 

Three LED ceiling lights that I designed and built with help from the members here at AAC more than seven years ago have not failed once and are as bright as on the first day put to use. These lamps are on all the time.

[EDIT] See the schematic diagram of my LED lamp in my post #37 in the page of the thread that is linked to below. . Recently I found that the rating of the fuse in the circuit of the lamp can be reduced to 1A fast acting.

https://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/threads/lm317t-using-it-properly.104704/page-2

Seeing to it that LED lamps are durably constructed and repairable would be best. Of course the cost for repair would have be cheaper than the cost of purchasing a new one- with the way manufacturing is these days, good luck with that. In terms of reducing electronic waste, this is the way that it should be done even if the cost of repairing rather than replacing is greater.

 

Your right, I mean just look at how each company making fluoresent tubes has their own connector style and type. And don't get me started on how the companies making the fixtures have their own sockets.

But also consider the number of different power connectors for laptop/notebook computers. And even today they are mostly not the same. Then look back a few years at the varied connectors for charging cell phones, prior to the introduction of the USB connector. So in some areas there has been standardization, and in other areas the "standard"is every one is quite different. Just look at the number of different wall-wart connectors on various devices.