I tend to stay away from Edison base LED fixtures, it's just a bad form factor for LED lamps, almost guaranteed to have heat-stressed parts.

The long fluorescent tube style lamps tend to last longer, less thermal stress.

 

Different brands / makers use different methods to control the voltage. Your best bet is to surf YouTube for videos on how they make LED bulbs. I know I've seen some pretty cheaply made lights that use a capacitor to control the voltage. The ones I've had go bad have had full blown electronics, using what I believe is a SMPS setup. As for how some are dimmable - that I haven't a clue. And the typical dimmer is not compatible with LED technology. I have successfully dimmed LED's by keeping a single incandescent bulb on the line. My bedroom ceiling fan is not compatible with dimmable LED's. Four lights, three are LED and one is Incandescent. Not the best looking, but by having the inc. bulb I can reduce the current, which in turn dims the LED's as well. Not sure HOW that works; only know it does.

Some LED's can't be put on motion detector switches (passive IR or PIR). They'll flicker and never go off. That's what happened in my laundry room. Walk in and the lights come on. Replaced them with LED and they'd flicker and produce roughly 60% of their light. The only way to stop that was to use an inc. bulb. Something as simple as an oven appliance bulb works just fine.

LED's work on voltage whereas inc.s work on current. The voltage is needed but the current causes them to glow. Not so with LED's. So dimming an LED requires a bit more technology.

 

here's https://www.edn.com/design/power-management/4430321/How-to-make-LED-bulbs-dimmable an article about the design of dimmable LEDs.

It seems the biggest problem is maintaining the holding current of the triac used in the dimmer. You get an efficiency penalty for doing so.

Incandescent dimmers were never very smart. They were cheap. At work, we had lots of system using temperature control and triac controllers operating into a Variac to get 30 V nominal heaters made of tantalum wire.

This isn't something that a lamp dimmer can do. Current limit is required for one and so is the current/voltage phase. the triac turns off at zero current and zero voltage and they don;t occur at the same time for an inductive load.

i finally got tired of the extra work and rack space that I proposed using 1U 1500 W power supples for the triac controller. This gave real meters which when I and V were multiplied, you got real power. The temperature controller had an isolated output which was needed to drive the supply and it took up about 1/4 the front panel rack space, Not many power supplies will report power. The supplies needed were like 40 v, 30 A. Management would not spring for isolated 0-5V outputs proportional to voltage and current.

 

@KeepItSimpleStupid I wonder if I could just throw a load like a very small 120 V transformer across hot and neutral to act as a current load. I'll have to try that. I've got plenty of old wall warts that receive 120 VAC. I won't need the low voltage side, so, I wonder if that will do the same thing. Just install it up above my ceiling fixture and forget about it. It's only on when I turn the light switch on, and if a standard dimmer works then great.

The article you attached sounded like it was going to give me a quick and dirty way to make my bulbs dim. Instead, it explains how they make dimmable LED's. Certainly not going to open my LED bulbs and rework the electronics inside. I was hoping for an outside the bulb solution.

Thanks for that article.

 

You probably need at least 50-80 mA, so it's like 6 Watts. You can experiment on what the necessary current has to be. Now, you might be able to use a flange mount power resistor mounted int he inside of the fan somewhere.

I upgraded the interior lighting in a 2000 vehicle that has retained accessory power and it will automatically shut down the interior lamps/trunk lamp if they are on for too long.

Problem. the trunk would turn off. When I shut the trunk and opened it, the trunk lamp would come on dim UNLESS I opened an interior door. I put a power resistor in parallel with the trunk lamp.

i have UPB switch that probably needs to be configured for on/off operation. it's probably configured for dim. It's for an outside light, Paralleling a small incandescent lamp worked there,otherwise it would never turn completely off.

 

I have nearly all LED bulbs in the house. So far I've had a Sylvainia bulb burn out, less than one year. Just now a second bulb burned out, maybe in service for two years - another Sylvania, and not that many hours on them. Smaller than the other one, but it burned out nonetheless.

At first I tapped it. It flickered. So I removed it and set it on my workbench. It flickered there too. Tapped it a few more times and again it flickered a few more times. It no longer flickers, the capacitor inside must have discharged.

Anyone else experiencing LED bulbs burning out? They tout that they're supposed to last 10 years. OK, the LED part of the bulb will likely last that long, but the electronics inside them are burning out far short of the 10 year proclamation. The first bulb to blow, it appears the main fuse internally has burned out. I took it apart and de-potted it. Also damaged the LED element so I couldn't put it back together, but nevertheless, it burned out. OR perhaps more appropriately expressed, "Failed".

These things aren't cheap. They're SUPPOSED to last 10 years. This is really bugging me. ESPECIALLY with Sylvania. I thought they were one of the better name brands. Does this mean ALL my LED bulbs are unreliable? I don't have exclusively Sylvania, but most of them are.

Maybe I should call them and complain.

[edit] and hot as hell too. The heatsink that is.

Check the electrical if not switch brands but if you have the same problem then it's an electrical issue

 

All LEDs here but two (floor lamp and main garage light). Practically all have well over 5 years on them, and even the 2-3 that are almost always on are still chugging along. The ceiling fixtures are all Philips (A19 and SlimStyle). The nightstand and office desk lamps are are the Feit ones that are like 2/3 heatsink.

Other than the 'novelty' ones (switchable color temp, WiFi node, switchable color), none of which stayed up longer than a year for different reasons, the only bad ones I had were a Feit 'remote phosphor' unit (which flickered within a week - it went right back), a CREE 75W A19 style (this one looked like a frosted bulb but for the vents at the bottom, and the internal PC boards were interlinked like an X), and a illuming 450 lumen globe bulb (and which was a failure after several months).

 

Cerealkilla & metermannd Welcome to AAC.

Thank you for the input. The electrical has been checked and found to be in standard condition. Nothing wrong. The fixtures are not overheating the bulbs, and the failures have not been brand specific. I know that suggests an electrical problem, but since 2018, when this post was started, I haven't had any further failures.

One note to watch for with answering threads - check the date the last post was made. The last post before you guys (girls maybe, I don't know, doesn't matter) was back on February 7, 2018. It's been dormant for a while now. But thank you for the helpful words.

Tony.

 

All I can say, is that cheap bulbs cut a lot of corners to reduce the price. I have had my fair share of short-life bulbs

On the other hand, I have some Toshiba bulbs, purchased over 9 years ago when we moved into our actual home, without any failures.
These bulbs are on the front door, exposed to the elements and turned on every evening from a photocell.
Assuming at least 10 hour/ day burn time, these bulbs have lasted some 33k hours.
They have of course become dimmer.

They were expensive, though, something like $18 US each.

 

Are any of your lights in recessed fixtures? Those have very poor ventilation. I went through several brands of CFL's before I started reading the labels. I found some Philips lamps that were rated for being used in a recessed fixture and the failures stopped. I imagine that some LED lamps are not designed to this higher standard.

 

Two lamps are closed fixtures. None of the failures have occurred there. In more open fixtures is where I've seen the most failures. Places like floor lamps and wall sconces.

But this thread is four years old. It's no longer a problem. At least for the moment.

 

A few years ago my wife had some serious cancer surgery. We moved from an upstairs bedroom to downstairs. The main kitchen fixture has a LED flood fixture with 3 LED floods. It went in a few years before Kathy's surgery and for the last two years has been on 24/7as it serves as a night light of sorts. All 3 bulbs are doing as well as the day I put them in. You buy quality you get quality, you buy junk you get junk.

Ron

 

In most instances the failure is in the driver electronics, not the LEDs, but I have an exception which is the 48 inch tube lights with all of the LEDs facing in one direction. We use these as outside lights at a restaurant that I take care of, and one batch of those suffers from a failure of LEDs. Each tube contains 4 series strings of 24 LEDs in series, 4 strings in parallel. The failure mode begins with one string flashing, and eventually all 4 strings flashing, and then not illuminating at all. All of that batch of tubes failed in less than a year burning about 6 hours every night. The replacements have lasted much longer so far. So it seems that it is a production quality issue, and since these tubes have no manufacturer label it is quite likely they are some strange brand, not found at any other store. The power connection has been declared unsafe, as it is 120 volts between the two ends. That poses a shock hazard for anybody dumb enough to put their hand on the end while installing them in a live fixture. AND, I have actually met a person that dumb.

 

In most instances the failure is in the driver electronics, not the LEDs, but I have an exception which is the 48 inch tube lights with all of the LEDs facing in one direction. We use these as outside lights at a restaurant that I take care of, and one batch of those suffers from a failure of LEDs. Each tube contains 4 series strings of 24 LEDs in series, 4 strings in parallel. The failure mode begins with one string flashing, and eventually all 4 strings flashing, and then not illuminating at all. All of that batch of tubes failed in less than a year burning about 6 hours every night. The replacements have lasted much longer so far. So it seems that it is a production quality issue, and since these tubes have no manufacturer label it is quite likely they are some strange brand, not found at any other store. The power connection has been declared unsafe, as it is 120 volts between the two ends. That poses a shock hazard for anybody dumb enough to put their hand on the end while installing them in a live fixture. AND, I have actually met a person that dumb.

I have heard many stories of similar fixtures experiencing similar problems. The conclusion in every case was a production issue.

 

In most instances the failure is in the driver electronics

Of those I've taken apart and did post-mortem the failure has been in the electronics. Not the LED. However ONE set of the LED's actually failed and can not be lit by an external power supply. So not always is it the driver circuitry.

 

That is my experience too. Mostly the driver electronics, but out of about 6 failed LEDs (probably cheap ones, I did not purchase these but given to evaluate) the drivers had gone in 4 and LEDs in 2.
A lot of cheap stuff on the market, it seems.