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Incandescent light bulbs are officially banned in the U.S. (www.digitaljournal.com)
submitted 3 years ago by [M, B] to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Incandescent light bulbs are officially banned in the U.S.::America’s ban on incandescent light bulbs, 16 years in the making, is finally a reality. Well, mostly.

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[–] 13 points 3 years ago (6 children)

Is there a brand that's better for LED? I get migraines and the stroking effect of LED bulbs can be a trigger.

LED christmas bulbs particularly bad. It felt like walking into a rave at the Christmas store.

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  • [–] 27 points 3 years ago

    Regular brand LED bulbs don't strobe at all, only the very cheap ones from AliExpress and the resellers of Chinese crapware (like Walmart) do. IKEA has some nice and cheap bulbs, for example.

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  • [–] 11 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Yeah, many of those christmas lights use pulse width modulation to control brightness and it is very noticeable. I hope that gets changed over for an analog voltage dimmer soon.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Also, cheap ones run directly on AC, so they flicker at 60 Hz (50 in Europe) because the current is only flowing for half the cycle.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (1 child)

    How do high-end home LEDs get around this? Do they have a battery that caches the current between cycles?

    When my wife and I bought our place, we renovated and made all lights LED. The overheads in the living room and kitchen are quite bright and steady, so they must avoid this somehow.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    A bridge rectifier flips the negative current to positive, so instead of a sine wave you get a series of humps. Then a capacitor acts as a battery like you describe to smooth out the dip between humps.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    There are half wave rectifiers and full wave rectifiers. The former only converts the positive AC to DC and shuts off for the negative half (causing flickering). The latter will convert both positive and negative halves to DC and don't flicker.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago

    There are LEDs with CCD power converter. I got one 10 years ago and tested it with a 240 fps camera, no flicker at all. I will not recommend a brand because it's been years,but search for "ccd led bulb".

    Also there's a number called CRI, indicating how well it represents colors. This also may contribute to your headaches. 85 or higher is good, 90 is great. Just don't trust these numbers on Amazon, the cheapest of cheap crap is marketed as " cri 90+" there.

    Or scratch what I just said and find a small store that specializes in lighting and ask the clerk (or email them).

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago

    I honestly couldn't tell you. Its been so long since I purchased LEDs and the ones I bought were from the company I work for. They have worked well for me but I don't know if any brand is better than another.

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