I tried to replace all the CF bulbs in the living room with LEDs and ended up having to buy a new dimmer switch too.
(, Mon 25 Jan 2021, 18:49, Reply)
So in order to save... what? £10 of electricity, I have to throw out and replace a perfectly good dimmer switch? Per room?
Seems a bit wasteful.
(, Mon 25 Jan 2021, 19:45, Reply)
(, Mon 25 Jan 2021, 20:10, Reply)
How many tonnes of coal does it take to make a dimmer switch to replace one that I'm being forced to throw out long before the end of it's lifespan?
(, Mon 25 Jan 2021, 20:28, Reply)
or basically 5 years emissions of a driving a normal petrol sedan
(, Wed 27 Jan 2021, 3:33, Reply)
but I had one “friend” on Facebook proudly saying they had driven an electric car all the way from Sussex to Scotland.
At that time the energy mix of the UK generation capacity was approximately 40% coal. Which I reckon got them as far as Nottingham.
(, Wed 27 Jan 2021, 7:07, Reply)
The quickest of Googling shows that you're wrong about the CO2 by about 30% and you've more than doubled the time taken to balance the CO2 cost of the WHOLE car compared to a petrol-burner.
(, Wed 27 Jan 2021, 10:51, Reply)
since the existing mains dimmer switches won't work with them and normal light switches don't really work well with them either (since you need to leave the power to the lamps turned on in order to remotely control them). Not particularly smart, in my opinion...
(, Mon 25 Jan 2021, 22:41, Reply)
I have a few wifi smart bulbs - look good to begin with, then once the novelty wears off, they're pretty boring.
I wouldn't want to make all my lights dependent on a single point of failure eg wifi hub or zigbee bridge - I can see that ending in some loud sweary words at some point
(, Tue 26 Jan 2021, 10:50, Reply)
Light-bulbs being a case in point.
(, Wed 27 Jan 2021, 8:46, Reply)
Remember when you didn't have to worry if something as basic as a lightbulb was compatible with something as basic as a switch?
(, Mon 25 Jan 2021, 19:41, Reply)
Don’t even get me started on the dimmable bedside lights I have. Bought a replacement LED bulb for one of those only to have it flicker horribly in anything other than fully on.
Rather than replace two rather nice lamps ahead of time I bought a crap load of spare halogens on Amazon.
(, Mon 25 Jan 2021, 19:52, Reply)
(, Mon 25 Jan 2021, 20:08, Reply)
And a diode is not a bulb.
(, Mon 25 Jan 2021, 20:14, Reply)
domestic mains lighting dimmers change the shape of the waveform to reduce the overall power in each AC cycle and can only be used with lamps that work with a non-sinusoidal AC supply (hence the need for dimmable LED lamps, and even then some are fussy about the waveform).
Resistive dimmers are too bulky, inefficient and get too hot to be practical in domestic lighting.
(, Mon 25 Jan 2021, 20:49, Reply)
It started lighting intermittently (~1s) when switched off.
(, Mon 25 Jan 2021, 21:02, Reply)
They may contain capacitors which could store sufficient charge to power the lamp for a short duration after the supply voltage has been removed.
(, Mon 25 Jan 2021, 22:31, Reply)
My guess was some sort of current leakage allowing it to recharge. It died a few weeks after.
(, Mon 25 Jan 2021, 23:54, Reply)
or your microwave oven was seriously leaking radiation!
(, Tue 26 Jan 2021, 0:40, Reply)
It does this by turning the power on and off around 100Hz.
Most LED drivers don’t react well to this.
(, Mon 25 Jan 2021, 20:56, Reply)
I'm fine to mod your battery operated synth but don't let me rewire your house.
(, Mon 25 Jan 2021, 21:39, Reply)
