My wife and I were out recently looking at ceiling fans to replace the one in our dining room, which has committed no crimes, other than having the appearance of being very much from the 1980s.
I was taken aback by how few of the fans had replaceable lightbulbs! In the entire store there were maybe three or four options with a replaceable bulb!
Call me crazy, but a nonreplaceable LED is a complete dealbreaker. I go through so many LED bulbs! I don't know if my electricity is like particularly bad or if that's just normal? The first LED bulb I ever bought (Shout out EarthLED) in 2008 for like $30 is still going strong, but every bulb I buy these days lasts like two years tops.
Don't do that! v041 has been compromised upstream by a supply chain attack and big fan doesn't want us to know. You have to use v040 until it has been fixed. Also, used the hacked flashing software because the official version is spyware. Did you even read page 723 of the support thread?? I can give you more info when I am done patching my toaster.
My MinkaAirs use 303MHz remotes. No pull chains. This frustrated me so much, last night i got an ESP32-S3 + CC1101 and reverse engineered the signal to the fans to be also control it from Home Assistant. Now, if i lose or break the controller, i can still switch the fans & built-in LED on & off another way. not perfect, but it is in my control.
Probably not anything more complicated than running some kind of signal receiver while clicking each button on the remote and then capturing/replaying it. I highly doubt there's much if any security around the fan remote signals lol.
I did exactly the same thing for a different brand of DIP-switch-addressable remote-control fan back in 2016. It's been wonderful.
It wasn't that hard; I used gnuradio with an SDR to see what the remotes were sending and just pressed buttons and flipped switches until I figured out what all the bits were. There was no encryption whatsoever.
This annoys me too. My Casablanca fans have a wall switch which is hard wired to power only for on/off, but the fan and light controls are sent via a radio frequency signal. The most frustrating part of this, is that the RF transmitter inside the wall switch is battery operated. I have to unscrew the wall switch a couple times a year to get to the batteries.
As someone that designs battery powered RF devices. It's shocking an disheartening seeing stuff like that.
Things drawing an average of a few hundred microamps while the fan is running. Probably because it's blasting a keep alive packet once a second or so. It does that because a transceiver costs an extra 50 cents.
> DC fans are infinitely superior to AC fans (noise, torque, longevity, etc.), which is unfortunately why this became a thing.
What?
Every house I've ever lived in over my many decades of life has had ceiling fans. I've never known one to fail, never known one to be noisy, and never known one to have inadequate power. I've personally installed a couple and know those got wired straight into AC mains power... so unless they have a converter built in, I figure that every ceiling fan I've ever lived with has been AC powered.
Unless you've been working with absolute bottom of the barrel fans (and those fans are worse than I could possibly imagine), this smells like industry propaganda to me.
> There's no clean mechanism to control a fan's speed in-band on a normal AC wall switch.
OP is asking for a normal pull chain or switch... one that's attached to the fan housing, not some doodad that's embedded in the wall and needs to be specially wired into the fan electrics. I've been to the houses of a few friends that have had fans controlled with a handheld wireless controller, and I can confirm that that was -overall- way worse than hauling my ass up to pull a damn chain.
Where are you getting ceiling fans that don't squeak and/or hum? (Or perhaps, what are you doing to maintain them)
I'm pretty anti remotes and apps for things, but it's pretty handy when my spouse can start the fan from her phone in the middle of the night instead of waking me to go turn it on in the middle of the night.
Our current one isn't too loud and it has a nice range of speeds so you can run it without it getting super wobbly. But overall, I still dislike fans. :p
The ceiling fan in my bedroom was installed no later than 1981 (possibly a few decades earlier) and is utterly silent. On high you can hear the rush of air and thats it.
Not op, but we have old, AC ceiling fans that are wall controlled. They run 95% of the time, no maintenance, no squeaks, no nothing. Obviously anecdata, but this is representative of my entire life's experience with AC ceiling fans. I doubt these were either the cheapest fans nor the most expensive, fwiw. I'm sure the prior owner did nothing to maintain them either
I should have been more specific - yes, you can "dim" AC fans and it's purely electrical. "Dimming" DC fans and similar switching loads requires detecting shaped pulses, and is really dirty and not something you want to do.
> Where are you getting ceiling fans that don't squeak and/or hum?
Lowes? Home Depot? Any other reputable, major home appliance store? Where else does one get a ceiling fan? Are you buying yours from Amazon or Ali Express?
I don't know about those reasons, but an AC fan uses ~100W on low and my DC fan uses 5W. You tune out the hum, but the AC fans hum and the DC fans don't.
But I don't think torque or longevity are actual issues with AC fans. Just efficiency and noise.
DC fans don't have the hum, get up to speed faster, etc. They can operate at a far greater range of speeds and still maintain high power output. AC fans operate in a much narrower envelope.
> I figure that every ceiling fan I've ever lived with has been AC powered.
Every high-end fan sold today is DC. It's possible that you didn't see the power supply.
> way worse than hauling my ass up to pull a damn chain.
Many people have high ceilings where a pull chain couldn't be humanly reached. Sure, this might work if you have 8' ceilings. Which high-end fans have pull chains?
> Every high-end fan sold today is DC. It's possible that you didn't see the power supply.
a) I did a quick search and noticed that Hunter Fans sells many ceiling fans with AC motors at a variety of price points. [0][1] Do you consider what Hunter produces to be entirely mid-to-low-grade? Or are you doing the Scotsman thing where any ceiling fan that doesn't contain a DC motor cannot be high-end?
b) The manufacturer of the fans in my apartment is "Hampton Bay", which are readily available at Home Depot. If Home Depot hasn't fucked up their product categorization, nearly every fan they sell in the SF Bay Area today has an AC motor. [2][3] Given the price, I'd agree that the ones that Home Depot are selling are not high-end fans, but given that the ones in my apartment have given me trouble-free, zero-noise operation for fifteen years and have done the same for previous tenants for who knows how long, I don't see why I'd want a high-end fan.
c) Remember that I said "Every house I've ever lived in over my many decades of life has had ceiling fans. I've never known one to fail...". I've lived in my current place for ~fifteen years now. Even if the fans had been installed new just before I moved in [4] I'm fairly confident that DC-driven ceiling fans were -if available- an extremely high-end option in the US in 2011. Authoritative information is difficult for me to find, but I see weak indications that they didn't really become A Thing until 2020.
DC is much quieter and energy efficient. Can't comment on the longevity etc
Technology Connections "Ceiling fans: the simple idea we keep screwing up" YouTube video is interesting. The old old fans had oiled bearing baths and overbuilt motors, extremely overbuilt compared to today standards which means they'll probably keep going forever. If you are nerdy and interested it's worth a watch.
> There's no clean mechanism to control a fan's speed in-band on a normal AC wall switch.
I went through this pain when I bought ceiling fans a few years ago. Various manufacturers offer switches or remotes you can attach to the wall but that take batteries - the options for actual wired switches are slim. I ended up with a few hardwired Big Ass Fans wall controllers that work pretty well - but their current-gen wall controls are hardwired bluetooth remotes, which is subpar for something that's connected via wire. (And they cost $210/each, which is pretty egregious for a wall switch.)
> There's no clean mechanism to control a fan's speed in-band on a normal AC wall switch.
There absolutely is. If you have a fan with a light controlled by separate wall switches, you have two hots running to the fixture. Take one, and leave it unswitched always on to the fixture, and use the second switch (or fan controller) and use it as an input to the controller on the fan. Done.
Unfortunately, I haven't seen this implemented anywhere.
This message brought to you by the hours I've spent annoyed by exactly this misfeature in our new bedroom fan. Fanimation does sell a wall mounted remote that can be wired inline with a switch, so at least there's a single point for master power and a remote you can't lose. Unfortunately, there's a noticeable delay between flipping the switch and the light turning on.
> If you have a fan with a light controlled by separate wall switches,
This is common, but it's also not uncommon for only one circuit to be wired. The "clean" qualifier is because even if you have that line, you don't have a common DC ground.
> Unfortunately, I haven't seen this implemented anywhere.
Many Z-wave switches use the three-way traveler line for out-of-band signaling (instead of a traditional three-way switch arrangement.) (Homeseer, Inovelli, etc.) This line will communicate dimming, double taps, etc.
> There's no clean mechanism to control a fan's speed in-band on a normal AC wall switch.
There is.
I specifically purchased a Fanco Horizon DC fan as it has an optional physical wall switch which connected to the existing wiring for the fan it was replacing.
The caveat being if you use the wall remote, it's not compatible with the model with built in LED light fixture. This was a non issue for me as wanted to avoid any fan with built in LED light due to when the led panel fails, it'll be extremely difficult to replace vs having independent lights in the room.
I think most DC fans don't support wall remotes because it's cheaper and simpler not to, and provide a remote control instead. It's not a technical issue as you can absolutely find DC fans with wall controllers they are just harder to find.
Not an electrician, wiring diagram is page 7 if it helps: <a href="https://fanco.com.au/wp-content/uploads/manuals/horizon-manual.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://fanco.com.au/wp-content/uploads/manuals/horizon-manu...
mmm, I don't know if you'd call it clean but I have a late-1990s ceiling fan with a feature they called "fan flick" - turn it on, it comes on at the last selected speed. Want to change the speed? flick the power switch (toggle it quickly) and it changes by one notch. It's tedious, and you only get to change it one direction until it wraps around - but no wireless, no additional wiring, just "short power interruption" as a signal...
In two apartments, the remote affected the neighbor's fan and vice-versa. At first I wondered at the fan's erratic behavior, especially switching modes soon after I changed it. Then I guessed the problem and spoke to the neighbor.
I tried changing channels in the remote but that didn't seem to help much. With the second neighbor, the fans were in my living room and their bedroom. We agreed to control fans in shifts (I turned mine off at night).
It's hard to believe it's just a very unlikely coincidence. Maybe the channels are too few or narrow to be useful? How hard would it be to implement some psuedo-UID?
Sounds like the old Steven Wright joke about having a switch in his apartment that didn't do anything, he kept turning it on and off and nothing happened. Then a guy in France called him and said, "Cut it out."
You're right, it did. Unfortunately, I tried that without success:
That's what I meant when I wrote, "I tried changing channels in the remote but that didn't seem to help much.", and wondered "Maybe the channels are too few or narrow to be useful?".
The POE hats for something like a pi convert the high voltage (~48v) down to 5V, so efficiency is going to be generally middling if you don’t spend a lot on the components. I imagine they’re running 80% efficiency or so, which would be an easy 3W of dissipation at peak or so.
It's bad power - transients apparently kill LEDs quickly.
Me - I have the exact same bulbs in my off grid property, and in my on-grid property. On grid, it's about 18 months MTBF. Off grid - it's been seven years and I haven't had to replace a single bulb yet. On-grid our power is anywhere between 205 and 235v, often has spikes up to 260+, and has like 99% uptime. Off grid, it's 230v, day in, day out. Grid power is terrible in most places.
I grew up in Australia and now live in Hyderabad, India. Pretty good chance I’ll be building a house in the next couple of years, and I’m of a strong mind to go off-grid for power for this sort of reason. Appliances and other devices (ACs, fridges, computers, laptops, chargers, even fans and lights) fail at far greater rates than in Australia, and I believe most of that is about power quality (though sometimes it’s about higher ambient temperatures, far more dust, possibly lower component quality). Given how often the power goes out, you want a home inverter anyway, so increasing the battery capacity further and adding solar isn’t such a huge extra cost; and if it reduces appliance failure rates as much as I expect, I genuinely suspect it’ll be cheaper in the long run, even with the grid price being 0.05–0.10 USD/kWh.
Now if only DC wiring and appliances were more common/mature, could possibly drop the “inverter” part altogether. If I were single I’d try more seriously for a full-DC system, but as a married man I’ll probably just stick with everything AC.
Led bulbs should last you 20 years. I once lived in a place with dodgy power and led bulbs would burn out - sometimes less than a year. You could also turn the microwave on and see the lights dim.
110VAC "LED bulbs" are not the same thing as the LEDs on a PCB in a DC motor ceiling fan.
"LED bulbs" die because they have to rectify 110VAC (hot) into LEDs (hot) into an enclosure that was designed for incandescents.
In a proper enclosure, with cooling (it's a fan), they will actually live their fully-stated lifetime - assuming the fan's upstream power supply makes it.
> In a proper enclosure, with cooling (it's a fan), they will actually live their fully-stated lifetime - assuming the fan's upstream power supply makes it.
But in an "old school" hardware, you'd then replace the bulb and get a new "lifetime" out of it, here you have to throw everything away.
An AC motor has basically nothing inside that can fail (maybe the capactitor, but that can be replaced), and can work for a hundred years and more if properly maintained (mostly cleaned).
On average ~6 hours per day (living room with night owls living there), is ~2000 hours per year... 5 years at 10.000hours expected lifetime for the leds, 10 if the stated lifetime is 20k hours... that's not really that long.
You can replace parts that don't come in nice detachable sockets.
Lightbulbs came in sockets because they were meant to fail. First by accident, later intentionally. They were also quite breakable because they were made of glass. LED lights don't have these problems unless they're designed to. Which is the meta-problem - how do you know which ones are planned obsolete?
Forcing an LED system into a lightbulb from factor has quality and cost implications though. A good LED light has a separate power brick inside the enclosure. Which is what you see in these fan lights.
I build lights with cob modules with phosphor (bridgelux), and unless I screw up the thermal interface, I get many years out of modules that cost < $5 each. one thing is that the thermal paste is too fiddly for most people, voltage/current tends to drift around and 0.5V is a big difference here. mechanically they tend to use a couple different form factors, but not 100%. the 10 watt units I had been using were bigger than the 15w I use now, and the mounting spacing went from 0.75 to 0.71
I would hope that at least some of this would get standardized over time
> An AC motor has basically nothing inside that can fail
Let me know how the non-replaceable sealed bearing packs in these AC or DC fans fare after 10,000 hours.
In a proper/high-end DC fan, the bearings are failing before any motors or LEDs.
Regardless, in a Big Ass Fans Haiku, the downlight is a completely separate/replaceable module - and it isn't going to fail before the bearings or motor.
Edison screw LED bulbs are the inferior design by every objective measure.
> Let me know how the non-replaceable sealed bearing packs in these AC or DC fans fare after 10,000 hours.
...your AC-powered ceiling fans are failing (or even "just" substantially degrading) after a little under fourteen months? What garbage are you buying?
> A recessed can or “upside down” ceiling fan globe with an open bottom is technically an enclosed fixture since heat rises.
Typically fans with built-in LED downlights are engineered to actually dissipate heat - and they have a much larger area to do it in. Edison-format bulbs are inherently space-constrained.
When an LED bulb dies, it's typically not the LED, it's the electronics driving it. This is worsened substantially by heat. If you have recessed downlights or something, that's close to worst-case for an LED bulb.
Lights with non-replaceable bulbs can actually be far better, because they can be designed for their environment. Recessed downlights with built-in LEDs for example can thermally couple the LEDs directly to the metal housing, so the heat can be dissipated into the surrounding air, instead of into the recess.
Maybe in theory. In practice, the Phoebus Cartel was a real thing, and they limited lightbulb lifespans, worldwide. The same thing exists today, albeit more because companies that sell lightbulbs want to keep selling them, instead of putting themselves out of business. So, many LED lightbulbs are intentionally designed to fail early.
The only place where this doesn’t happen is in the country of Dubai. Because of national law, lightbulbs sold there are required to have very long lifespans. That’s why there is a world-wide grey market business for taking existing LED lightbulbs apart, snipping off a resistor so that they pull about half the amperage and then putting them back together, and suddenly their lifespan is increased by 10-100x. This is called a “doobie”, after the name of the country. Check out “bigclivedotcom” on YouTube if you want to see this in action.
You will notice this if you buy Philips Ultra Definition bulbs in Dubai, versus the same bulbs sold at the same amount of lumen output from the UK or elsewhere in the world. The “doobie” version has twice as many LED filaments inside, compared to the UK version. Same price, way different life span. Philips is one of the better manufacturers of lightbulbs, and nowhere remotely close to the only one doing this.
With regards to LED light fixtures (ones that don’t allow you to screw in your own bulb), most manufacturers do the same thing. They’re designed to fail early. Who wants light fixture styling that is fifty years old, just because the LED lights inside haven’t failed yet? They want to make you buy new fixtures every couple of years, just like they do for bulbs.
Yes, there are exceptions in both cases. But they are the rare exceptions, not the rule. And if you haven’t studied up on the Phoebus Cartel, you can start with the article on Wikipedia.
I'm well aware of the Phoebus Cartel. It's not as straightforward as often reported. Have a look at Technology Connections: <a href="https://youtu.be/zb7Bs98KmnY" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/zb7Bs98KmnY
Dubai isn't a country. It's a city in the United Arab Emirates.
The Dubai bulb isn't some trick Big Lightbulb doesn't want you to know about, it's an engineering tradeoff: lower current on more filaments gives you higher efficiency and lower temperature but at higher cost and with substantially lower light quality (CRI).
You'll find that after EU energy labeling, there are products available to European consumers that well exceed the specifications of the "Dubai" bulbs. Look for EU energy class A. They often come with a 5-year warranty and rated lifespan of 50000 hours. The "Dubai" bulbs were rated for 25000 hours. You'll also find though that they're substantially more expensive and usually don't have a CRI above 90.
Regarding planned obsolescence, in many cases I can believe that a product will fail earlier than it would if designed for longevity. Rather than planned obsolescence, I believe this is simply a result of being cheap, a consequence of the race to the bottom. If you're buying cheap Chinese fixtures for $10, or cheap Chinese bulbs for $2, you're not going to get a high-quality, long-lasting product.
If you want products that last a long time, buy them and use them properly. If you want bright lights, make sure they're adequately cooled. Consider buying lower-voltage fixtures and bulbs so that you can have a separate power supply and don't put the full ~230V to ~3V conversion in a tiny space.
I would love to buy an LED bulb that lasts a long time. I thought the reason for their premium price was supposed long lifetime. Mine all last as long as the older bulbs but cost 5X as much. Where can I buy such bulbs in the US?
There can be a lot of variation. From what I've seen, I'd say 2-5 years is a typical lifespan for an LED bulb. We have some recessed lights in the kitchen that require brighter bulbs, and those typically last only 1-2 years. But then we also have some other (non-replaceable!) recessed lights that are 14 years old and still work fine.
There was one time I bought some cheap ones from Amazon, and several of them failed within a few months. There was also an LED bulb in the front porch light (so, outside) that lasted around 10 years, despite being outside and used daily. I had several of that same type and that particular one lasted longer than all of the others, where the others were all inside and not installed upside down. So yeah, it varies.
My Philips Hue bulbs are going strong for just over 7 years now. They are the premium bulb in my experience. I've bought other LED strips using controllers compatible with Hue, but they died where there are obvious burned points all along the strip. We all have different experiences that will counter each other, so it's frustrating to no end on finding trust worthy devices.
Regardless of all of that frustration, thank the gods we no longer have to deal with CFL
I have yet to replace any of the LED bulbs I bought at Costco in 2013. I dunno who manufactured them, or what kind of unobtainium they're made from, or whether I will jinx them by talking about it, but they just... Keep on going. Basic Edison screw-ins, from the first generation of bulbs that emitted warm light, that I've used exactly as I would any light-bulb. They weren't really expensive - maybe $2-3 apiece, though I really don't remember - and, I dunno. I hear everyone constantly complaining about their LED bulbs, and maybe they've been enshittified since, but I have absolutely no complaints.
I've been using LED lights for over a decade. Can't say I have replaced any of them.
And nowadays you can get E27 LED bulbs for 75 cents at IKEA, which is cheaper than incandescents ever were. Not sure how they managed that, because it sounds insane.
Biggest problem of leds is we have no good standards. Classic screw in bulb makes no sense with LEDs. Other formats usually mean you are screwed when you have to replace. So far LED strips seem the best way. A bit of soldering but you can replace them by parts.
Screw in bulbs make plenty of sense. You are not going to get people to convert to LEDs by forcing them to replace every single fixture in their home. That would be ridiculousmaxxing.
It would be nice to have an updated standard for newer buildings, though. In practice fewer and fewer fittings are using screw-in lightbulbs at all but there's not another standard.
What happens when something does go wrong though? Now, you have to replace the entire thing instead of just simply replacing a bulb. If only we had some other previous existing examples of fancy tech that used non-replaceable parts requiring a full replacement...
I think they're suggesting a lightbulb equivalent of going from USB-A connectors to USB-C. Replaceable bulbs in sockets that are just as easy to use, but with a smaller profile.
The problem is going from mains voltage to 3.3v means some sort of waste heat. Rewiring the whole house to 12v is one idea I've seen, but again, total house rewire and fixture replacement. In the mean time, it's A9 bulbs with LED electronics going from 120v to 3.3v generating heat. Making cheap electronics means that heat will kill the electronics. Making good electronics at a higher retail price is the solution, but consumers are not educated enough so all they see is sticker shock.
Your comparison of USB-A to USB-C is nonsensical and does not actually acknowledge the issue of why the existing screw in bulb direct replacement have issues
Screw-in sockets are more durable and long-lasting than any replacement so-far, most of which have been replaced again (remember those weird fluorescent mini-bulb sockets?).
12V is too high for your LEDs, you still have the power supply. 12 volts is not near enough voltage for a house. You can get around it with very big wires but copper is extremely expensive. Even in cars, 12 volts is borderline. Trucks are fairly often go to 24 or higher voltage because even at the size of a large truck (semi), higher voltage is an advantage.
Well, we can certainly argue with 110 or 220 is a better voltage for a house. It is quite clear that 12 volts is too low.
It doesn't need to be for the whole house, it just needs to be for the lighting fixtures. Obviously nobody is going to use a microwave or blender on 12V. It's not like our bulbs plug into NEMA 5-15 outlets. Having good DC standard voltages and plugs would be incredibly useful. Don't bother running 12V everywhere, but like after the 120V light switch go to a single controller that then drives the lights for that room. Or have that be in the box with the switch, although that might still have the same kind of cramped heat issue.
And it's not like we need to just stop producing Edison socket styles tomorrow. But let's make sane standards today.
Yeah 24VDC or 48VDC would make more sense but tbh you only need to drive the LEDs with it.
At 48VDC you could run 16AWG like 100ft and still be fine as long as the lights pull around 60W or less all together (which works out to ~12 lights on a circuit). And that circuit would only add another ~2W or so in power losses when energized.
That circuit is essentially what power over ethernet does today so you could replace romex with PoE Type 3/Type 4 plenum rated ethernet and it'd be like half the cost.
And if you really want to optimise for losses you could put the switches on the ethernet data line and use that for sensing rather than running the PoE circuit out to each light switch (and then de-energise the PoE circuit when the switches report off). Bonus points in that this would allow you to "reprogram" which light switch controls which circuit without needing to do any re-wiring.
My vote would be 24v or 48v. You cannot power substantial LED with 3.3v. You’d spend a fortune rolling out ultra-thick gauge wire to avoid pissing away non-trivial amounts of power into heat. Many, many LED strips come as 24v. It’s the perfect balance of wire gauge for the amount of power you’ll be drawing.
The lightbulb that you're throwing away also contains all the same electronics that a larger light fixture does, just in a smaller and less thermally efficient space.
Mounting options that allow larger LED lights allow you to use lights that are more thermally efficient without sacrificing any replaceability. JIS C 8310 mounts for example.
> Dubai isn't a country. It's a city in the United Arab Emirates.
I learned recently that Dubai is also the name of the emirate. I don’t have a good understanding of the UAE governmental structure, but the Emirates do seem to have their own governments. Maybe it can be thought of as a country in the same way Scotland can be thought of as a country.
The United Arab Emirates is a federal state, like the US or Canada (and notably not like the UK--Scotland is a devolved component of a unitary state, not a member of a federal state). The Emirate of Dubai is thus most closely analogized to a US state or a Canadian province, though I'm not entirely sure off-hand how the power of a UAE Emirate compares to federal subjects in the countries whose politics I'm more familiar with.
Also, Dubai is effectively a city-state, as the vast majority of the population of the Emirate lives in the city itself.
Reliability engineering is a thing. I had a friend whose research was targeted around getting consumer white goods to work for a specified number of months.
They aren’t designed to fail, they are designed to work around some predictable model during the warranty and extended warranty period.
> The only place where this doesn’t happen is in the country of Dubai.
As far as I'm aware, we've got comparable bulbs available in Canada. We've got the Philips 95 CRI ultra definition bulbs and the ultra efficiency bulbs.
The UltraEfficient bulbs seem better-specced than the Dubai bulbs - the standard A19 of the latter is specced for 6W/600 lumen/25k hours at 80 CRI, while the bulbs I can buy at the drug store here are specced for 5W/810 lumen/50k hours at 80 CRI.
Interesting. I was just thinking I have never had to replace a single bulb in my apartment. I have lived here for five years and the bulbs weren’t new when I moved in.
I also have Nanoleafs that I have had for about six years and so far no issues. They run for about 12 hours a day on most days.
I am in BC,CA. I gotta take apart my lights and see what they are.
There's definitely no cartel today, there are wayyy too many manufacturers for that to be a practical reality.
The reason most consumer LED bulbs fail early today is because consumers are low-information buyers who make purchase decisions based overwhelmingly on price and secondarily on aesthetics. The typical buyer has no way to accurately judge the actual design longevity of a bulb on the shelf. Yes, bulbs have lifetime ratings, but even if people bother to read them, those ratings in many places are not well regulated and reflect an ideal scenario that oftentimes is not reflective of real-world use.
The sales success of these race-to-the-bottom bulbs has driven higher quality bulbs off of the shelf at most retailers. You can get well designed long-life LED lighting, but you'd need to step up to commercial/industrial options. There are long life bulbs available, but they generally are designed for uses where they are difficult to replace... because in those use cases a high product price can be justified by lower labor costs to maintain their installation... e.g., bulbs for use high up on a structure, factory lighting, continuous use, etc.
The reason Dubai has better bulbs is simply because they have decided to require it. The reason the US has shit bulbs is because Americans love buying $0.80-1.50 light bulbs. The Dubai bulb is an order of magnitude more expensive. This is a hard sell at Walmart. And the TCO of the $0.87 bulbs on Amazon is still less even accounting for early failures if you are a homeowner who is not factoring in labor costs.
Just an anecdote but I had a huge number of LED MR16 bulbs in my house. Bunch of different brands. They were all crap so we replaced every downlight in my house with an LED disk instead. I’ve stopped thinking about light bulbs altogether.
Maybe they can be designed for thermal management, but very few of them really are. I'm also finding the LED is the most likely failure point, so I prefer to find fixtures with replaceable LED bulbs so I can install the ones I know to be reliable. That way the entire fan isn't junk when the LED dies.
Integrated LED fixtures are usually quite easy to fix when an LED actually fails. Check them all with a multimeter in diode mode and you know which one to replace.
Doesn't the LED going out after 2-3 years make it not only way more expensive (LEDs are easily 10x or more than a regular incandescent light), but also way less energy efficient and much worse for the environment?
These lightbulbs, while using less electricity, use much more energy to produce. And I wonder what with their substrates, if that isn't more difficult to recycle too. I'm not sure, and don't want to judge, but if both every efficiency and recycling are harder, then these bulbs aren't really energy and environmentally efficient.
Not sure if I buy special LEDs, but I have outfit my house with LEDs basically everywhere between 10 and 13 years ago. In that time I had maybe one or two of them die.
Traditional light bulbs have taught us that lights naturally have to be "consumables". That has been far less true for energy saving lamps (of which I have maybe 2 or 3 still left which I planned to replace by LEDs once they die, but they just won't). As far as I can tell, this isn't at all the case for LEDs.
It's much more likely that lamps and ceiling fans made out of plastic break from accidental physical impact or turn ugly due to natural UV discolorization or similar. And probably most will live on until replaced due to changing tastes.
In theory, yes. In practice I suspect a lot of these fixtures are not using integration to achieve better thermal design, they're using it because it makes the product cheaper and lets the manufacturer control the whole assembly.
A lot of comments are trying to defend this by saying a properly designed light could last some amount longer, which is true, but misses the point. These designs couple the light and the fan. That’s an extra failure mode that doesn’t need to exist.
It also prevents the user from changing the bulb if they want a different color temperature or better CRI. Most of the built-in lights I see are in the 3000-3500K range, which is cooler the warm white I’ve chosen for the house. If I could swap the bulb it would be an easy fix, but if it’s built in then I’m stuck with it.
Those are generally bad quality because they’ve split the LED budget across twice as many modules.
A high CRI single color temperature bulb beats them in light quality.
Most people aren’t going to notice, but if you’ve done any work with color, lighting, or photography then the average consumer LED lights feel terrible. They’re mostly blue light with a little bit of other colors to make them appear white to the eye.
Yeah anything which forces you to use whatever the manufacturer chooses is an instant no from me too. I don't have any fixed lights cooler than 2200 K at home, the standard 3000 K 'warm' white is going to look crappy the majority of the time.
It's funny how popular it is to take an extremely durable and long-lived light-generating technology and pair it with the cheapest short-lived power electronics.
To add to that, my advice is to look for LED lights where the AC-to-DC conversion is done by a power brick separate from the lights. Not only does that mean you can replace them separately, but generally these will be much more robust as the power electronics won't be as constrained by size.
I wish it caught on to have LED lights powered by a barrel jack DC plug like you have for most electronics. It would be a huge win for longevity. Sure it's not backwards compatible with fixtures designed for light bulbs, but the cases we're discussing here are complete light fixture replacements anyways... The fixture could have a barrel plug that you connect to an inexpensive commodity DC power brick which you then hide away in the ceiling.
Interesting; I’ve literally never had an LED bulb die that can remember. I’ve got a bunch of Ikea Tradfri bulbs that are now ~8y old and used daily. (240v here btw.)
I’ve replaced at least a dozen. Multiple brands, ranging from rando amazon brands to name brands like CREE and GE.
I’m under the impression at this point that they just do not do well inside can lights. I honestly don’t think the average lifespan is much higher than incandescent in that scenario.
> I’ve literally never had an LED bulb die that can remember.
This 120v-using USian has had many fail, and if they don't fail by intermittently blinking and flickering [0], they fail by slowly giving me worse and worse and worse headaches [1]. Unless you choose to count the fact that they were technically still emitting light, I've never gotten the rated lifetime out of a screw-in LED bulb.
[0] ...as all of the ACE Hardware ones did...
[1] ...as all of the dimmable [2] CREE ones did...
[2] These were never attached to a dimmer. At the time, the advice was to get LED bulbs rated for use in a dimmer, as it was believed that that would get you higher-quality construction.
Chances are that you didn't. You bought an item through Amazon from a vendor in their marketplace.
Being that you're unwilling to name the vendor or brand, or even a proper link... it doesn't seem a rousing recommendation. Is it an affiliate link, I wonder.
I just checked my Amazon order history. It says it was sold by Amazon. When I visit the listing now the 'buy box' isn't Amazon.
We live in San Francisco so there are only a few days a year when we need a fan. Like this weekend.
From my order history:
Prominence Home Saybrook, 52 inch Indoor Farmhouse LED Ceiling Fan with Light, Pull Chain, Three Mounting Options, Dual Finish Blades, Reversible Motor - 51592-01 (Matte Nickel)
Sold by: Amazon.com
Supplied by: Other
$99.22
Yeah, I have so many LED bulbs that are rated at "10+ years". I put all of the lights in my apartment 5 years ago. I'd say the failure rate is 10-20% at this point. The particularly painful one is the downlights under my kitchen cabinets. They require removing the entire probably 30 kg board that I have them mounted in, which requires clamping things up and undoing 6 heavy duty screws, and the whole process of changing one takes about an hour. 2 of the 5 have failed in 5 years. I'm very picky about lighting (only get LEDs with CRI 95+), so I usually am buying the expensive ones.
Same here. We have had outdoor hanging string lights for ~10 years with nice incandescent bulbs that occasionally burn out. I thought I would join the 21st century and started replacing the burned out ones with LED versions. Big mistake. In about 3 years, half of the new LED ones have already failed. Managed to find a new pack of the incandescent ones and so far so good.
Like for most consumer products today, the problem is that when buying LED bulbs you do not know their real quality.
LED bulbs can be designed to live almost forever, but many of them are not designed so, for savings in cost, but the selling price may be poorly correlated with the manufacturing cost.
I have about two dozens Philips LED bulbs (4000 K color temperature and equivalent with old 100 W incandescent bulbs, i.e. 1500 lumen) of the kind that fits in legacy Edison sockets for incandescent bulbs. They were bought more than 15 years ago and all continue to work perfectly fine. I did not have to replace any of them.
Nonetheless, if I would buy today new LED bulbs, even of the same brand, I think that the chances are slim that they will be equally reliable.
In the past, you could rely on the brand of a product to inform you about the expected quality, but today buying any product with a certain brand provides no guarantee that the quality will be the same as for an apparently identical product bought one year earlier.
Early LEDs were fine. Then they overclocked them a bit too much and they just break now. Too much current and so on. You can make a very simple led very bright but it won't last. If you undervolt them instead they are dim but last forever. So the deal is to have many undevolted LEDs. Ofc that is pricier...
Not exactly forever: I have a 20+ years old led "bulb" (it's large enough to deal with its own heat) that is barely able to light up a closet now...
I'm pretty surprised, I've had LED bulbs for ~5+ years without any dying. I also wouldn't accept a nonreplaceable LED in a ceiling fan though.
I had a car that had non replaceable light bulbs in the rear blinkers, just a strip of led integrated deeply in the tail light assembly. Of course the blinker died. Replaced the whole assembly. (And replaced the whole car later). Apparently some enthusiasts do disassemble them and replace just the led strip, probably requiring soldering etc. This company had designed cars for about 120 years at that point but still seemed to commit easy mistakes...
> This company had designed cars for about 120 years at that point but still seemed to commit easy mistakes…
Oh take a look at the recall list of any car company in the world and you will find they all make simple mistakes, constantly. Probably a consequence of price pressure at all times. While cars are lasting longer than they used to on average, I feel like it’s been getting worse in some ways with cars lately turning into computers and good car/engine companies lately turning into bad tech companies without that much tech experience who outsource important parts and do lousy integration. And yeah, building assemblies or modules with non-replaceable parts is becoming more common.
Mistakes, or careless at best? I'm thinking of a couple of scenarios I've had in personal vehicles, where I'm positive the design decision was the unreviewed work of some co-op student's summer project.
Case 1: Ford Taurus wagon, my wife calls in a panic because it's blowing all hot air, and the dash is awash in lights. I get her to shut it off, wait a bit, and limp the last few km home. Turns out the serpentine belt goes around a pulley, the center bolt of which is screwed into the engine block. When the bearing started to go, there was friction, and the belt spun the bolt out and it fell off. It could have been reverse threaded, like one pedal on every bike, ever. But no. If it had, the bearing would screech, we'd get it replaced, instead of just silently falling out with potentially catastrophic consequences.
Case 2: Chevy Venture van, where the lights on the rear door all stopped working. Turned out the wiring harness for them ran through this accordion hose at the top, plugged into the bottom of a rain gutter across the top. So as soon as that hose broke its seal with the trough, the whole harness is shorted.
Funny, I have never experienced this sort of stupidity in the Toyotas and Hondas that have followed these last couple American-branded vehicles.
Making the car cheaper to assemble shows up in the numbers today, making it easier to repair shows up in the numbers in subtle ways over the course of decades.
> I go through so many LED bulbs! I don't know if my electricity is like particularly bad or if that's just normal? The first LED bulb I ever bought (Shout out EarthLED) in 2008 for like $30 is still going strong, but every bulb I buy these days lasts like two years tops.
That is abnormal compared to my experience. I have a lot of bulbs in my house between recessed lights, fixtures and lamps, probably 150-200 in total, and in the 5 years I've been in this house I've had, I think, 3 bulbs in total fail.
Even if you can find one, good luck finding a fan that supports using a separate fan switch in the wall.
I resorted to buying a “smart” fan, pulling credentials for it, blocking it from all internet access, and controlling it exclusively with Home Assistant and the remote control it came with. These things are so flimsy nowadays and I couldn’t find anything of decent quality.
I just moved into an apartment with ceiling fans made by an austrian manufacturer Globo, one with a broken lampshade, the other with a broken LED module. This was my interaction with them over email about spare parts:
> I have a few questions regarding your products and spare parts:
> - Would it be possible to order a replacement lampshade for this Globo fan and deliver it to [place], [country]? The model is Globo 0350/0351, I have attached a picture to describe the part I need.
> Unfortunately, no—that item is no longer in our product range.
>- Is it possible to order other spare parts, like LED modules for this or other models?
> Unfortunately, no
> - Separately, is the Elina model available with a shorter rod? The ceiling height in the room is approximately 2.6m.
Ask a friend who is an interior designer. There are great fans on the market, but building a quality fan costs money and for whatever reason the walk-in stores don't want to have those, so instead they add baubles to justify a ridiculous mark-up. (Good tell for quality: warranty.)
Remote only controls also a common dealbreaker for me that’s become the norm. We went with no light and switch plate controls (no remote but more difficult install) for the fans in our new build.
I lived in an apartment where two ceiling fan lights went out, and when I told the management, they replaced the entire fans, explaining that the lightbulb cannot be changed. Wtf bro
The only reason I have a fan with a light in it is because it came with the house. Otherwise, once they both die (one already has) they are coming out and never being replaced.
So glad to see this as the top comment and to see this highlighted in the article:
> These fixtures are also revolutionary in that they are extremely cheap in the short run – many of these fans cost under $200 – but expensive in the long rung, as the LEDs usually cannot be replaced, causing the whole apparatus to be thrown away.
A few years ago we had a relatively small pendant lamp (I think there were like 6 or so hanging lights total) over a stairwell that we really liked. It was installed by the previous owners just before we moved in, and about 7-8 years later 2 of the lamps died (not sure if it was the actual LED or just the electronics like another sibling comment mentioned). We were a bit aghast when we got an electrician and he said the only reasonable thing to do would be to replace the entire chandelier.
It's just so ironic how LEDs were supposed to be the "environmental" choice yet they were just another tool for our disposable economy.
I had to replace the light fixture in our kitchen last week. It was a pseudo track lighting setup that I had installed shortly after we bought in 2021. Two of the six LEDs burned out and are of course unreplaceable.
I replaced it with something similar in aesthetics but twice the price, including replaceable LEDs (GU10).
As a side note: replacing a light fixture is mostly easier than I expected except that you need a couple zip ties on hand to keep the new fixture close to the installation site while you attach the wires. Also, wire nuts are miserable and you should use lever nuts instead (check Home Depot).
My biggest issue is that a lot of them have cheap power supplies with terrible PWM, so they hurt my eyes. So my nightmare is basically finding a nice place to rent and realizing they put all these cheap fixtures in and then I can't spend more than like an hour in the house without feeling like someone is stabbing my retinas.
Most fan lights have the e12 candelabra base, these led bulbs end to fail quite often, even in open fixtures. Look for fans with the e26 base the bulbs will last a lot longer.
The LED light in my refrigerator died. I tried looking up replacements, and discovered that there aren't any, because "the LED lights have a lifespan longer than the rest of the refrigerator."
Lots of manufacturers are simplifying assembly design by making the lights non-replaceable much like phone manufacturers glued their batteries in. Fewer clips / screws / gaskets / sockets / wires etc.
Of course, the refrigerator model isn't made anymore and probably isn't under warranty.
Since I switched to fully LED about 7 years ago I haven't had to replace a single bulp. Call me naive but I am the kind of person who would buy a nice looking non replaceable LED solution.
donatj · · focus · HN ↗
I was taken aback by how few of the fans had replaceable lightbulbs! In the entire store there were maybe three or four options with a replaceable bulb!
Call me crazy, but a nonreplaceable LED is a complete dealbreaker. I go through so many LED bulbs! I don't know if my electricity is like particularly bad or if that's just normal? The first LED bulb I ever bought (Shout out EarthLED) in 2008 for like $30 is still going strong, but every bulb I buy these days lasts like two years tops.
Anyway, we did not buy a fan.
christophilus · · focus · HN ↗
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cosmicgadget · · focus · HN ↗
sgc · · focus · HN ↗
UnlockedSecrets · · focus · HN ↗
WaitWaitWha · · focus · HN ↗
cmclaughlin · · focus · HN ↗
I’ve looked at a product called Bond that seems to facilitate it. But haven’t yet tried it.
Zircom · · focus · HN ↗
cevn · · focus · HN ↗
zbrozek · · focus · HN ↗
It wasn't that hard; I used gnuradio with an SDR to see what the remotes were sending and just pressed buttons and flipped switches until I figured out what all the bits were. There was no encryption whatsoever.
cmclaughlin · · focus · HN ↗
Gibbon1 · · focus · HN ↗
Things drawing an average of a few hundred microamps while the fan is running. Probably because it's blasting a keep alive packet once a second or so. It does that because a transceiver costs an extra 50 cents.
15155 · · focus · HN ↗
There's no clean mechanism to control a fan's speed in-band on a normal AC wall switch.
simoncion · · focus · HN ↗
What?
Every house I've ever lived in over my many decades of life has had ceiling fans. I've never known one to fail, never known one to be noisy, and never known one to have inadequate power. I've personally installed a couple and know those got wired straight into AC mains power... so unless they have a converter built in, I figure that every ceiling fan I've ever lived with has been AC powered.
Unless you've been working with absolute bottom of the barrel fans (and those fans are worse than I could possibly imagine), this smells like industry propaganda to me.
> There's no clean mechanism to control a fan's speed in-band on a normal AC wall switch.
OP is asking for a normal pull chain or switch... one that's attached to the fan housing, not some doodad that's embedded in the wall and needs to be specially wired into the fan electrics. I've been to the houses of a few friends that have had fans controlled with a handheld wireless controller, and I can confirm that that was -overall- way worse than hauling my ass up to pull a damn chain.
toast0 · · focus · HN ↗
I'm pretty anti remotes and apps for things, but it's pretty handy when my spouse can start the fan from her phone in the middle of the night instead of waking me to go turn it on in the middle of the night.
Our current one isn't too loud and it has a nice range of speeds so you can run it without it getting super wobbly. But overall, I still dislike fans. :p
apothegm · · focus · HN ↗
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15155 · · focus · HN ↗
I should have been more specific - yes, you can "dim" AC fans and it's purely electrical. "Dimming" DC fans and similar switching loads requires detecting shaped pulses, and is really dirty and not something you want to do.
simoncion · · focus · HN ↗
Lowes? Home Depot? Any other reputable, major home appliance store? Where else does one get a ceiling fan? Are you buying yours from Amazon or Ali Express?
coryrc · · focus · HN ↗
But I don't think torque or longevity are actual issues with AC fans. Just efficiency and noise.
15155 · · focus · HN ↗
DC fans don't have the hum, get up to speed faster, etc. They can operate at a far greater range of speeds and still maintain high power output. AC fans operate in a much narrower envelope.
15155 · · focus · HN ↗
Every high-end fan sold today is DC. It's possible that you didn't see the power supply.
> way worse than hauling my ass up to pull a damn chain.
Many people have high ceilings where a pull chain couldn't be humanly reached. Sure, this might work if you have 8' ceilings. Which high-end fans have pull chains?
simoncion · · focus · HN ↗
a) I did a quick search and noticed that Hunter Fans sells many ceiling fans with AC motors at a variety of price points. [0][1] Do you consider what Hunter produces to be entirely mid-to-low-grade? Or are you doing the Scotsman thing where any ceiling fan that doesn't contain a DC motor cannot be high-end?
b) The manufacturer of the fans in my apartment is "Hampton Bay", which are readily available at Home Depot. If Home Depot hasn't fucked up their product categorization, nearly every fan they sell in the SF Bay Area today has an AC motor. [2][3] Given the price, I'd agree that the ones that Home Depot are selling are not high-end fans, but given that the ones in my apartment have given me trouble-free, zero-noise operation for fifteen years and have done the same for previous tenants for who knows how long, I don't see why I'd want a high-end fan.
c) Remember that I said "Every house I've ever lived in over my many decades of life has had ceiling fans. I've never known one to fail...". I've lived in my current place for ~fifteen years now. Even if the fans had been installed new just before I moved in [4] I'm fairly confident that DC-driven ceiling fans were -if available- an extremely high-end option in the US in 2011. Authoritative information is difficult for me to find, but I see weak indications that they didn't really become A Thing until 2020.
[0] <<a href="https://www.hunterfan.com/collections/ceiling-fans-without-lights?filter.p.m.ProductTag.Control=Pull+Chain&filter.p.m.ProductTag.Motor_Type=AC+Motor&filter.p.m.ProductTag.Motor_Type=WhisperWind%C2%AE+AC+Motor&sort_by=manual" rel="nofollow">https://www.hunterfan.com/collections/ceiling-fans-without-l...>
[1] <<a href="https://www.hunterfan.com/collections/ceiling-fans-with-lights?filter.p.m.ProductTag.Control=Pull+Chain&filter.p.m.ProductTag.Motor_Type=AC+Motor&filter.p.m.ProductTag.Motor_Type=WhisperWind%C2%AE+AC+Motor&sort_by=manual" rel="nofollow">https://www.hunterfan.com/collections/ceiling-fans-with-ligh...>
[2] <<a href="https://www.homedepot.com/b/Lighting-Ceiling-Fans/Hampton-Bay/AC/Classic/N-5yc1vZbvlqZp4Z1z0jylqZ1z1yjby?sortorder=desc&sortby=price" rel="nofollow">https://www.homedepot.com/b/Lighting-Ceiling-Fans/Hampton-Ba...>
[3] <<a href="https://www.homedepot.com/b/Lighting-Ceiling-Fans/Hampton-Bay/DC/Classic/N-5yc1vZbvlqZp4Z1z0jylqZ1z1yjdq" rel="nofollow">https://www.homedepot.com/b/Lighting-Ceiling-Fans/Hampton-Ba...>
[4] ...I know how my landlord operates and they absolutely were not. Plus, why would you replace something that's working fine and never breaks?
tiew9Vii · · focus · HN ↗
Technology Connections "Ceiling fans: the simple idea we keep screwing up" YouTube video is interesting. The old old fans had oiled bearing baths and overbuilt motors, extremely overbuilt compared to today standards which means they'll probably keep going forever. If you are nerdy and interested it's worth a watch.
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KWdCqpXB7A" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KWdCqpXB7A
Marsymars · · focus · HN ↗
I went through this pain when I bought ceiling fans a few years ago. Various manufacturers offer switches or remotes you can attach to the wall but that take batteries - the options for actual wired switches are slim. I ended up with a few hardwired Big Ass Fans wall controllers that work pretty well - but their current-gen wall controls are hardwired bluetooth remotes, which is subpar for something that's connected via wire. (And they cost $210/each, which is pretty egregious for a wall switch.)
mauvehaus · · focus · HN ↗
There absolutely is. If you have a fan with a light controlled by separate wall switches, you have two hots running to the fixture. Take one, and leave it unswitched always on to the fixture, and use the second switch (or fan controller) and use it as an input to the controller on the fan. Done.
Unfortunately, I haven't seen this implemented anywhere.
This message brought to you by the hours I've spent annoyed by exactly this misfeature in our new bedroom fan. Fanimation does sell a wall mounted remote that can be wired inline with a switch, so at least there's a single point for master power and a remote you can't lose. Unfortunately, there's a noticeable delay between flipping the switch and the light turning on.
15155 · · focus · HN ↗
This is common, but it's also not uncommon for only one circuit to be wired. The "clean" qualifier is because even if you have that line, you don't have a common DC ground.
> Unfortunately, I haven't seen this implemented anywhere.
Many Z-wave switches use the three-way traveler line for out-of-band signaling (instead of a traditional three-way switch arrangement.) (Homeseer, Inovelli, etc.) This line will communicate dimming, double taps, etc.
tiew9Vii · · focus · HN ↗
There is.
I specifically purchased a Fanco Horizon DC fan as it has an optional physical wall switch which connected to the existing wiring for the fan it was replacing.
The caveat being if you use the wall remote, it's not compatible with the model with built in LED light fixture. This was a non issue for me as wanted to avoid any fan with built in LED light due to when the led panel fails, it'll be extremely difficult to replace vs having independent lights in the room.
I think most DC fans don't support wall remotes because it's cheaper and simpler not to, and provide a remote control instead. It's not a technical issue as you can absolutely find DC fans with wall controllers they are just harder to find.
15155 · · focus · HN ↗
How did it work electrically? This is what I mean by "clean."
tiew9Vii · · focus · HN ↗
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mmooss · · focus · HN ↗
I tried changing channels in the remote but that didn't seem to help much. With the second neighbor, the fans were in my living room and their bedroom. We agreed to control fans in shifts (I turned mine off at night).
It's hard to believe it's just a very unlikely coincidence. Maybe the channels are too few or narrow to be useful? How hard would it be to implement some psuedo-UID?
simoncion · · focus · HN ↗
Are you mad? That would cost low-single-digit pennies per unit!!! </pennypinching_bigco_derision>
pdonis · · focus · HN ↗
mcswell · · focus · HN ↗
mmooss · · focus · HN ↗
That's what I meant when I wrote, "I tried changing channels in the remote but that didn't seem to help much.", and wondered "Maybe the channels are too few or narrow to be useful?".
m463 · · focus · HN ↗
It might be that POE power supplies get hot - I've noticed the POE hats for the raspberry pi need a fan
Kirby64 · · focus · HN ↗
madaxe_again · · focus · HN ↗
Me - I have the exact same bulbs in my off grid property, and in my on-grid property. On grid, it's about 18 months MTBF. Off grid - it's been seven years and I haven't had to replace a single bulb yet. On-grid our power is anywhere between 205 and 235v, often has spikes up to 260+, and has like 99% uptime. Off grid, it's 230v, day in, day out. Grid power is terrible in most places.
adamgordonbell · · focus · HN ↗
I have this issue as well, of burning thru LED lights.
someonebaggy · · focus · HN ↗
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chrismorgan · · focus · HN ↗
Now if only DC wiring and appliances were more common/mature, could possibly drop the “inverter” part altogether. If I were single I’d try more seriously for a full-DC system, but as a married man I’ll probably just stick with everything AC.
comrade1234 · · focus · HN ↗
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15155 · · focus · HN ↗
"LED bulbs" die because they have to rectify 110VAC (hot) into LEDs (hot) into an enclosure that was designed for incandescents.
In a proper enclosure, with cooling (it's a fan), they will actually live their fully-stated lifetime - assuming the fan's upstream power supply makes it.
ajsnigrutin · · focus · HN ↗
But in an "old school" hardware, you'd then replace the bulb and get a new "lifetime" out of it, here you have to throw everything away.
An AC motor has basically nothing inside that can fail (maybe the capactitor, but that can be replaced), and can work for a hundred years and more if properly maintained (mostly cleaned).
On average ~6 hours per day (living room with night owls living there), is ~2000 hours per year... 5 years at 10.000hours expected lifetime for the leds, 10 if the stated lifetime is 20k hours... that's not really that long.
someonebaggy · · focus · HN ↗
Lightbulbs came in sockets because they were meant to fail. First by accident, later intentionally. They were also quite breakable because they were made of glass. LED lights don't have these problems unless they're designed to. Which is the meta-problem - how do you know which ones are planned obsolete?
Forcing an LED system into a lightbulb from factor has quality and cost implications though. A good LED light has a separate power brick inside the enclosure. Which is what you see in these fan lights.
convolvatron · · focus · HN ↗
I would hope that at least some of this would get standardized over time
15155 · · focus · HN ↗
Let me know how the non-replaceable sealed bearing packs in these AC or DC fans fare after 10,000 hours.
In a proper/high-end DC fan, the bearings are failing before any motors or LEDs.
Regardless, in a Big Ass Fans Haiku, the downlight is a completely separate/replaceable module - and it isn't going to fail before the bearings or motor.
Edison screw LED bulbs are the inferior design by every objective measure.
simoncion · · focus · HN ↗
...your AC-powered ceiling fans are failing (or even "just" substantially degrading) after a little under fourteen months? What garbage are you buying?
quickthrowman · · focus · HN ↗
A recessed can or “upside down” ceiling fan globe with an open bottom is technically an enclosed fixture since heat rises.
15155 · · focus · HN ↗
Typically fans with built-in LED downlights are engineered to actually dissipate heat - and they have a much larger area to do it in. Edison-format bulbs are inherently space-constrained.
Youden · · focus · HN ↗
Lights with non-replaceable bulbs can actually be far better, because they can be designed for their environment. Recessed downlights with built-in LEDs for example can thermally couple the LEDs directly to the metal housing, so the heat can be dissipated into the surrounding air, instead of into the recess.
bradknowles · · focus · HN ↗
The only place where this doesn’t happen is in the country of Dubai. Because of national law, lightbulbs sold there are required to have very long lifespans. That’s why there is a world-wide grey market business for taking existing LED lightbulbs apart, snipping off a resistor so that they pull about half the amperage and then putting them back together, and suddenly their lifespan is increased by 10-100x. This is called a “doobie”, after the name of the country. Check out “bigclivedotcom” on YouTube if you want to see this in action.
You will notice this if you buy Philips Ultra Definition bulbs in Dubai, versus the same bulbs sold at the same amount of lumen output from the UK or elsewhere in the world. The “doobie” version has twice as many LED filaments inside, compared to the UK version. Same price, way different life span. Philips is one of the better manufacturers of lightbulbs, and nowhere remotely close to the only one doing this.
With regards to LED light fixtures (ones that don’t allow you to screw in your own bulb), most manufacturers do the same thing. They’re designed to fail early. Who wants light fixture styling that is fifty years old, just because the LED lights inside haven’t failed yet? They want to make you buy new fixtures every couple of years, just like they do for bulbs.
Yes, there are exceptions in both cases. But they are the rare exceptions, not the rule. And if you haven’t studied up on the Phoebus Cartel, you can start with the article on Wikipedia.
Youden · · focus · HN ↗
Dubai isn't a country. It's a city in the United Arab Emirates.
The Dubai bulb isn't some trick Big Lightbulb doesn't want you to know about, it's an engineering tradeoff: lower current on more filaments gives you higher efficiency and lower temperature but at higher cost and with substantially lower light quality (CRI).
You'll find that after EU energy labeling, there are products available to European consumers that well exceed the specifications of the "Dubai" bulbs. Look for EU energy class A. They often come with a 5-year warranty and rated lifespan of 50000 hours. The "Dubai" bulbs were rated for 25000 hours. You'll also find though that they're substantially more expensive and usually don't have a CRI above 90.
Regarding planned obsolescence, in many cases I can believe that a product will fail earlier than it would if designed for longevity. Rather than planned obsolescence, I believe this is simply a result of being cheap, a consequence of the race to the bottom. If you're buying cheap Chinese fixtures for $10, or cheap Chinese bulbs for $2, you're not going to get a high-quality, long-lasting product.
If you want products that last a long time, buy them and use them properly. If you want bright lights, make sure they're adequately cooled. Consider buying lower-voltage fixtures and bulbs so that you can have a separate power supply and don't put the full ~230V to ~3V conversion in a tiny space.
DougN7 · · focus · HN ↗
usefulcat · · focus · HN ↗
There was one time I bought some cheap ones from Amazon, and several of them failed within a few months. There was also an LED bulb in the front porch light (so, outside) that lasted around 10 years, despite being outside and used daily. I had several of that same type and that particular one lasted longer than all of the others, where the others were all inside and not installed upside down. So yeah, it varies.
dylan604 · · focus · HN ↗
Regardless of all of that frustration, thank the gods we no longer have to deal with CFL
buttocks · · focus · HN ↗
aaronbrethorst · · focus · HN ↗
wat10000 · · focus · HN ↗
eszed · · focus · HN ↗
lucumo · · focus · HN ↗
And nowadays you can get E27 LED bulbs for 75 cents at IKEA, which is cheaper than incandescents ever were. Not sure how they managed that, because it sounds insane.
Neikius · · focus · HN ↗
dylan604 · · focus · HN ↗
rcxdude · · focus · HN ↗
dylan604 · · focus · HN ↗
Izkata · · focus · HN ↗
dylan604 · · focus · HN ↗
Your comparison of USB-A to USB-C is nonsensical and does not actually acknowledge the issue of why the existing screw in bulb direct replacement have issues
shawn_w · · focus · HN ↗
bombcar · · focus · HN ↗
Screw-in sockets are more durable and long-lasting than any replacement so-far, most of which have been replaced again (remember those weird fluorescent mini-bulb sockets?).
bluGill · · focus · HN ↗
Well, we can certainly argue with 110 or 220 is a better voltage for a house. It is quite clear that 12 volts is too low.
vel0city · · focus · HN ↗
And it's not like we need to just stop producing Edison socket styles tomorrow. But let's make sane standards today.
OneDeuxTriSeiGo · · focus · HN ↗
At 48VDC you could run 16AWG like 100ft and still be fine as long as the lights pull around 60W or less all together (which works out to ~12 lights on a circuit). And that circuit would only add another ~2W or so in power losses when energized.
That circuit is essentially what power over ethernet does today so you could replace romex with PoE Type 3/Type 4 plenum rated ethernet and it'd be like half the cost.
And if you really want to optimise for losses you could put the switches on the ethernet data line and use that for sensing rather than running the PoE circuit out to each light switch (and then de-energise the PoE circuit when the switches report off). Bonus points in that this would allow you to "reprogram" which light switch controls which circuit without needing to do any re-wiring.
cruffle_duffle · · focus · HN ↗
Spooky23 · · focus · HN ↗
sixtiethutopia · · focus · HN ↗
Mounting options that allow larger LED lights allow you to use lights that are more thermally efficient without sacrificing any replaceability. JIS C 8310 mounts for example.
CDRdude · · focus · HN ↗
I learned recently that Dubai is also the name of the emirate. I don’t have a good understanding of the UAE governmental structure, but the Emirates do seem to have their own governments. Maybe it can be thought of as a country in the same way Scotland can be thought of as a country.
jcranmer · · focus · HN ↗
Also, Dubai is effectively a city-state, as the vast majority of the population of the Emirate lives in the city itself.
Spooky23 · · focus · HN ↗
They aren’t designed to fail, they are designed to work around some predictable model during the warranty and extended warranty period.
Neikius · · focus · HN ↗
Marsymars · · focus · HN ↗
As far as I'm aware, we've got comparable bulbs available in Canada. We've got the Philips 95 CRI ultra definition bulbs and the ultra efficiency bulbs.
The UltraEfficient bulbs seem better-specced than the Dubai bulbs - the standard A19 of the latter is specced for 6W/600 lumen/25k hours at 80 CRI, while the bulbs I can buy at the drug store here are specced for 5W/810 lumen/50k hours at 80 CRI.
HnUser12 · · focus · HN ↗
I also have Nanoleafs that I have had for about six years and so far no issues. They run for about 12 hours a day on most days.
I am in BC,CA. I gotta take apart my lights and see what they are.
kube-system · · focus · HN ↗
The reason most consumer LED bulbs fail early today is because consumers are low-information buyers who make purchase decisions based overwhelmingly on price and secondarily on aesthetics. The typical buyer has no way to accurately judge the actual design longevity of a bulb on the shelf. Yes, bulbs have lifetime ratings, but even if people bother to read them, those ratings in many places are not well regulated and reflect an ideal scenario that oftentimes is not reflective of real-world use.
The sales success of these race-to-the-bottom bulbs has driven higher quality bulbs off of the shelf at most retailers. You can get well designed long-life LED lighting, but you'd need to step up to commercial/industrial options. There are long life bulbs available, but they generally are designed for uses where they are difficult to replace... because in those use cases a high product price can be justified by lower labor costs to maintain their installation... e.g., bulbs for use high up on a structure, factory lighting, continuous use, etc.
The reason Dubai has better bulbs is simply because they have decided to require it. The reason the US has shit bulbs is because Americans love buying $0.80-1.50 light bulbs. The Dubai bulb is an order of magnitude more expensive. This is a hard sell at Walmart. And the TCO of the $0.87 bulbs on Amazon is still less even accounting for early failures if you are a homeowner who is not factoring in labor costs.
grvdrm · · focus · HN ↗
toddmorey · · focus · HN ↗
kube-system · · focus · HN ↗
onlyrealcuzzo · · focus · HN ↗
Operative word here is "can".
wafflemaker · · focus · HN ↗
These lightbulbs, while using less electricity, use much more energy to produce. And I wonder what with their substrates, if that isn't more difficult to recycle too. I'm not sure, and don't want to judge, but if both every efficiency and recycling are harder, then these bulbs aren't really energy and environmentally efficient.
stkdump · · focus · HN ↗
Traditional light bulbs have taught us that lights naturally have to be "consumables". That has been far less true for energy saving lamps (of which I have maybe 2 or 3 still left which I planned to replace by LEDs once they die, but they just won't). As far as I can tell, this isn't at all the case for LEDs.
It's much more likely that lamps and ceiling fans made out of plastic break from accidental physical impact or turn ugly due to natural UV discolorization or similar. And probably most will live on until replaced due to changing tastes.
veunes · · focus · HN ↗
Aurornis · · focus · HN ↗
It also prevents the user from changing the bulb if they want a different color temperature or better CRI. Most of the built-in lights I see are in the 3000-3500K range, which is cooler the warm white I’ve chosen for the house. If I could swap the bulb it would be an easy fix, but if it’s built in then I’m stuck with it.
someonebaggy · · focus · HN ↗
uxp100 · · focus · HN ↗
Aurornis · · focus · HN ↗
A high CRI single color temperature bulb beats them in light quality.
Most people aren’t going to notice, but if you’ve done any work with color, lighting, or photography then the average consumer LED lights feel terrible. They’re mostly blue light with a little bit of other colors to make them appear white to the eye.
BoxOfRain · · focus · HN ↗
harpiaharpyja · · focus · HN ↗
harpiaharpyja · · focus · HN ↗
I wish it caught on to have LED lights powered by a barrel jack DC plug like you have for most electronics. It would be a huge win for longevity. Sure it's not backwards compatible with fixtures designed for light bulbs, but the cases we're discussing here are complete light fixture replacements anyways... The fixture could have a barrel plug that you connect to an inexpensive commodity DC power brick which you then hide away in the ceiling.
mft_ · · focus · HN ↗
dpark · · focus · HN ↗
I’m under the impression at this point that they just do not do well inside can lights. I honestly don’t think the average lifespan is much higher than incandescent in that scenario.
SoftTalker · · focus · HN ↗
simoncion · · focus · HN ↗
This 120v-using USian has had many fail, and if they don't fail by intermittently blinking and flickering [0], they fail by slowly giving me worse and worse and worse headaches [1]. Unless you choose to count the fact that they were technically still emitting light, I've never gotten the rated lifetime out of a screw-in LED bulb.
[0] ...as all of the ACE Hardware ones did...
[1] ...as all of the dimmable [2] CREE ones did...
[2] These were never attached to a dimmer. At the time, the advice was to get LED bulbs rated for use in a dimmer, as it was believed that that would get you higher-quality construction.
rahimnathwani · · focus · HN ↗
I bought some high CRI LED bulbs from some place recommended in an HN post.
ButlerianJihad · · focus · HN ↗
Being that you're unwilling to name the vendor or brand, or even a proper link... it doesn't seem a rousing recommendation. Is it an affiliate link, I wonder.
rahimnathwani · · focus · HN ↗
We live in San Francisco so there are only a few days a year when we need a fan. Like this weekend.
From my order history:
wheels · · focus · HN ↗
ryandrake · · focus · HN ↗
Gigachad · · focus · HN ↗
adrian_b · · focus · HN ↗
LED bulbs can be designed to live almost forever, but many of them are not designed so, for savings in cost, but the selling price may be poorly correlated with the manufacturing cost.
I have about two dozens Philips LED bulbs (4000 K color temperature and equivalent with old 100 W incandescent bulbs, i.e. 1500 lumen) of the kind that fits in legacy Edison sockets for incandescent bulbs. They were bought more than 15 years ago and all continue to work perfectly fine. I did not have to replace any of them.
Nonetheless, if I would buy today new LED bulbs, even of the same brand, I think that the chances are slim that they will be equally reliable.
In the past, you could rely on the brand of a product to inform you about the expected quality, but today buying any product with a certain brand provides no guarantee that the quality will be the same as for an apparently identical product bought one year earlier.
Neikius · · focus · HN ↗
Frenchgeek · · focus · HN ↗
hgoel · · focus · HN ↗
ls-a · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
Gravityloss · · focus · HN ↗
AustinDev · · focus · HN ↗
dahart · · focus · HN ↗
Oh take a look at the recall list of any car company in the world and you will find they all make simple mistakes, constantly. Probably a consequence of price pressure at all times. While cars are lasting longer than they used to on average, I feel like it’s been getting worse in some ways with cars lately turning into computers and good car/engine companies lately turning into bad tech companies without that much tech experience who outsource important parts and do lousy integration. And yeah, building assemblies or modules with non-replaceable parts is becoming more common.
tlavoie · · focus · HN ↗
Case 1: Ford Taurus wagon, my wife calls in a panic because it's blowing all hot air, and the dash is awash in lights. I get her to shut it off, wait a bit, and limp the last few km home. Turns out the serpentine belt goes around a pulley, the center bolt of which is screwed into the engine block. When the bearing started to go, there was friction, and the belt spun the bolt out and it fell off. It could have been reverse threaded, like one pedal on every bike, ever. But no. If it had, the bearing would screech, we'd get it replaced, instead of just silently falling out with potentially catastrophic consequences.
Case 2: Chevy Venture van, where the lights on the rear door all stopped working. Turned out the wiring harness for them ran through this accordion hose at the top, plugged into the bottom of a rain gutter across the top. So as soon as that hose broke its seal with the trough, the whole harness is shorted.
Funny, I have never experienced this sort of stupidity in the Toyotas and Hondas that have followed these last couple American-branded vehicles.
wat10000 · · focus · HN ↗
Marsymars · · focus · HN ↗
That is abnormal compared to my experience. I have a lot of bulbs in my house between recessed lights, fixtures and lamps, probably 150-200 in total, and in the 5 years I've been in this house I've had, I think, 3 bulbs in total fail.
illusive4080 · · focus · HN ↗
I resorted to buying a “smart” fan, pulling credentials for it, blocking it from all internet access, and controlling it exclusively with Home Assistant and the remote control it came with. These things are so flimsy nowadays and I couldn’t find anything of decent quality.
dsego · · focus · HN ↗
> I have a few questions regarding your products and spare parts:
> - Would it be possible to order a replacement lampshade for this Globo fan and deliver it to [place], [country]? The model is Globo 0350/0351, I have attached a picture to describe the part I need.
> Unfortunately, no—that item is no longer in our product range.
>- Is it possible to order other spare parts, like LED modules for this or other models?
> Unfortunately, no
> - Separately, is the Elina model available with a shorter rod? The ceiling height in the room is approximately 2.6m.
> Available only in the specified length
JumpCrisscross · · focus · HN ↗
Ask a friend who is an interior designer. There are great fans on the market, but building a quality fan costs money and for whatever reason the walk-in stores don't want to have those, so instead they add baubles to justify a ridiculous mark-up. (Good tell for quality: warranty.)
RajT88 · · focus · HN ↗
conductr · · focus · HN ↗
frollogaston · · focus · HN ↗
FlowingRiver · · focus · HN ↗
hn_throwaway_99 · · focus · HN ↗
> These fixtures are also revolutionary in that they are extremely cheap in the short run – many of these fans cost under $200 – but expensive in the long rung, as the LEDs usually cannot be replaced, causing the whole apparatus to be thrown away.
A few years ago we had a relatively small pendant lamp (I think there were like 6 or so hanging lights total) over a stairwell that we really liked. It was installed by the previous owners just before we moved in, and about 7-8 years later 2 of the lamps died (not sure if it was the actual LED or just the electronics like another sibling comment mentioned). We were a bit aghast when we got an electrician and he said the only reasonable thing to do would be to replace the entire chandelier.
It's just so ironic how LEDs were supposed to be the "environmental" choice yet they were just another tool for our disposable economy.
aaronbrethorst · · focus · HN ↗
I replaced it with something similar in aesthetics but twice the price, including replaceable LEDs (GU10).
As a side note: replacing a light fixture is mostly easier than I expected except that you need a couple zip ties on hand to keep the new fixture close to the installation site while you attach the wires. Also, wire nuts are miserable and you should use lever nuts instead (check Home Depot).
winrid · · focus · HN ↗
milleramp · · focus · HN ↗
zdragnar · · focus · HN ↗
Lots of manufacturers are simplifying assembly design by making the lights non-replaceable much like phone manufacturers glued their batteries in. Fewer clips / screws / gaskets / sockets / wires etc.
Of course, the refrigerator model isn't made anymore and probably isn't under warranty.
veunes · · focus · HN ↗
herbst · · focus · HN ↗