this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
1192 points (98.7% liked)

Technology

61022 readers
5031 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s
enu
technopagan
L4s
1192
Incandescent light bulbs are officially banned in the U.S. (www.digitaljournal.com)
submitted 2 years ago by L4s to c/technology
320 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] WetBeardHairs 11 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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.

[–] cerevant 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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.

[–] AndrewZabar 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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.

[–] cerevant 6 points 2 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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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.

[–] cerevant 1 points 2 years ago

Well, LED lights are half-wave rectifiers that light up, so you wouldn’t add one. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a half wave rectifier referred to as a bridge rectifier.

[–] AndrewZabar 2 points 2 years ago

Ok, I get the gist. Thanks!

[–] Aux 1 points 2 years ago

FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER!!!11