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Comment by ksenzee | Hacker News Reader

Not all the opposition to the light bulbs regulation was corruption and posturing. Some of it was quite reasonable objections from consumers along the lines of "hey, I buy that product, and there's no good substitute at a reasonable price point." I doubt consumers really care that much about microbeads, which makes them a lot easier to ban.

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Yeah, CFL bulbs are icky blue flickering garbage, and the LED bulbs I've used (Hue), while otherwise fine, don't support my dimmer correctly. Using the Hue app isn't as easy as walking over to the light switch, and they won't work anyways, unless I rip out the dimmer - I ended up putting the Hue bulbs in the bathroom, which is at least fun for a joke.

Incandescent bulbs are just a better experience for me right now. I don't think there are any such advantages for microbeads.

There are LED bulbs on the market that have great compatibility with all dimmers. I hope that market forces eventually weed out all of the less compatible LED bulbs. At that point, LED bulbs should be truly interchangeable with incandescents for lighting (heat generation, not so much).

I've got a few of the good ones for dimmers, I have however had a problem with them still. They're too efficient, all of the dimmers I have don't got low enough to be able to actually get them dark at the low end. They're all still fairly bright and I've already gone to bulbs rated at half of what I had originally. I think it's just something that's going to take a bit to actually catch up properly.

True, but it depends. I bought a bunch (16?) of top-end Soraa MR16 bulbs at about $30 apiece to replace the halogens in my new house. This is not something everyone can easily afford.

Of course, it turns out that even though they have great dimmer compatibility, they're not 100% compatible with my magnetic dimmers. I have to trim them to 80% of peak; if I try to run them over 80%, the transformer resets and the bulb turns off. Sometimes they strobe for a few seconds when they're running at max brightness, I haven't solved that issue yet.

So unless I want to replace every transformer at ~$60 a pop or more (plus labor costs if not doing it yourself), plus likely a bunch of switches.. It's either $100 per bulb to go LED, or suffer with not-quite-perfect replacements.

Can't say I've had any experience with magnetic dimmers, but the cheaper dimmer compatible LEDs seem work fine on Triac dimmers.

I think often the answer is "you won't know until you try it". Forward-phase, reverse-phase, symmetrical... Low voltage in particular makes things more complicated.

http://www.ledsmagazine.com/articles/print/volume-9/issue-6/... http://www.lutron.com/en-US/Education-Training/Pages/LCE/Dim...

Why can't the LED controller circuits come with a calibration feature that detects (with user help) the minimum level the dimmer will support, and makes that the all-black point?

Partly because the usual minimum level the dimmer will support is off. That is the all black point :)

I know what you mean though. It'd be nice if there was some way to adjust them to change the brightness curve to match what you'd expect. It's one reason I'm considering something like the Phillips Hue bulbs instead of dimmers in the future despite the cost difference.

NOW there are LEDs on the market. I'm a bit of bulb person and have tried all sorts of LEDs. The other problem is that many of the LED bulbs used to look bad if they were not in a shade. Fortunately that situation has also improved.

There are LED bulbs designed to work in dimmer switches. I don't remember the model, but I had one that worked with my dimmer switch in an old 1970s era building I lived in.

My current apartment came with CFLs and a dimmer switch. They work well with the dimmer. It's a pretty new building though, so perhaps the switch was designed with them in mind. It might be worth looking at new switches to see if they help with LEDs.

I installed the dimmer myself after moving into this apartment somewhat recently, so it's a pretty recent model, whatever that means for a light switch.

> and there's no good substitute at a reasonable price point

Not to mention that the CFL bulbs are poisonous and contain mercury. If they break, they're hazardous.

This is a huge point. When I was young, I broke many lightbulbs playing sports in my basement. Regular old incandescent lightbulbs were perfect for this scenario - cheap to replace, not chemically hazardous if broken, and not turned on all that often so the power consumption wasn't a big deal.

Put in some LEDs and you'll never break one again (or have to change it!).

LEDs are great, and I'm happy they're gaining popularity and their price is coming down. But I'd rather have kids break a 20 cent lightbulb instead of a $5 bulb. Still, a lot of LED bulbs now seems to come in plastic casing, so perhaps they would be more durable - good point!

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