Comment by hedora | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hedora | Hacker News Reader

We just put in lighting for an entire house. Here's what we learned:

- Even high-end bulbs flicker badly when dimmed. Maybe flickering all the LEDs in the array with different phases would fix this.

- It's illegal to sell bulbs that buzz in California. All our custom fixtures buzz. If you buy high end dimmers, they buzz less, but still buzz. More enforcement of consumer protection laws is needed. Manufacturers should be liable for parts and labor and upgrades if their fixture buzzes with a dimmer that's licensed for sale in the state. Dimmers should be regulated for compatibility with a least-common-denominator LED.

- The current status quo is to buy lights that are brighter than needed, then dim them (California mandates installation of dimmers). This makes no sense. There should be an option to do a lighting simulation of the house, and then use the results of that to remove the dimmer requirements for high-efficiency, properly-sized installs. This helps solve the flickering and buzzing issue.

- The bulbs are all high CRI and matched color temp. They mostly maintain CRI and temp across the dimmable range, but other bulbs I've dealt with in the past did not. Bulb CRI should be rated at the worst-case dimming level.

- There should be a maximum permittible latency for power on of bulbs, again, across the dimming range. Some of our lights take 2 seconds to power on. (Coincidentally, these are probably the most marked up of the fixtures, and the only ones bought from a non-Ikea brick and mortar that operates in California. (These are also the loudest of the buzzers).

- Lutron fixtures are terrible. The smarter the fixture, the worse it is. Many are not fit for purpose. Everyone we've talked to say they're the best available. They should be liable for replacement parts and labor, and more consumer protection laws are needed (around minimum time to power on, correctness of movement / humidity detction, and standardization of the dimming current range, and the user interface of what happens if you push buttons / flip switches. The latter is not standard, even within Lutron's line)

> Even high-end bulbs flicker badly when dimmed.

Dimming is crap. I'll go so far as to say it causes subconscious anxiety and stress — obviously negating any positive effect the light brings.

I rotate my hands quickly between my eyes and the lights when I'm at a store to look for strobing when dimmed. Any strobing and I am not on board.

> Maybe flickering all the LEDs in the array with different phases would fix this.

I doubt it. A truly "smart" light would, IMHO, cluster LED's in parallel banks and when asked to dim, disable whole banks.

The cost then is in the controller within the bulb but I expect this would be cheap enough.

Then of course dimming happens in "steps" but I would take that trade-off for non-flicker.

> Dimming is crap.

Agreed LED dimming is crap, but incandescent is not so bad. Mainly because it dims toward red, simulating the day -> sunset -> fire transition. Apart from flickering, my gripe with LED is that it stays a constant color which looks unnatural even with a 2700K bulb.

That's interesting: trying to track the color temperature curve as the bulb dims.

FWIW, I just replaced a lot of bulbs in my house with Philips Hue white ambience bulbs because I'm very sensitive to flickering and we dim a lot. So far, no buzz or flicker. They are expensive, and so is everything in their ecosystem, but I finally have a light I like dimming.

My experience with the Philips Hue was: not bright enough. That was admittedly years ago when they were the new hotness. Perhaps they are brighter now.

Also, I don't want "an app for that" with my lighting.

They recently announced new, brighter lights.

Re the app: then don't use it, just program the hub directly yourself - see https://developers.meethue.com/.

It all runs locally on the hub - I've set it up for auto-day/night colour switching, plus manual override via a switch. I also used a light meter to more precisely tune the colour temperature ;)

I don't know how bright you want them to be. But I've got the 75 watt equivalents and they are usually to bright for us, we dim them slightly.

Ahh. We're talking about different market segments.

The highest performing bulbs we have are also the cheapest. We went with hyperikon bulbs, IKEA pendant fixtures and mid to low end lutron dimmers in some rooms.

Those are totally fine. In hindsight, I'd probably have gone with 100% IKEA pendant fixtures that use standard bulbs and populate them with hyperikon bulbs. Sadly, hyperikon apparently went out of business. Thanks, Covid! Surely some other company makes decent dumb bulbs these days. No idea who, though.

The problems start once you buy modern fixtures, where the LEDs and power converters are integrated into the fixture itself.

this is actually immensely helpful as someone in the middle of a renovation.

We're planning on having a combination of 'direct' light from bulbs and cans as well as dimmable (and tunable color temp) LED strip lighting that throws indirectly into the ceiling. The frustration with residential dimmers (really all residential versions of things) is so true.

Before we moved out for demolition we did some mockup testing and were just blown away by the effect of adding light to spaces. The house already has a ton of windows but the mockups had what would be considered and 'unreasonably high' amount of light by most design standards. That being said, we were so happy with the results, especially in the morning and early afternoon.

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