Lee.org

Please help me find household lighting dimming that doesn’t flicker or hum! Please email or comment if you can help me.

I am sensitive to light bulb flicker (previously) including all the new LED tail lights on cars and household light bulbs and dimmers that use flickering (PWM or Pulse Width Modulation) to control their brightness.

It is a very real problem. While driving, it is extremely distracting; when I turn my head quickly, LED tail lights look like police flasher lights. And at home, a light bulb that is set to dim is soothing on my eyes except for the constant BZZZZZZ!! of the light flickering. Not fun.

Lights don’t have to flicker. They flicker because companies take shortcuts that make their lighting less expensive. In brief, instead of smoothly decreasing how much power the bulb gets, they turn the bulb on and off really quickly, fast enough so most people don’t even notice it. But I notice it. :-(. You might want to look up the concept of flicker fusion threshold for more reading.

I am willing to pay more for good lighting that doesn’t flicker. The problem is, I can’t figure out who to pay. Can you help me find household lighting dimming that doesn’t flicker or hum?

Here is a letter I wrote to Lutron (one of the biggest lighting control suppliers in the US) the other day and their (very sad) response:

I am looking to outfit my home with flicker-free and noise-free dimming lighting controls. Can you help?

I have tried using the Credenza Lamp Dimmer with an incandescent bulb and the flicker at low brightness doesn’t work for me. I have also tried using in-wall dimmers with LED lighting and both the flicker and noise of the system was bothersome. It is clear that the bulb and dimmer must be well-matched but I have yet to find a reliable way of matching them.

Here is Lutron’s response:

Application Group appsgroup@lutron.com via lee.org
Lee,
We really cannot tell you what to use. The reason for that you can get flickering or buzzing noise from any of those lamp types. And it has to do with the quality and compatibility of the dimmer with the bulbs. You really won’t know what you get till you have wired it up together. With incandescent if you have poor quality bulb you could get buzzing noise. With CFL these bulbs are typically a noisy bulb and you have to match the correct bulb with dimmer. And even with that they are still noisy. And with LEDs you really have to match up the dimmer with the bulbs and you may still get noise and flickering and that may be normal. It really is a trial and error. We have a list of CFL and LED brand and model of bulbs that we have tested and can say will work with our dimmers but that does not mean that you won’t get flickering or even buzzing noise from the dimmer or bulbs.

Sincerely,
Oscar
Lutron Tech Support
Lutron Electronics, Inc.
www.lutron.com
OM

What is your favorite daily mail?

Here’s mine:

Creators Project. New cutting edge art. I get the weekly mailer

The Daily Digg. News and stories.

SomeEcards. Humor

I saw projection mapping at an Amon Tobin concert at the Greek Theater in Berkeley in late 2012 and it was amazing. This is the next, mind blowing level! Real Time Projection Mapping on Faces!

Via Creators Project

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGI4oz1QnZo

Purnail is a toenail product to treat nail fungus. It’s active ingredient, undecylinic acid is available for about 1/40th the price at your local CVS!

For example, $13 for 1 ounce of 25% undecylinic acid in Fungicure vs $60 for 0.3 ounces of 10% undecylinic acid in Purnail.

Purnail is a scam. I’d like to give you better news but modern science doesn’t have a cure-all for nail fungus. Feel free to browse my site for ongoing real discussion about nail fungus cures.

Short form: orals sometimes (50%?) work but they can be toxic to your liver. Any topical has a low (10%?) chance of success at curing. Some people say one formulation has done better for them than others. Don’t hold your breath and don’t spend a ridiculous amount of money on treatments: if it seems to good to be true, it is. Keeping your infection at bay with an inexpensive topical might be the best you can do.

Purnail is almost definitely just a rebrand of another product made with the same ingredients with the same bottles and the same marketing. Take a look at the two product pages, do you notice any similarities?

What I learned on Imgur today:
Slow motion close up of a steel cutting tool

Those little splotchy marks on the metal being cut are grains. The boundaries between grains is where cutting is preferred. Notice how the tool doesn’t do the cutting, rather the material being cut creates a dead zone in front of the tool and does the cutting, increasing tool life. When this buildup breaks away, a burr is formed. Also, the shavings that are formed during cutting tell a lot about the quality of cut and if the rake angle, speed or feed of the cutting must be altered.

Last night I was a little surprised that the first hit I found for the Obama speech was NPR but I pressed on. Today I read that none of the big networks,  ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX carried the speech. Of course, it makes sense they’d all pass on the presidential speech since it’s sweeps month, there’s a lot of very important fiction that needs watching this month.

It is now official, network television is now irrelevant.

It’s been said that the revolution will not be televised. I didn’t think this would be the reason why.

Obama’s Speech on Immigration tonight is pretty important. Watch it.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/11/20/365561535/watch-president-obamas-speech-on-immigration

Registration for December’s Oakland Workshop Weekend is now open!

Join us on December 6 & 7 to solder, sing, make ice cream, learn about mechanisms, program in JavaScript, Python, Clojure, or visually, remotely control an Arduino and more. At Workshop Weekend, a flat $40 admission gets you as many workshops as you can handle!

Register online by Wednesday, November 19 and save $10 with code EARLYBIRD1795.Select your workshops at http://workshopweekend.net/catalog

For families coming to Workshop Weekend together, we’re keeping our $10 discount for all parent admissions with the purchase of two or more admissions for children (under 18). Sign up on the same account and the discount will be automatically applied.

We have 30 workshops to choose from at this Workshop Weekend — a few old favorites are coming back alongside a number of new electronics, papercraft, and wearables workshops — and more! Join us for:

• Learn Arduino!
• Learn to Solder!
• Carousel Circuits
• Hands-on Math: Knots and Braids
• Cake Decorating
• Personal Finance
• Learn to Sing
• Intro to Clojure
• Moving Mechanisms
• LED Ornaments
• Felt Critters
• Electroluminescent Wire
• Wearable Tech: Bliplace
• 3D Copy your Face
• Flappy Bird in 45 Minutes
• Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream

…and many more!

Register and select workshops online at http://workshopweekend.net/catalog

I hope we’ll see you in December!

Cheers,
J.D., Gil, and the team at Workshop Weekend

Reminder to self: cancel my GoDaddy.com account. Their long history of misogynistic ads belittle women.

My Godaddy account is paid up through most of 2015. I’ll be switching in a few months.

I made this decision in 2012 and will follow through with it. You might want to do the same.

Here’s something you won’t be able to unsee: The next time you are driving at night behind a car, flit your eyes left and right. The brake lights of the car in front of you might cast long streaks of flickering on your retinas. Many of the new LED lights are more like strobe lights, flicker in an insanely distracting way… on the highway and in people’s homes.

LED string lights are the worst. In shopping centers and restaurants and on Christmas trees. Just move your eyes around a little and ZOWIE, you’re in a disco with streaks of strobe lights all around you! I’ve heard that it actually causes epileptic seizures in a small percentage of people. For me, it just makes me hate you and your incessant strobe lights in my face. I’ll admit that the effect isn’t too bad as long as I keep my head and eyes perfectly still. :-(

Can’t tell if your light is flickering? Try this: close one eye and wiggle your finger in front of the bulb. You’ll see the strobe effect very clearly.

“Oh Lee, you’re exaggerating / crazy / over-sensitive!”

Actually, I’m not. Try googling “LED flicker“. Let me point out to some sources

Here’s an IEEE workgroup formed to work on the problem of high-brightness flickering LED bulbs and their 2010 work-in-progress document whose purpose is “…to describe health implications of flicker”

This article in LEDs Magazine promotes good techniques for manufacturers to use in making good LED lighting because “…people are beginning to pay more attention to long-term exposure under higher-frequency flicker in the 70—160-Hz range. Such flicker can cause malaise, headaches, and visual impairment.”
(LEDs Magazine April/May 2014, Proper driver design eliminates LED light strobe flicker)

Here’s a guy on Youtube that tests LED bulbs on his own time. One of his tests is to check whether bulbs flicker. Some of the big brands flicker, some of the no-name brands don’t. Ugh, there are no standards.

Here’s a snippet from a US Department of Energy publication “Low-frequency flicker can induce seizures in people with photosensitive epilepsy, and the flicker in magnetically-ballasted fluorescent lamps used for office lighting has been linked to headaches, fatigue, blurred vision, eyestrain, and reduced visual task performance for certain populations. Flicker can also produce hazardous phantom array effects–which may lead to distraction when driving at night, for example–or stroboscopic effects, which may result in the apparent slowing or stopping of moving machinery in an industrial setting.”

etc etc etc…