
Oh right, about those LEDs - BuuQu9hu
http://xiphmont.livejournal.com/70696.html
======
yuubi
> "What do you mean? You can have any bin mentioned on the spec sheet."

Reminds me of the ancient story of the electronics manufacturer that sourced
some resistors or whatever from Japan for the first time. The spec called for
max 1% bad parts or whatever. When the parts arrived, the box contained a
packet with a note that said something like "Thanks for your order. We are
unsure why you want 1% defective parts, but for your convenience, we have
packaged them separately."

~~~
jkbyc
"An IBM plant in Windsor, Ontario, is said to have ordered a shipment of
components from a Japanese firm, specifying an acceptable quality level(AQL)
of three defective components per 10,000 shipped. In a covering letter
accompanying the shipment, the Japanese company apologized and said it had met
with great difficulty producing these defective parts, and had been unable to
understand why they were required. They wrote: “We Japanese have hard time
understanding North American business practices, but the three defective parts
per 10,000 have been included and are wrapped separately. Hope this pleases.”

This seems to be the oldest reference: Chris Taylor, (1995) "The case for
customer satisfaction", Managing Service Quality: An International Journal,
Vol. 5 Iss: 1, pp.11 - 14
[http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/09604529510081...](http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/09604529510081767?src=recsys&journalCode=msq)
but behind a paywall

...it is referred to for example by
[http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-287-429-0_3...](http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-287-429-0_37)
"The Effectiveness of Service Quality by Jabatan Agama Islam Wilayah
Persekutuan (JAWI) Towards Customer Satisfaction"

~~~
sp332
Funny, I heard it as AOL buying modems. Instead of a complaint, they got a
shipment in two parts with a note: "We don't know why you wanted defective
parts, but for your convenience, we packaged them separately."

------
kosma
This is exactly my experience. Cheap Chinese LEDs seem like a bargain until
you discover they are not spec'd beyond "they emit light". The steep price you
pay for CREE and other brand-name LEDs is for a product that actually lives up
to its datasheet.

~~~
ryao
I have gotten some good Chinese filament LED bulbs from eBay, but it is very
hit or miss. I did not analyze them for the quality of the output beyond "it
looks good to me". The total cost is lower than CREE and other brands even if
I consider that I had to throw away half of them due to a poorly manufactured
batch that had an audible electric whine and failures of the higher output
models after a month or two.

If you are willing to buy multiple times what you need to make up for the
quality issues, you can get a decent deal with the cheap Chinese ones. The
ones that whined and the ones that did not whine had a fabric covering the
wires at the base of the bulbs. If I had some way of knowing which eBay
merchants were selling those, I would get a much better deal.

By the way, Nichia is a Japanese company.

~~~
jdietrich
Buy cheap, buy twice. Even if you get a good one, no-brand Chinese bulbs just
don't last. They're badly engineered and use cast-off LED chips that nobody
else wants. I made the mistake of buying some Chinese LED lamps for my utility
rooms and outbuildings; they all died within 18 months.

Philips and Osram LED lamps just aren't that expensive. Cheaping out just
isn't worth the hassle.

~~~
foofoo55
"Buy-twice" methods like this further convince me that a stronger incentive is
needed to ensure such junk is not manufactured but is integrated into what
many are calling a "circular economy". I wish it was the responsibility of the
manufacturers to take back all failed and end-of-life products and recycle the
materials such that their waste output was minimal. Likewise, the I wish the
wholesaler and retailers were responsible to take back the product from the
purchaser or consumer and send it back upstream (and not drop it in the
dumpster like Costco does).

~~~
azinman2
I wish there was some drop dead easy way for this. Like you just hand these
items to the postman or the like. Dead batteries, outdated electronics, broken
electronics, etc.

------
nickhalfasleep
The growth in efficiency has been spectacular. Every other source will be
retired in the face of LED greater efficiency, solid state design, and lower
cost.

The only light more efficient than an LED is an LED that is turned off.
Demand-based lighting, network controlled is the next step.

Cree already sells Power-over-Ethernet powered and controlled light fixtures
to do this: [http://www2.cree.com/smartcast-landing-
page](http://www2.cree.com/smartcast-landing-page)

~~~
oftenwrong
It should be considered that LEDs are now being used for lighting in
situations where there used to be no lighting at all [1]. The potential energy
savings we could realise with LEDs may be negated by an increase in lighting
itself. This would be an example of Jevons' paradox [2].

[1] [http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/10/led-light-
cfl-b.html](http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/10/led-light-cfl-b.html)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons's_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons's_paradox)

~~~
dpark
> _LEDs are now being used for lighting in situations where there used to be
> no lighting at all_

While LED lights have certainly allowed for new applications, that article is
nearly 10 years old and the future predicted has not come to pass. There has
been no wave of LED-encrusted buildings. The roads don't glow. My bookshelves
and whatnot don't either.

If LEDs deliver a 10x improvement in energy use, we'll have to use 10x as much
light to offset the energy gains. How likely is that?

~~~
Obi_Juan_Kenobi
> My bookshelves and whatnot don't either.

Speak for yourself :)

I agree, though; I use a lot more lights around the house, but they're small
and very directed for their purpose. Many of them are controlled by cheap,
ubiquitous PIR modules so that they're only on when needed, with absurdly low
quiescent current. I use less light overall because it's only where I need it
to be, and I find this to be much nicer on my eyes, and generally pleasing for
the evening. The added efficiency is just a bonus on top of all that. Many are
undervolted, as well, so should last a very long time; the main concern is the
lifespan and quality of the power supplies.

~~~
grogenaut
Got any recommendations for the LEDs, power sources, or PIRs?

------
agumonkey
For the padders interested in modding CCFL to LEDs, he wrote
[https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/thinkpad/led-
backlight.sht...](https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/thinkpad/led-
backlight.shtml)

------
AceJohnny2
Speaking of LED lighting, I've been meaning to upgrade my living space
lighting. The one killer feature I'm looking for is color temperature control:
I want to be able to adjust between "soft white" (2700K whitepoint) and
"daylight" (5000K) whitepoint.

Basically, what Philips Hue "White Ambiance" [1] bulbs offer. Are there any
alternatives?

[1] [http://www2.meethue.com/en-us/productdetail/philips-hue-
whit...](http://www2.meethue.com/en-us/productdetail/philips-hue-white-
ambiance-extension-bulbs)

~~~
andrewmunsell
I am currently using Osram Lightify bulbs with my SmartThings hub (no separate
Osram hub required unless you want to update the firmware), and I have both
tunable white and tunable white+rgb bulbs that work great.

~~~
cgvgffyv
Santa can I please have a separate HN for those who buy lightbulbs with
firmware to post to?

Jesus.

------
sliken
Have to say the evolution in LEDs has been pretty amazing.

First we had terrible yellow fragile maglites that requires several large C or
D cells for anything approaching reasonable brightness and battery life. I had
my small maglite die at the bottom of the grand canyon, and the top of MT
shasta. After trying to replace a tiny incandescent bulb in the dark in
challenging conditions I decided I was switching to LEDs, no matter what the
compromise was.

Similar monitors had broad spectrum CFLs that generated UV, converted it to
white light with a phosphor then threw away most of the light and filtered it
down to approximately R, G, and B. The resulting color accuracy was terrible.

LEDs started out expensive, not very bright, and mostly red. Migrated to
different colors, I think blue was the most expensive.

Finally white LEDs started showing up in tiny AA or AAA flashlights with 50-75
lumens. About as bright as the 2xAA maglite that were huge in comparison.

Color coverage got better, life got better, efficiency started ramping up.

100-200 lumen flashlights started to become more common. 18650s that have
substantially more power and a more LED friendly 3.7V started to appear.

Year or two later 400-500 lumens were common, efficiency kept increasing.
Started to appear as backlights, car dash boards, brake lights, etc.

CFLs switched from wasting 95% of the light to ditching the white phosphors
for a mix of RGB phosphors. The savings were twofold and multiplicative. The
first was generating UV -> RGB directly with mix of RGB phosphors in the CFL.
Then additionally instead of narrow notch filters that didn't pass much light
they switched to very wide spectrum filters that passed most of the light. So
a red pixel didn't need to be within 1% of red, but instead just block 99% of
G and B. Since the RGB phosphors emitted very close to the ideal frequencies
the color accuracy increased. Monitor power requirements dropped
significantly.... only to be killed off by more efficient LEDs.

Things doubled again, small ish flashlights much like the 2xAA maglites except
fatter. 1000 lumens hitting $50-$100 points points. Now throwing a usable
light 300 Meters isn't unusual from a small hand held light. Depending on your
use recharging once a month isn't unusual. 4-or 5 light levels are common, and
runtimes of 1.5 hours (max light) to 100 or more hours (on low) aren't
uncommon.

So now macbook pros that are extremely thin (greatly helped by very tiny LEDs
for backlights) get 10 hours of battery light with 500 nit screens with
wonderful color accuracy. Similarly even 55" LED screens are crazy high
resolution and crazy cheap. The cost per pixel doesn't seem on that crazy
different than the cost per transistor.

Sadly like Moore's law, LEDs aren't getting much better anymore. For the first
time I purchased a new flashlight after 2-3 years... and the best I could find
was zero % brighter 8-(.

It's not just computers that have been improving like crazy.

~~~
pilif
_> I think blue was the most expensive._

yes. Which is why to this day so many "cool" accessories insist on blue LEDs
as a power indicator making them completely useless whenever too much light
would actually be harmful to the experience (like the Playstation Power LED,
or any other power LED on devices you have in your bedroom).

The blue LEDs feel so incredibly bright compared to all other LED types to the
point where they become very distracting.

Blue light isn't cool any more (I would argue that it never was in the first
place). Stop adding blue LEDs to all your devices. Please.

~~~
Freak_NL
Too late. Semiotically blue now means 'power LED/main button', so monitors,
computer cases, etcetera all have one blue LED for the power button. Even your
toaster has a blue LED on its on/off-switch.

Changing this will take years. Perhaps premium brands will start making red
power LEDs hip again, and we will enter a period of red LEDs (again). On the
other hand, violet power LEDs might become fashionable, so count your
blessings.

I was amused that the HTPC computer case I chose had a small slider just below
the blue power indicator; you can slide it to the right, and the blue is no
longer visible.

~~~
rsync
"Too late. Semiotically blue now means 'power LED/main button', so monitors,
computer cases, etcetera all have one blue LED for the power button. Even your
toaster has a blue LED on its on/off-switch."

Red/off, green/on (stop/go) has a much, much deeper symbolic link and would be
easy to adopt and be understood - no matter how entrenched blue LED symbolism
has, or will, become.

~~~
Bartweiss
The threat with red, though, is that it also has a strong symbolic link to
"error". If you power down your console and suddenly see a red light, it
conjures up awful memories of the Xbox 360.

------
k__
LEDs are an adventure.

5 Years ago I replaced all my light bulbs with LEDs, but it was not easy.

First I had to find a brand that didn't sell this clinically white light
emitting crap and then I had to buy 3 times as much as I needed and send 2/3
back because not all emitted the same color.

~~~
dboreham
I tried various different LED bulbs many of which did not pass the wife's
standards for color temperature. Eventually settled on the products Costco
sells which are coincidentally also quite inexpensive.

------
honkhonkpants
I put his conversion kit in my X61t and it is whoa-Nelly bright and the colors
are spectacular. I recall that it also costs a fifth what a genuine ThinkPad
CCFL backlight module costs.

------
sdfjkl
Those daylight backlight upgrade kits are nice. We boat nerds always lust
after stuff like that, because we like to take computers out in the sun (and
rain and airborne saltwater) and this is one of the key parts for doing that.

------
GregBuchholz
Speaking of LEDs, I've been on and off looking for 0402 or 0603 pink LEDs.
There seem to have been multiple manufacturers building them years ago, but it
seems like they've been discontinued/obsolete. Now I can't seem to find them
at the larger distributors (Digikey/Mouser/ etc.). And I'm leery of buying
them off of Ali-express/ebay, because I wouldn't want to have to test them
each before using them, and for this particular project it wouldn't be worth
it to rework if we had to replace non-functioning LEDs. Anyone know more about
the trials and tribulations of pink LED manufacture?

~~~
kosma
I don't know the reasons behind the shortage, but if this is a one-off thing,
TME still carries some: [http://www.tme.eu/gb/details/osk40603c1e/smd-colour-
leds/opt...](http://www.tme.eu/gb/details/osk40603c1e/smd-colour-
leds/optosupply/)

By the way, wouldn't it be feasible to just mix red and blue, either discrete
or in RGB packages?

~~~
GregBuchholz
Thanks for the find. I want to cramp about 100 of these as close together as
possible.

~~~
kosma
Go for it before they sell out! :) TME is our primary supplier and from my
experience they are not exactly stellar in restocking components when they run
out.

------
samstave
How much was a strip 5000 LEDs?

~~~
xiphmont
$1720 delivered, and that's been fully recouped.

------
vxNsr
Can someone explain what it is he was trying to do, as in, why did he want
such a small batch of LEDs for?

~~~
tempestn
It sounds like he's replacing the old LCD back-lights in Thinkpads with LEDs.

