
The Biggest Thing Since the Light Bulb - lispython
http://www.creebulb.com/
======
jwr
We are still in the dark ages, though. Just consider: this "bulb" has to plug
into the standard 110/230V AC electrical sockets. Powering an LED is nothing
like powering an incandescent bulb: you need a constant current driver
delivering a precisely measured DC current that, depending on the LED, is
between 300mA and (say) 1.5A. The voltage you need depends on the number of
LEDs in series, but assume 3.2V per LED. If you want dimming, you need to do
PWM (pulse-width modulation).

This means that inside every "bulb" like this there is a small switching power
supply. And small switching power supplies that can take you from 110/230V AC
to 3-24V DC are a) expensive, b) not very efficient.

Even more amusing is the "dimmable" bulb: traditional dimmers in AC circuits
use triacs to effectively cut out (e.g. cut to zero) a part of the sinusoidal
AC waveform. Meaning you get a chopped-up sine waveform behind the dimmer. Any
switching PSU won't really notice, as long as there is enough (let's use a
technical term) "oomph" left in the waveform. So, what the "dimmable"
solutions do, is look at the AC waveform coming in, notice that it isn't
really a sine and a part of it has been cut out, estimate how much has been
cut out, and provide a PWM dimming signal to the LED driver.

Sure, it's all still better than the incandescent bulb, but it's very costly
and inefficient. It also generates a lot of waste: if you throw out an
incandescent bulb, it's really just some glass and a little metal. The LED
"bulb" contains at least 20 electronic components and a PCB apart from the LED
itself.

I think that sooner or later we will need an additional electrical standard,
24 or 48V DC with an overlaid control signal for dimming and a new standard
for sockets. 110/230V simply doesn't make sense for powering single bulbs
anymore.

~~~
tehwalrus
I agree that we need a closed-circuit DC solution for households. One
efficient step-down, and then we plug rechargeable (phones, laptops, etc) in,
and power LED lights off it. We still need AC to transmit power to the house,
and power high-juice devices, obviously.

Presumably this already exists? Any home-hackers know who's making them?

~~~
cincinnatus
The off-the-grid folks are surely on top of this. They also have the advantage
of a 'natively' DC supply coming off storage batteries.

------
ars
This page has GOT to stop moving!! GRRRR. Who decided this was a good idea?

~~~
belorn
I wonder what you are talking about because ... A ye, must be something that
Ghostery or No script (js enabled) is preventing. Or ad block.

I guess I don't know what is preventing me for having a bad experience, but I
guess one of those 3.

 _update_ Found the issue. JavaScript was disabled on the page. Sorry if my
post mislead.

~~~
Otiel
Not AdBlock nor Ghostery. Have both and page is moving alone.

------
otibom
Off topic, but am I the only one to find the automatic scrolling very annoying
? Don't move the page on my behalf.

~~~
ck2
Not just you, YesScript or NoScript solves this problem for me though.

<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/yesscript/>

------
ck2
This is huge if only because a LED bulb company finally put its warranty where
its mouth is.

Every other bulb, ie. the expensive Phillips bulb, only gives a 3-4 year
warranty

I'd definitely give this a try @ $10

It's also dimmer compatible which is a big plus for me with X10 control, CFL
cannot dim.

 _If this bulb does not operate for 10 years (based on 6 hours per day / 7
days per week of normal consumer use) from date of purchase when used as
directed, return the bulb [...] Cree will send you a replacement or at Cree’s
option refund the original purchase price._

ps. you can use ebates.com to get a $5 off $50 Home Depot coupon and 3%
cashback which will reduce the cost on these

~~~
mullr
I wonder what the expected warrantee redemption rate is for these things, for
all of them that fail. Say you had it for 5 years and it failed. If it was me,
I'd just go out and buy another one. Perhaps a different brand, but I probably
wouldn't think that far ahead. For something at this price point, does anybody
really USE the warrantee?

~~~
Cthulhu_
And that's exactly where they're going here; offer a long warranty and easy
returns, while producing a product that's cheap enough (definitely in 5 - 10
years) that people won't actually bother with it. It's what happens with
mainstream consumer electronics; 3 years warranty, sure, but would you return
a $30 machine to the webshop you got it the cheapest to claim that three years
later?

------
gregable
$10 seems like actually a very good price for LED bulbs, especially if they
work as advertised. Add in a 10yr warranty and it seems like a no brainer.
Cree isn't a little startup or anything either, it's an established LED
manufacturer.

------
hmsimha
-How many HN readers does it take to change the light bulb?-

6 to discuss the efficiency of the new light bulb, 10 to propose alternative
designs to the light bulb components, 15 to point out various health and
environmental concerns of old and proposed new light bulb components, and 25
to criticize the design of the webpage promoting the new light bulb.

~~~
brianmcc
finally registered after years of lurking purely to upvote you for this

------
com2kid
Am I the only one not impressed by these 60 watt bulb replacements? 60 watt
bulbs leave my entire place looking dim and depressing, sure good colors are
nice, but if I can't see anything, what does it matter?

My light fixtures were designed for a few 100 watts, replacing them with these
60 watt LEDs may save me power, but at the cost of my eyesight!

I am more interested in true 100, or even better, 150 watt, replacement bulbs.
Get those in a good package size with some energy savings!

~~~
jswanson
It's amazing how widely people vary on light. It's observable across major
cultures, or even different families.

A Japanese IKEA I went through recently had a display which would allow you to
switch between 'Japanese' style lighting' and 'Western' style, with western
style being dimmer, and with warmer color temperature.

I immediately found the Western one more comforting, relaxing, while my wife
(Japanese) prefers the brighter one. Internal lighting in Japan is almost
uniformly overhead neon, without the baffles you'll see in many North American
offices.

I've grown used to it, but would rather work in the dark.

I'm sure there are many people that, like you, feel that these LED bulbs are
too dim. If you're at all curious though, I'd recommend that you find one and
give it a shot, many of them /feel/ brighter than the numbers would lead you
to expect when compared to an incandescent.

It might be better to compare on the basis of Lumens, as watt's are a measure
of power instead of brightness[1].

1 - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb>

~~~
kijin
I grew up in Korea and moved to the West (USA & Canada) in my late teens. I
found the lighting very annoying almost as soon as I stepped foot in my first
dorm room. Even when I rented my own place later on, I could never make my
living room look "proper", since none of the apartments I've lived in had any
lighting fixtures in the living room. No amount of indirect lighting can
compensate for the lack of several thousand lumens, daylight color, right in
the middle of the ceiling. I can see why other people find 2700K 60W
"relaxing", but to me it feels like perpetual twilight, some sort of
reenactment of Rembrandt's paintings.

Ditto for "desk lamps" that can't evenly illuminate two Letter-sized sheets of
paper side by side (the typical dimensions of an open textbook), let alone the
whole desk. To this day I still don't understand why students buy those. Maybe
they just put them on their bedside tables in case they need to find their way
to the bathroom at night.

On the other hand, everyone's computer screen is too bright for me. My screens
are usually set to 25%-40% brightness unless I'm using it outside on a sunny
day. So I suppose people do have varying tastes about illumination.

------
rosser
I can't find any information on the CRI (color rendering index) of these
particular bulbs, but Cree was making a bulb a couple years ago that was rated
over 90, which is generally considered excellent. If these are comparable,
they're a fantastic deal, particularly given the warranty.

~~~
ars
CRI is 80:
[http://www.homedepot.com/catalog/pdfImages/36/36f3e188-bdb8-...](http://www.homedepot.com/catalog/pdfImages/36/36f3e188-bdb8-40ac-a7ad-
ef9ae6c129b6.pdf) which is slightly worse than most CFLs.

Note that 80 is the minimum legal to qualify for Energy Star.

~~~
msutherl
That's a deal-breaker. Don't buy this bulb. It will make everything look
awful.

~~~
lusr
"CRI is not a good indicator for use in visual assessment, especially for
sources below 5000 kelvin (K)."

Bulbs in question are 2700K and 5000K. Does your conclusion still hold?

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index>

~~~
thisone
2700k isn't bad, but 5000k? That's grow light spectrum. I've seen people
complain over the "too whiteness" of 3000k bulbs never mind 5000k.

------
ars
Hmm, actually beats a CFL - although not by much, the CFL uses 11 watts, this
uses 9.5.

But the CFL costs $1, this costs $13.

It lasts 3 times as long, but still - unless you really need great color
accuracy (i.e. CRI), I can't see myself buying this. (I'm comparing to a CFL
with the same warm color temperature.)

Edit: CRI of 80! That's worse than the CFL I'm comparing it to!

Why would anyone want to buy this? The small boost in energy efficiency is not
worth the $10.

~~~
asmosoinio
How much do you pay for electricity?

Over 10 years, the difference probably makes this cheaper, even with such a
small difference.

2.5 Watts, 6 hours/day, 300 days/year, 10 years, 0.13 USD/kWh [2]

=> 7.2 USD saved in electricity [1]

Count in the replacement CFL prices, 3 USD vs 13 USD, and the costs are pretty
much equal.

Point being: Electricity is the biggest cost.

[1] right?: <https://www.google.com/search?q=2.5*6*300*10*0.16%2F1000>

[2] from here: <http://www.bls.gov/ro9/cpilosa_energy.htm>

~~~
ars
Your math is fine except it's 1.5 watts, so savings of $4.88.

Use wolfram Alpha with units and you can be sure:
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1.5+watts+*+%240.13%2Fk...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1.5+watts+*+%240.13%2FkWh+*+25000+hours)

But the thing is I don't trust the hour ratings, not on CFLs not on these. So
I'd rather pay the smaller amount upfront and not gamble.

------
gt565k
Hah... the light bulbs today are the biggest scam ever.

Light bulbs made 100 years ago are still working today, because the materials
used, more precisely, the filament, was made out of a lot more durable
materials. However, companies quickly realized that if ligh bulbs lasted so
long, no one would buy new light bulbs.

If you have not seen the light bulb conspiracy, please watch it on youtube.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WPrTk90VZM>

Planned obsolescence...

You can buy long lasting light bulbs made with stronger filament, of course
they are no LED, but will probably last a century.

~~~
ars
Nonsense.

You can trade long life for energy efficiency. That's all.

After some tweaking and market testing people settled on the current balance.

The old stuff is just not very efficient, that's why it lasts so long -
nothing stops you from doing that today, just derate the bulb, use a bulb
intended for a higher voltage (or put a dimmer on it).

~~~
riffraff
> After some tweaking and market testing people settled on the current
> balance.

FWIW, old style incandescent lightbulbs have effectively been banned in
europe, australia, brazil and other places for years, and will be such in the
US next year, IIRC.

While I think that is overall a good thing it's not exactly an invisible hand
thingy.

~~~
Gotttzsche
i think the balancing he talked about happened far earlier than the bans. or
what bans on what kinda incandescent lightbulbs are you talking about?

------
dutchbrit
I'm not a huge fan of Cree's heat sink design - I prefer the Pharox bulb
personally when it comes to esthetics,
[http://www.solarengineeringltd.com/renewableenergy/images/Br...](http://www.solarengineeringltd.com/renewableenergy/images/Brands/Pharox/pharox_200_p45.jpeg)

However, we aren't buying a car here. Nice that Cree's 60 watt replacement
which actually produces 800 lumens, compared to other bulbs that claim to
replace 60 watt lightbulbs that actually produce 400 lumens. Amazing that they
managed to produce that amount of lumens with such little amount of energy -
has anyone tested this bulb here? Also, very affordable compared to most
manufacturers!!

Disclaimer - I use to work for Pharox. They were leading for a while but seem
to have been overtaken.

------
bemmu
These are probably available everywhere, but since moving to Japan I found
some motion-detecting LED light bulbs. Now when coming home or walking down
the hall at night the light turns on automagically. Saves both time and
energy.

~~~
FoeNyx
You said "at night", so it's not only motion-detecting but also comes with a
light sensor to avoid to turn on in bright day light, isn't it ? Do you have
an URL or a name to provide ?

~~~
bemmu
Found it, it's this one: <http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B004XKI9GU>

------
davidkatz
"the biggest thing since the light bulb". Keep reading their marketing, and
you get "it's a bulb that lasts longer than a normal light bulb, and consumes
less energy".

So let me get this straight — the light bulb took us from expensive,
unreliable, dangerous light (candles) to instant, cheap, reliable, safe light.
The light bulb is one of the greatest inventions of humanity. You made it a
little more efficient, and you invented the biggest thing since the light
bulb? Gotcha.

------
jckt
Talking just about the incandescent ("classic") light bulb's life...isn't its
life limited by the policy of "planned obsolescence"?
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence>

Are there any lightbulb engineers on HN that can confirm that lightbulbs are
indeed, so to speak, "made to fail"? Or is it actually really difficult to
make a long-lasting lightbulb?

~~~
sbierwagen
It's .046mm tungsten wire that's heated hot enough to glow white. You try and
make it durable.

You can buy "rough service" light bulbs: [http://www.bulborama.com/Turbo-
Life-20-000-Hour-Light-Bulbs-...](http://www.bulborama.com/Turbo-
Life-20-000-Hour-Light-Bulbs-c34/)

They are, of course, much more expensive per-unit.

------
NatW
Cree LEDs (not just bulbs) are sold to 3rd parties, too - and I've seen them
used a bit on various Kickstarter projects. e.g: this one:
[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1324892969/open-
source-u...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1324892969/open-source-ultra-
bright-led-light-pad-with-wifi-a)

A standard 100 Watt lightbulb gets about 16 lumens/watt. The 9.5 Watt
lightbulb here can get ~ 84 lumens/watt. The 9 Watt (more blue) lightbulb gets
almost 89 lumens/watt The above project can get about 90 lumens/watt.

.. but higher efficiencies and cooler temperatures are possible .. e.g: this
one spaces out the LEDs and claims to get 133 lumens/watt: - I don't know if
they are from CREE or from a competitor:
[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/619878070/nanolight-
the-...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/619878070/nanolight-the-worlds-
most-energy-efficient-lightbu?ref=live)

Higher efficiencies are coming from Cree and others in the future - so it's
going to get better. In the lab they're sometimes getting even in the realm of
200 lumens/watt.

------
nikcub
Cree is one of the firms from the Wired feature on LED lightbulbs in the
August 2012 issue:

<http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/08/ff_lightbulbs/all/>

------
kephra
The comparison is shit, because it compares shit (LED) with shit
(fluorescent).

The website does not tell if Cree is using two band LEDs of a blue LED with
yellow dotation, or a 3 band UV LEDs with R, G, and B dotations. Its likely
only two band, because those are much cheaper. So they are worse than any 5
band fluorescent lamp. And not comparable in light quality with a good old
light bulb or tungsten halogen lamp.

They are not suited for sewing, when you need to match the color of the thread
to the cloth, and they are badly suited for electronics, when you need to read
the color code of a resistor.

------
tomkinstinch
I got my parents a Switch[1] bulb for Christmas. If the Cree bulb is anything
like it, I'll be swapping out the CFLs I use the most right away--$13 at Home
Depot is better than the ~$45 I paid for the Switch. It puts out great light
and "feels" better than a CFL bulb. Not sure if it's the ballast frequency,
color temp, or the spiky emission spectrum, but CFLs bother me.

1\. <http://switchlightingco.com/>

------
buro9
Great.

Except for those outdoor pictures at the bottom, because all I see is a
massive amount of light pollution. Does a Burger King really need to be lit
like that?

No-one is there, perhaps the lights should dim dramatically and sensors should
make them come on depending on movement.

For indoors these bulbs are great, but for outdoors I care more about the
excessive light pollution than the power usage.

------
lighthazard
Life: 22.8 years * based on 3 hours /day

------
h4pless
So quick question... I noticed that when this site was posted to Facebook, FB
rendered the title of the link as "New Site" above the URL instead of "Cree
LED Bulb" but I am not seeing anything in the metadata that should cause this.
What am I missing here?

------
galaktor
Wow, that "auto-aligning" of the (supposed) current slide to my screen is
incredibly annoying.

~~~
quorn3000
I'm amazed when this kind of usability is rolled out.

If they'd just asked 5 people for feedback.

------
Amarandei
That's nice and all, but a 60 Watt bulb is still not bright enough for my
taste. I have never used old 60W bulbs exactly for this reason. I always feel
like I'm struggling to see things with those bulbs.

------
kayoone
This might be obvious, but its not that this is something new. Lightbulb
makers want to sell lightbulbs to you forever, so they wont give you ones that
will never need to be replaced!

------
millstone
This site hijacked my back button as I scrolled. Please don't!

------
beachstartup
i use one of these to walk my dog. it's ridiculously bright and it's laughable
when you see someone using a 'normal' flash light which basically just looks
like someone using a zippo lighter to light their way.

bought 2 for the office and 1 for the car too. mine use regular AA batteries
not the expensive high voltage rechargeable ones.

edit: this comment is about the same cree LEDs except in flashlight form.

~~~
ars
Your message is offtopic. Delete it before you get tons of downvotes, and your
account gets banned.

Next time actually read the linked article before posting.

~~~
easytiger
personally i think you are being an asshole... he just forgot to mention he
was talking about something else in their product range. It is in that
context, still on topic.

~~~
ars
How nice.

Note that I did not downmod him, but at least 3 other people did. I was
warning him before his account got hellbanned.

But I guess you see prefer to see bad intent.

~~~
beachstartup
the article is about cree LEDs

i use a cree LED in a flashlight to walk my dog

if i get 'hellbanned' for this comment, i'm not really sure what to say. i
probably won't try registering again because that's just really mean.

------
swagatata
This is another cool light bulb : <http://lifx.co/>

------
Void_
Where can we get these in Europe?

~~~
FoeNyx
I don't know for this brand, but there are Phillips or Toshiba LED light bulbs
in mall for years. (caveat : not as cheap)

~~~
lucaspiller
I haven't heard of those before. All I've seen on the high street are CFLs and
halogen bulbs. The prices seem pretty good on Amazon:

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-
alias%3D...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-
alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Toshiba+LED)

------
Avitas
I like the Philips L-Prize 10W 900L better.

It's $15 when it's on sale.

------
davedx
I can only buy these from Home Depot in America?

------
paulocal
how about the standard spotlight sized ones?

------
charonn0
I'm not seeing what's so special about these bulbs.

------
L0j1k
Whoever made this site is an idiot.

------
joshuaheard
A light bulb is the biggest thing since the light bulb? The light bulb was the
greatest invention of the 20th century, but the story is about to an energy
saving light bulb sold at Home Depot?

~~~
ptaipale
The light bulb was invented in the 19th century. A patent was granted for an
incandescent lamp in England in 1841 but the first commercially viable design
was by Edison in 1879.

I think the story itself, however, is a demonstration of an extremely annoying
web site design.

~~~
joshuaheard
The light bulb was invented in the 19th century, but did not become important
until a massive electricity infrastructure was built in the 20th century.

If the joke was about the horrific web design (and it was horrific), I didn't
get it.

~~~
ptaipale
"Important" is a relative matter of course, and surely light bulbs were not as
ubiquitous in 19th century as they were later, but e.g. London had 2.5 million
light bulbs at the end of 19th century. That is not insignificant.

