Sunspark That is puzzling to me.. all halogens are, are incandescents just using a different gas and running the filament a little hotter (hence why they look slightly more white).

By all means keep using incandescent if it is available, I am just saying I don't see any physical reason why halogen wouldn't be drop-in compatible. There is no PWM or electronic circuits. It is literally straight voltage to the filament inside the quartz capsule.

Halogens have a different color reproduction than incandescent. Incandescent is black body radiation (light coming directly off an energized source), halogen lights give off light by stimulated emission (passing an electric field through a gas that then gives off light).

I have observed incandescent and halogen both through a spectrometer and noted the color bands and saw the differences. It's not drastic but for some folks (like me) it's enough to trigger a symptomatic response. Beyond my LED issues I also suffer from symptoms triggered by color reproduction as well.

      ensete

      You are wrong with the statement that the halogen bulbs emit light from the gas.

      Like regular incandescents, they emit light from the filament. They just burn hotter (thus a whiter colour temperature), and the filament lasts longer because the tungsten is redeposited on the filament.

      The inert gas itself is not light-emitting and the colour reproduction is the same, just a different white point.

        Quad43

        Yes, unfortunately. For the ones that have, there are still some limited exceptions (e.g. appliance bulbs for ovens, etc.) but by and large, quite difficult. Even fluorescent strips are going to be phased out in the UK in 2023. UK will stop selling halogens in September 2021.

        The LEDs that will be sold in the UK and EU are likely going to be higher quality than what is available in North America (mainly cheap trash).

        Thankfully, Canada is not banning a technology, but rather power efficiency levels which is different than what some other countries have done, where they just banned the technology.

        So, because of that incandescent halogens remain available in Canada. 3-way bulbs (I have a lamp that takes one, the brightest setting is 150w, the downside of them is when a filament burns out, you only have the other 2 brightness levels left), appliance, rough-service 130v bulbs, etc.

        I looked up rough-service. It's the same as a regular bulb.. the difference is the voltage it is built for. 130v vs 120v.. so if you put a 130v bulb in a 120v fixture, it just produces fewer lumens, but if it was 75w to begin with, who cares, it'll still be 60 or higher in brightness.

        • diop replied to this.

            Quad43

            The US made a very limited ban on >= 60W 120v standard A19 bulbs.

            You can still buy lower power incandescent A19 bulbs, you can buy 60W and higher incandescent non A19 bulbs, and specialized (rough service) incandescent 60W A19 bulbs.

              They're deprecated in stores, but in Amazon USA you can still buy soft white bulbs of various denominations. 60W is the hardest to find, as others have stated. I find that the Philips Halogen-in-a-standard-housing work very well for me. It's actually much harder to find the good instant-on CFL's now, which is frustrating because those were my favorite.

              Sunspark Even fluorescent strips are going to be phased out in the UK in 2023. UK will stop selling halogens in September 2021.

              The LEDs that will be sold in the UK and EU are likely going to be higher quality than what is available in North America (mainly cheap trash).

              Damn, I'm in the UK, better get shopping!

              The halogen bulbs I have in a few lights are comfortable, at least compared with LED. I don't think I've seen an incandescent light bulb since the late 2000's. I would probably react like a moth if I saw one now… 😁

                I can find halogen bulbs only online where I relocated. Circa 5 dollars the piece. Incandescent ones are unavailable. The problem is that I have been unable to find lamps which allow more than 13W. I should look for antiques.

                jen I really love my flicker-free A19 LEDs

                Thanks for the info! What is the difference between the various options, e.g., CENTRIC HOME™ versus FilmGrade™? Do you know any alternative brand producing LEDs of this sort? Thanks.

                    AGI

                    Go to a hardware store, you can buy replacement lamp sockets.

                    • AGI likes this.

                      AGI

                      I have checked my home lights and TV's using this application for Iphone. It is not 100% accurate but at least it is helped me to understand why my Samsung TV, Iphone XS and some LED bulbs are giving me severe eyestrain. Have tried to find similar other free app with no success.

                      Spectrometers are too expensive to buy (Above 1K USD). So other acceptable way to measure PWM with 10-20% accuracy for me was to purchase this device this Radex Lupin. It can be connected to laptop and show some graphs at least.

                      If you guys know any other acceptable ways to measure PWM flickering let us know.

                      • KM replied to this.

                          krr55

                          Check our oscilloscope thread, the methods developed there are working very well for lighting. Make sure to read all replies, as the info is scattered across the thread.

                          https://ledstrain.org/d/312-homemade-oscilloscope-to-detect-pwm-diy-guide

                          @everyone: you need to understand one thing, which is not obvious and may cause disbelief: even extremely small fluctuations can cause symptoms. That is the most important thing I have discovered over time. By tiny I mean fluctuations that you cannot discover with the camera/smartphone methods. You need something more accurate. And frequencies > 20 kHz can still cause symptoms. I think both of those statements go against anything you'll currently read and hear anywhere else about lighting safety and medical knowledge, but if you already know you're sensitive to flicker it is super important that you get the right tools to check out if this level of sensitivity applies to you, too. Cameras are not the right tools. You will never capture fluctuations smaller than 1% with a camera. Not to mention the "pencil" method. Feel free to ask if you need more info.

                            ensete

                            Thanks, I will check if they ship overseas.

                            Doubt. If a product is banned in the country where you live, is it legal to import such item from overseas? Does any of you know?

                                AGI

                                I can only speak to the US law regarding incandescent, it was VERY targeted, it did not ban incandescent lighting, it only banned certain bulbs that fell below the stated efficiency standards. Any incandescent bulb that meets those standards (which is plenty) is still legal, as well as bulbs in different sizes, bases, specialized bulbs, are all still legal to buy and use.

                                • AGI likes this.

                                  I recently bought this Coffee Scale. It has a horrible built-in LED light, I get dizzy and feel almost sick after looking at it.

                                  There seems no way to disable the light, trying to think I can disassemble the unit to remove the LEDs somehow.

                                    ryans

                                    You should be able to with a hot air station.

                                    Disassemble the unit, find the LED (it will almost certainly be an SMD component) and use hot air to take it off the board. Depending on the board design the unit may work fine without it, or it may expect resistance, so use a multi meter to get the ohm rating of the LED and solder in a resistor of that measurement onto the board where the LED was

                                    If you are not handy with electronics, you should also be able to open the unit up, find the LED, and cover it with flat black paint. That will leave the electronics unmolested but block the light.

                                      5 months later

                                      KM

                                      KM, could you please explain how it works? You mean according to physics it's impossive to have flicker free LED lamp?

                                      p.s. I see statement on one of these companies saying:

                                      incandescent 15% flicker

                                      regular led 70% flicker

                                      our led 0% flicker

                                          I think even those bulbs would fail proper testing (with photo diode and oscilloscope). If someone does the camera test, it is no proof of "completely flicker-free". Be careful to use a term like that.

                                          gety9 They'd have to explain how they measure their percentage. There are different formulas which create different percentages. Usually companies use a formula that makes their percentage look better. That company surely did that as you can see by their 15% incandescent flicker, which is very low for an incandescent. A formula that creates a high percentage would be (a-b)/a. As you can see, companies use everything they can to make their products look better. And then look at the "0% flicker" statement. It doesn't mention numbers after the floating point. One might argue it's negligible but however it may not be negligible at all not for users who are sensitive and visit this forum.

                                          I have baskets full of supposedly "flicker-free" bulbs and all of them flicker either a lot (xx.0%) or a little (0.xx%), but the flicker is always measurable. So if there's yet another company making a statement like "flicker-free" or even "completely flicker-free" they better back it up with more than buzzwords.

                                            dev