Next generation LEDs are cheap and sustainable

I think it's a good idea in general to just try and replace every switch and outlet if you buy a home that was lived in for an extended period of time. We moved into a home that the previous family lived in for 30 years and I've been working my way through replacing everything. I've found some crazy work in some of the junction boxes. Most weren't grounded which isn't super surprising. Many were wired incorrectly which is a little less surprising.

Also it's a good exercise in making sure the electrical panel is labeled correctly. Ours was somehow only labeled like 75% correctly.

Yup. The LED diodes themselves will last for decades if treated properly, the power electronics though are very often made with extreme cut corners and the thermal design is awful meaning bulbs much more expensive and environmentally impacting than a bit of glass and milligrams of tungsten wire are failing in similar time spans. Somebody should do an environmental impact study of shitty LED bulbs vs incandescents to determine if the manufacturing impact difference makes up for the energy savings.

"I don't understand why there's no startups making open source modular electronics."

I would love to do exactly that, but so far I have not found any way how I could do that and still have a regular salary. Of course, I could do it for free as a generous gift to Chinese factories who will then produce things and flood Amazon with it ... but they won't reciprocate and donate back to the Open Source project. The OS project will quickly stagnate and future development stops.

The fix is that the Open Source project needs to sell hardware, or else there's no revenue to fund further development. And that means you now also need FCC and CE certification. And you need patents. Or else, Chinese factories will flood Amazon with your design. (but without paying for FCC/CE)

But now that you can successfully sell hardware to fund future development and you can fend off Chinese clones, your project is not really "open" anymore. It's kind of like an OEM module that is "source available". Like the Adafruit kits that you can order from Amazon/Arrow.

It's because you would need open source ICs for that, and that'd a whole complex multinational tool chain.

The modules you speak of exist, they're ICs. Most electronics now are just ICs and traces on a board. The real challenge is the IC tool chain is very complex and very not open.

It would do no good to have open source modules that are just traces and then a bunch of closed source ICs. This is what Sparkfun, adafruit, etc. do. It's great for engineers and hobbiests but it doesn't get to the root of the value you propose.

The real value is in the ICs, those are the magic modules you speak of that need to be open source.

Getting that to happen is a whole thing. Like getting ExxonMobil to share their oil rig designs.

Why would a startup do that? Hardware is low-margin difficult, capital intensive, long sales cycles, long rampups until revenue, volume sales are very trust-based (hard to get in when not established), expensive recalls, product compliance, etc. In addition the trend for the last 30 years of electronics is integration, completely opposite of modularization. I am very pro open source hardware and software (and contribute to both) - but I find it completely understandable that there are few startups/companies in this space.

> A microwave and a dishwasher and a dryer could all use the same controller and the same display module.

The real question is do we even need displays for those? A few buttons and a knob is all we need

Businesses don't care about opensource, and they already use standard electronics, just not modular, because modules are expensive.

E.g. many Haier/Candy mostly use esp32 microcontrollers, led displays don't even need modules, lcd displays use usually one of few standards, etc.

A cheap microwave costs 50euros, a washing machine 200, that's retail price with a 5year warranty, sometimes even with delivery, there is no place for modules that noone will actually use.

What's the business model?

I could, for example, design and make an open source controller board suitable for a microwave oven. But how do I sell microwave ovens competing on price with people who have been building microwave ovens for decades and have basically perfected the art?

How do I stop companies in China from taking my controller design and selling it at half the price?

"I don't understand why there's no startups making open source modular electronics." There is, maybe it is not a startup per se. In Shenzhen there is 500 companies that will produce whatever you need in whatever amounts you need, could be 10, 100, 10 000 000.

I'm not sure if this is the same thing, but I'd like to see a product family that can be configured to replace controller boards on a wide family of appliances. For instance, a generic compressor/thermostat controller that will work as a replacement on ALL models of refrigerator for the past 20 years. It would work based on jumper settings or loops that you add/cut that would be qualified and tested for each model. It's working with power levels that could burn your house down, so safety would need to be paramount. But basically all appliances do the same thing, just at different voltage and current levels. There should be a market for a common replacement set.

It's LED fixtures that I have a problem with; they're very common since it's easy to make them in various shapes and things, but when a component fails more often than not it's a "replace the whole fixture" situation.

My parents have a ceiling fan that came with an LED light, which broke. It was barely under warranty for the LED part still and the manufacturer sent out a new light module, except they've changed the fan a little over the years and the new module doesn't fit on the old fan... they ended up having to send a whole new fan.

Heat is the real killer for LEDs. Most LEDs sold for home lighting do not have very good thermal regulation, possibly as a planned obsolesence "feature".

I still have several Cree bulbs that are at least a decade old, I think more like 15 years old. None have failed.

Everyone I know who complains about LED bulbs failing, you ask them and they admit to buying the cheapest ones they could find.

Maybe you find this interesting: https://optimizeyourbiology.com/light-bulb-database

It's a database of light bulbs tested using a 1-meter barium sulfate integration sphere and calibrated lumen photospectrometer. Although no LED comes close to the Halogen in terms of CRI, it is very informative.

There's a lot of 18650 compatible flashlights and stuff, but some of them have the battery sealed inside. I have a couple of bike lights and flashlights that have this issue and I've cracked them open to replace the batteries, but it's not a regular person thing to do.

> Is there any way to avoid this problem besides regulation?

Just don't buy those, if you don't like them?

> For the consumer rechargeable always makes sense, but I think there's an incentive for stores to not push those products - why sell rechargeable flashlights when you can sell ones that gobble alkaline cells and get your customers coming back for batteries??

That only works as a business if your customer comes back to you. The market for these dirt cheap devices is pretty fragmented. And people are unlikely to turn into repeat customers, if the previous gadget failed them miserably.

The article is about people trying to engineer electronic devices that take into account their full lifecycle?

The knee-jerk cynical "hot takes" on this site are getting really tiresome. It's intellectual cowardice and laziness. Anyone can say this sort of zero-calorie edgy nonsense

I came back to say pretty much that. Since these buzzwords as used in most of society today barely mean anything at all, the writer was probably happy enough to namecheck something vaguely positive and endorsed to do with environment stuff.

It would have tickled my funny bone if they'd gone with "Green" in this case.

(Thanks nonetheless to ilove_banh_mi, for setting the record straight)

It just means that you can continue indefinitely with no end in sight. End could come from financial problems, consumer preferences to help the environment, environmental regulations, supply chain issues, and all sorts of other things.

It's like the sustain pedal on a piano: nothing actively dampens the sound, so the sound will continue for quite a while longer than is typically required.

> It's used for lots of interesting things, such as temperature control, motor control and positioning, and LED lighting.

A pretty slow version of this is used in your microwave or airfryer. But they typically use a temperature sense (like a bimetallic strip) to turn the heating parts on for at least a few seconds and then turn it off again; they don't use a timer.

This is known as bang-bang control.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bang%E2%80%93bang_control

Thank you for the awesome reply!

Too many companies nowadays just straight up lock all relevant documentation behind a contract and an NDA.

You want anything more than a 2 page marketing fluff piece? Talk to the sales! If you agree to a MOQ of 50000 and sign away your soul in a two miles long NDA, then you can have a look at the documentation. With one eye only. For a couple minutes.

It's also widely known to cause headaches. I swapped out all my PWM bulbs and couldn't be happier. More info here: https://flickeralliance.org/

How could the same modulation achieve "dimming" and "fully bright" simultaneously?

Perhaps less widely known is that if you market a commercial product that actually uses PWM to modulate LED intensity, you're liable to be litigated against by Philips for patent infringement?

Wild...yeah, I know. Heard that from a buddy in Austin over a decade ago. Vaguely recall that he had to redesign using some sort of current driver instead to avoid the legal encumbrance.

He's not talking about dimming. He's talking about the perceived brightness when you look directly at an indicator LED.

Thats more 'computer engineering' no? EE also has things like Power Systems, RF, solid state if you want to go into chip design and the like.

Last two collect water inside the button. Can't switch them off. One more expensive set had the rubber casing peal off because the strap is gently pulling on it. My current expensive one had its button drop into the casing. I bring it inside now as it obviously can't get wet.

The amount of light is great but we have a lot of "narrow" bike paths and people point them forwards blinding the opponent.

Is a driver something I can easily replace in an existing fixture?

They’ll be mass produced in staggering quantities, discarded everywhere, and enter the ecosystem. Plus kids be chewing.