A troubling trend in lighting?

Is this a bright idea? Or will it eventually leave you in the dark?

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00:00 Intro
01:56 A brief (hah!) history of electric lighting
04:28 Ballasted light sources
07:59 The freedom of LEDs
08:49 The thing the video is about
09:26 Electrical boxes and wiring
11:10 Why the idea is so appealing
12:02 All the advantages
17:17 And now for the problems
21:22 The idea is spreading - should it?
23:08 Some light bulb longevity advice
25:25 Thermal cam footage of filament-style LED bulb
27:19 I hope you will consider PAR-style lamps if you can
28:36 Smooth jazz and bloopers

[TechnologyConnections]

Well, _I_ might have taken a break but my hair sure didn’t.
Editor’s note: you may have noticed that I didn’t really come to a firm position on this topic. That’s because, well, I don’t really have one. Certainly some of the items I featured I think should be avoided, but the more basic thingamabobs I’m holding through much of the video? I still kinda like them. Time will tell how good these really are, I suppose, but they have the right stuff. Whether that’s worth axing the bulb socket? I’ll leave that up to you.

[gingerman]

I’d love a history of batteries and how they were standardized video.

[guyfriendo]

You take stuff that seems like it should be soul-crushingly boring and make it fascinating in the most midwestern way and this Michigander trying to learn home maintenance skills truly appreciates it

[seafood]

Let's apreciate the fact that this man actually goes through the trouble of putting subtitles on his videos (not the crappy auto-generated ones). THANK YOU!

[fantasticalfascination]

When my mom had her kitchen remodeled, she was talked into one of these fixtures, and was extremely angry when it stopped working within a few months and she couldn't replace it herself.

[chrayez]

“I have feelings about this - which you are all about to hear!”

Truly the tagline of Technology Connections.

[mistressalisi]

Great video, Just a comment!
I'm an LED Engineer. In fact i was involved with designing some of the first Direct-AC Drive systems that you showed on the video. Seoul Semiconductor boards are pretty (just like the ones you showed :D)
Everything is pretty accurate; but the ONLY comment i have to make is that the long, squiggly filament style bulbs are NOT driven by a driver. They're using a cheap trick which is, four diodes in a normal bridge; and then using 120VDc LEDs. That's what those filaments are: 120V voltage LED strings that are just powered at 120Hz by the dual waveform rectifier. You can validate this using a camera to see the shutter and the 60/120hz flicker.
That's why they last so long: There's no switchmode driver, just a couple of diodes.

[abigailedyth]

I really appreciate how often you brought up how comfortable someone is replacing the fixture. I think that's a super important and often overlooked safety factor!

[Entropic_Nightmares]

The tough thing for me is trying to find replacements for all in one led fixtures because by the time the light starts to fail, the company doesn't even make them anymore in that style, in fact it's so old it not even on their discontinued list anymore. So then I go down the rabbit hole of trying to find a chip that can safely work for that driver but the specifications for the driver are extremely confusing and I just give up. And when it's a commercial building you can't just replace on light fixture in a room full of them without having to change them all so I'm not entirely keen on them for commercial use when you have 20 of them and the product is sold a unit that no longer exists.

[Paios]

Interesting side note:
Some LED bulb drivers are known to interfere with garage door opener radio frequencies. Happened to me. Bought this great LED flood for the front of the garage and couldn't open the door. Took about a half a day of head scratching and googling but I just wanted to share 🙃

[asdfghyter]

What we really need is a new standard for connecting flat LED lights (with circuitry) to fixtures. That would provide a lot more flexibility for the consumers, while still being possible to sell in a pre-mounted package so it's just as convenient as these disposable fixtures.

[DallasHerrmann]

I really want a standardized driver/chip format for these so that just the failed component can be replaced.

[gtoger]

Recently took over an office building where the previous owner had put 6000+K PAR replacements in the can lights in the corridors. Everything looked purple, dingy and gross. Wound up replacing around 80x 3000K and the tenants' response was universally positive.

[miradrgn]

i just wanna take a second to thank you for always taking the effort to have high quality captions on your videos. it seems like they must all be done by hand since they're not filled with the kind of mistakes and mis-hearings that crop up when people hire cheap subtitling sites where underpaid, overworked ✨independent contractors✨ are incentivized to slap out stuff that's barely passable and move on*, and they also don't have the inconsistencies and timing issues that tend to crop up when youtubers copy in their script for subtitles, but whatever the case, they're pretty much always accurate and well-timed and it's really nice as someone who often uses subtitles to help with comprehension but gets totally brain-twisted when the words on the screen clearly don't match up to the words i'm hearing. i know not every youtuber can afford the money or time for quality subtitles, and youtube's absolutely goddamn boneheaded move of removing community contributions has removed the best option a lot of people had, so i do really appreciate it when people go that extra mile to add captions that Don't Suck



*side note, this is a dig at transcription companies and not those workers. i used to be one of them (until the hours of constant typing caused me chronic pain and nerve issues that still persist 5+ years later! with of course no unemployment or medical assistance because It's Gig Economy Baby and you're not considered an "employee"!) and frankly it's miserable work and if you try to be perfectionist like i was then you make a fraction of minimum wage, because the amount they pay their workers is simply not enough for the time it takes to thoroughly double-check a transcript

[WanJae]

I'd like to add that having any kind of microelectronics circuit hardwired into your house increases the relevance of a whole house surge suppressor. At my last house, electronic things would often get fried due to noise and swings in the mains power. I finally installed a monitor to prove my power quality was terrible. It doesn't take much to fry an LED board. And during a thunderstorm, even a strike a mile away can raise your voltage to levels unkind to electronics. At least with screw-in LED bulbs, you can CHANGE THEM when they fry.

[maikatase]

I can confirm, I was plagued with dead led bulb, I always bought the cheapest that had the plastic base/plastic cap design. After I switched to the filament/glass design, I had much better longevity. I still get defective bulbs, but the defective bulbs normally show issues nearly immediately.

[DanKillam]

They're selling desk and floor lamps now with these integrated, unreplaceable LED panels. So when the LED fails you have to toss out the whole lamp. Huge amount of additional e-waste.

[Adamanthil]

The thing I like most about the “disposable” LED light fixtures is that the light diodes are evenly spaced, causing a nice even glow through the transparent casing. With traditional fixtures, you can always see where the bulb(s) are underneath and I think it looks much worse in actual usage.

[jajssblue]

Oh man, that digression on "planned obsolescence" could be a video all on its own! I'd love to watch it!

[litchibunny]

As a lighting designer I’m so impressed by how well you covered the topic in just 30mins! Though when I read the title “disposable”, I was hoping that you would cover the environmental impact of producing LEDs too. Everyone is using LEDs these days but rarely people think about the environmental consequences of it (carbon footprint in manufacturing, end of life recycling, etc). LED fixtures that includes many components made of plastic, silicone, metal, etc is much more difficult to take apart and recycle properly compare to traditional light bulbs including mostly glass and metal. Commercial projects have a massive demand on fixtures that you can’t really just “change the lamp” when the fixture dies or switch brand without take off the whole thing, because each manufacturer has their own standard. Yet we are all still jumping on it because it’s convenient, cheaper, and efficient. Sometimes I worry this is the new invention that would end up like plastic bags—because it’s so convenient, we overlook the long term consequences it brings, ending up overuse it and only to realize the trouble in the future. It would be great if you could make another video in the future covering this topic too, and raise some awareness to people.