« SpaceX's Record Breaking* Rideshare Mission Launches 143 Satellites | Main | Open Source CubeSats Ease the Pain of Building Your Own »

Wednesday, January 27, 2021

CONTINUITY: Make Your Own Efficient, Long-Lived “Dubai Lamps”

A simple series capacitive dropper allows running higher-wattage LED bulbs at lower current, increasing efficiency, reducing heat generation, and dramatically improving the lifetime of the bulb. These aren't as nice as real Dubai lamps, as featured here on 2020-01-14, since they lack the voltage regulator which eliminates blinking with voltage changes, but they're an improvement on bulbs that over-drive their LEDs and burn out in short order. They do have a poor power factor, but unless you have a smart electric meter that charges for peak current, that won't show up on your electric bill (and besides, most cheap LED bulbs use capacitive droppers anyway and already have low power factors).

One nice thing about LED bulbs is that under-driving them does not change the colour of the light—it purely reduces intensity by limiting the duty cycle.

Posted at January 27, 2021 15:14