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This makes sense when you realize most ICE car makers get a substantial portion of their revenue from maintenance and replacement parts.

Maybe in theory. In practice, the Phoebus Cartel was a real thing, and they limited lightbulb lifespans, worldwide. The same thing exists today, albeit more because companies that sell lightbulbs want to keep selling them, instead of putting themselves out of business. So, many LED lightbulbs are intentionally designed to fail early.

The only place where this doesn’t happen is in the country of Dubai. Because of national law, lightbulbs sold there are required to have very long lifespans. That’s why there is a world-wide grey market business for taking existing LED lightbulbs apart, snipping off a resistor so that they pull about half the amperage and then putting them back together, and suddenly their lifespan is increased by 10-100x. This is called a “doobie”, after the name of the country. Check out “bigclivedotcom” on YouTube if you want to see this in action.

You will notice this if you buy Philips Ultra Definition bulbs in Dubai, versus the same bulbs sold at the same amount of lumen output from the UK or elsewhere in the world. The “doobie” version has twice as many LED filaments inside, compared to the UK version. Same price, way different life span. Philips is one of the better manufacturers of lightbulbs, and nowhere remotely close to the only one doing this.

With regards to LED light fixtures (ones that don’t allow you to screw in your own bulb), most manufacturers do the same thing. They’re designed to fail early. Who wants light fixture styling that is fifty years old, just because the LED lights inside haven’t failed yet? They want to make you buy new fixtures every couple of years, just like they do for bulbs.

Yes, there are exceptions in both cases. But they are the rare exceptions, not the rule. And if you haven’t studied up on the Phoebus Cartel, you can start with the article on Wikipedia.

DC fans are infinitely superior to AC fans (noise, torque, longevity, etc.), which is unfortunately why this became a thing.

There's no clean mechanism to control a fan's speed in-band on a normal AC wall switch.

I want more POE devices.

It might be that POE power supplies get hot - I've noticed the POE hats for the raspberry pi need a fan

My MinkaAirs use 303MHz remotes. No pull chains. This frustrated me so much, last night i got an ESP32-S3 + CC1101 and reverse engineered the signal to the fans to be also control it from Home Assistant. Now, if i lose or break the controller, i can still switch the fans & built-in LED on & off another way. not perfect, but it is in my control.

Your fan doesn’t need Wi-Fi?

In two apartments, the remote affected the neighbor's fan and vice-versa. At first I wondered at the fan's erratic behavior, especially switching modes soon after I changed it. Then I guessed the problem and spoke to the neighbor.

I tried changing channels in the remote but that didn't seem to help much. With the second neighbor, the fans were in my living room and their bedroom. We agreed to control fans in shifts (I turned mine off at night).

It's hard to believe it's just a very unlikely coincidence. Maybe the channels are too few or narrow to be useful? How hard would it be to implement some psuedo-UID?

This annoys me too. My Casablanca fans have a wall switch which is hard wired to power only for on/off, but the fan and light controls are sent via a radio frequency signal. The most frustrating part of this, is that the RF transmitter inside the wall switch is battery operated. I have to unscrew the wall switch a couple times a year to get to the batteries.

Not exactly forever: I have a 20+ years old led "bulb" (it's large enough to deal with its own heat) that is barely able to light up a closet now...

To add to that, my advice is to look for LED lights where the AC-to-DC conversion is done by a power brick separate from the lights. Not only does that mean you can replace them separately, but generally these will be much more robust as the power electronics won't be as constrained by size.

I wish it caught on to have LED lights powered by a barrel jack DC plug like you have for most electronics. It would be a huge win for longevity. Sure it's not backwards compatible with fixtures designed for light bulbs, but the cases we're discussing here are complete light fixture replacements anyways... The fixture could have a barrel plug that you connect to an inexpensive commodity DC power brick which you then hide away in the ceiling.

Yeah anything which forces you to use whatever the manufacturer chooses is an instant no from me too. I don't have any fixed lights cooler than 2200 K at home, the standard 3000 K 'warm' white is going to look crappy the majority of the time.

Does the design actually stop you from replacing the parts or is it just more difficult than plugging in a power plug?

Many of them are switchable color temperature. At least from what I’ve seen.

There are LED lamps rated for enclosed fixtures. If you buy and use them in enclosed fixtures, your lamps will last longer.

A recessed can or “upside down” ceiling fan globe with an open bottom is technically an enclosed fixture since heat rises.

> In a proper enclosure, with cooling (it's a fan), they will actually live their fully-stated lifetime - assuming the fan's upstream power supply makes it.

But in an "old school" hardware, you'd then replace the bulb and get a new "lifetime" out of it, here you have to throw everything away.

An AC motor has basically nothing inside that can fail (maybe the capactitor, but that can be replaced), and can work for a hundred years and more if properly maintained (mostly cleaned).

On average ~6 hours per day (living room with night owls living there), is ~2000 hours per year... 5 years at 10.000hours expected lifetime for the leds, 10 if the stated lifetime is 20k hours... that's not really that long.

Mine typically last a year or two. Very frustrating to pay 10x what incandescent used to cost for about the same life or marginally better.

I’ve replaced at least a dozen. Multiple brands, ranging from rando amazon brands to name brands like CREE and GE.

I’m under the impression at this point that they just do not do well inside can lights. I honestly don’t think the average lifespan is much higher than incandescent in that scenario.

> I’ve literally never had an LED bulb die that can remember.

This 120v-using USian has had many fail, and if they don't fail by intermittently blinking and flickering [0], they fail by slowly giving me worse and worse and worse headaches [1]. Unless you choose to count the fact that they were technically still emitting light, I've never gotten the rated lifetime out of a screw-in LED bulb.

[0] ...as all of the ACE Hardware ones did...

[1] ...as all of the dimmable [2] CREE ones did...

[2] These were never attached to a dimmer. At the time, the advice was to get LED bulbs rated for use in a dimmer, as it was believed that that would get you higher-quality construction.

Is there a solution for this?

I have this issue as well, of burning thru LED lights.

Overhead lights may generally suck, and I can say that I've been grateful to have one every time I've needed it.

As opposed to what? A bunch of lamps?

Your local inspector may have opinions about this, but you can buy all the components of an excellent LED system from your favorite electronics distributor, e.g. DigiKey.

Don’t waste your time or eyeballs with “driverless” devices. Get a chip-on-board LED, e.g. Bridgelux’s products, along with a matching driver (I like Luminus Devices’ small drivers - they have good startup and dimming behavior).

Aside from usual electrical safety, anyone designing what is effectively a luminaire needs to make sure that the driver matches the LED and that the driver is compatible with the dimmer in use. Matching the LED means that the driver produces an amount of current that that LED’s datasheet data is acceptable and that produces the amount of light that is desired and dissipates an amount of heat that can be managed. And that the LED’s voltage drop at the design current is in range for the driver. These LEDs are constant current devices, so you’re thinking about current first and voltage second. Read the datasheets!

Unfortunately many cheap luminaires are based on modules that are either driverless LEDs (which are terrible due to essentially unavoidable flicker and lack of regulation) or are line-voltage-supplied integrated devices. These are likely to be hard-to-find modules. There may not be room for a discrete driver and separate LED.

LEDs rarely die unless cooling is inadequate. DC/DC and AC/DC circuitry is a far more likely culprit.

In either case, learn to do hot air rework?

Have you tried replacing the LEDs or have you just assumed it's impossible because it's not a bulb?

Yeah. It's not just cost, it's time. If I have to replace the fan, that's a trip to a hardware store, then a half hour (at least) to remove the old and install the new and get it wired correctly, so that it works and doesn't burn my house down. Then I have to take the old one apart far enough to fit it into the garbage can.

Replacing a bulb is a trip to my stash of bulbs in the laundry room, then throwing the old one in the trash.

I don't have time in my life for a fan with non-replaceable bulbs.

> I'm old enough to remember when I was promised LEDs would last approximately forever without having to be replaced.

Yep, I remember that when Obama banned most incandescent lights because 'LED lighting is the future and 100 year lifespans blabla'.

Mind you, we used CFLs in the warm season, and incandescent in cold seasons. Incandescents are 100% efficient in cold seasons (heater AND light).

As much as I deign to admit, Trump reversed Obama's ban. And Biden reinstated it. I don't think Trump reversed Biden's reinstatement though. He's been way too busy with wrecking the country for shits and giggles.

But what the LED manufacturers figured out is they could overdrive LEDs and use substandard electronics for driving them. So sure, LEDs are more efficient, but they're the same old burnout cycle that's forced on us.

And we know all of this by the fact that Phillips makes "Dubai Lamps", and you can't buy them at any price. https://hackaday.com/2021/01/17/leds-from-dubai-the-royal-li...

Or “fit for purpose”.

The movie Beetlejuice (1988) contains within it a sort of aesthetic manifesto from Tim Burton, in which he rails against the passing of traditional architecture under the wave of Memphis modernity.

Before they die, the Maitlands lovingly restore their Connecticut Victorian home and even keep a model of the whole town up in their attic, as if capturing for themselves a bit of the town's bucolic New England charm. When they die, the Dietzes move in, and Delia declares psychotically, "I'll go crazy if you don't let me remodel this house!" With help from the obnoxious Otho she strips away the traditional Victorian trappings and turns the house into a modernist, Memphis-inspired nightmare, forcing the Maitlands to watch in horror as their hard work is destroyed (that is until they summon the title character). In keeping with the movie's structure as a "reverse ghost story" in which the ghosts are nice and the living humans are the horror.

Personally I find Memphis fascinating (though I wouldn't want to live there). I especially appreciate its influence on the design language of Sonic the Hedgehog games, as a complement to the greater variety of slopes, gradients, and curved ramps the early games afforded, to showcase the greater capabilities of the Sega Genesis. (That's really entirely why Sonic exists; some guys at Sega played Mario 3 and figured that they could "do Mario, but better".)

You're not wrong - but what do I do when the light is not bright enough (hint - almost all of them are not bright enough for my needs)?

And how many of them can I control with SmartThings, etc?

With my own bulbs, I can have it how I want it. I pick the fan based on the fan's capabilities, and not worry about the light.

> Central-point overhead lighting is displeasing.

No arguments there, but most houses/apartments in the US are built in this brain dead way. When I lived abroad, it was much better. The lights were always on the walls - often opposing walls. This way, light is coming more at an angle downwards, and you can position chairs/beds/couches such that the light is behind you, and if you're reading a book, the pages are being lit up by it.

What about the latent heat of vaporization?

Zürich