X10 Community Forum
🔌General Home Automation => Other Automation Systems => Powerline Control Reliability => Topic started by: JeffVolp on December 09, 2020, 04:43:51 PM
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We have had a Utilitech dimmable LED bulb in an interior hallway controlled by a Leviton dimmer to vary its brightness from max during daytime to a soft glow during the night. It is one of the early expensive LED lights with the aluminum heat sink, and has worked fine since being installed about 15 years ago. Recently it had started to occasionally miss the extended commands that set its brightness for that time of day.
At first I thought that maybe something had been added that was attenuating the X10 signal, but it was fine. So I checked the bulb itself. It indicated .38Vpp of noise on the XTBM. I had another one still in the box that produced no noise at all. The Leviton dimmer has AGC, which allowed it to continue working as the noise level built up. I replaced it with another bulb.
Bottom line is that even if LED bulbs work fine when installed, that doesn't mean they can't deteriorate and begin causing problems as they age.
Jeff
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Bottom line is that even if LED bulbs work fine when installed, that doesn't mean they can't deteriorate and begin causing problems as they age.
Jeff
Thanks for the heads-up! That's the same issue experienced with the CFL. But with a daily use 15 year lifespan for many of us here the LED's are nearly a lifetime fix.
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Unlike incandescent bulbs that when failed are obvious, other types of bulbs are not obviously faulty though. When the ballast of a full sized fluorescent fixture fails, it's generally hard to turn on or takes time to flicker to life. For CFL I've seen them just take longer to start but that's kinda normal for the garbage swirly bulb. LED report life of 15+ years but that's typically when they expect something to stop producing light (either the driver fails, the elements burn out, etc). For X10, lifespan means also when the bulb starts becoming electrically noisy. I have looked for information on whether this type of failure is built into the reported 15 year life span, but it's tough reading to understand. It's frustrating for X10 (a small market) but it's also problematic for high end audio/video and other applications relying on clean power signals. I'm surprised there hasn't been more talk about noise unless this failure mode (creates light but also electric noise) is extremely rare.
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Probably not so rare but rarely noticed or understood by most people.
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Most of the LED failures I have had.
They didn't light at all, flicker as they warmed up, go off when warmed up.
I do have one Philips L-Prize LED bulb that is in use for over eight years now.
Our governments Department of Energy's L-Prize contest. 10 Million dollar prize for the winner.
Had to meet a set of specifications to be the winner.
I believe it was around $38 and that was with a power company incentive to dump incandescent bulbs.