The Light bulb Cartel

It was named the Phoebus Cartel.

Phoebus

  1. Greek Mythology Apollo, the god of the sun.
  2. The sun.

"it engaged in large-scale planned obsolescence to generate repeated sales and maximize profit."

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Mikek

Reply to
amdx
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I guess you weren't happy paying 0.50c a bulb?

Now you can get a LED buld for >$8, and Hope it lasts for more than a few years. You do relize that half of the 20 year bulbs will not make it past 10y.

And I hevent touched on the cheap

Reply to
Martin Riddle

Opps, I guess I better send this to where I thought I sent it. :-)

But, ya, I was never happy with the life of CFLs or LEDs. I doubt it will get any better. Drive pcbs as cheap as they can be made. Mikek

Reply to
amdx

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** That Wiki is reporting a MYTH - not a scam.

Read the "Talk" FFS you sad wanker.

.... Phil

Reply to
Phil Allison

I've wondered what type of lamps were used at the tops of radio masts before LEDs. That's an expensive bulb-swap.

Reply to
bitrex

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** Incandescent bulbs, under run by 25% in voltage and hence filament temp can last 5 years at 8 hours per night.

... Phil

Reply to
Phil Allison

I'd explain it to you, but you're such an ass. My god, what happened in your development that caused such mental problems.

Mikek

Reply to
amdx

One of the surviving large shopping malls in the Boston suburban area that was built in the late 1980s (all are struggling, some in better locations limping along better than others that weren't and closed) replaced some of its bulb-type fixtures with LED bulbs.

It's a three-level enclosed mall with arched support columns spaced every 10m or so running up to the glass roof and the tops of each of the pillars are ringed in maybe 50-100 of what were originally clear envelope incandescent, replaced with clear envelope LED bulbs that have the array of a dozen or so LEDs on the sides of a post inside.

For a while all was well I guess but whether it was due to using a batch of lamps all from the same bad batch, or buying discount lamps in volume from a dodgy mfgr (it was a lot lamps to replace), or an overheating/thermal problem due to their location up by the roof of the structure, or a combination, one by one they started to fail and become intermittent and flicker, eventually probably 25%-50% of the lamps were flickering all down the whole length of the mall like a huge Christmas display or German discotheque.

And it was just like that for a number of years as I'm sure nobody in the management of this already-struggling mall wanted to shell out the cost yet again to make it right.

Reply to
bitrex

About a 1 million square-foot-of-retail space mall that expanded into the mid 1990s. Appropriately sized for the time, about 50% too large for the available customer base in the area now considering eShopping. Too large to maintain effectively given the revenue it's bringing in.

Reply to
bitrex

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** I have seen overdriven red LEDs change brightness and voltage on a regular basis. They were in a Boogie guitar amplifier, a "Dual Rectifier Roaster". Belonged to a young, gay woman who brought it back, new from the USA with her and it soon developed serious misbehaviour.

On advice, she took it to the local Boogie service agent who on a hunch replaced all the output tubes and handed it back. Unfixed, with a $300 bill.

Then it came to me to get really fixed, along with its hefty step-down tranny.

What it did was change volume and tone randomly while being used - wacky right ?

Soon discovered that the LEDs inside the many Vactecs were changing voltage regularly, with some very high readings or even going open.

Looking at the PCB I realised it did not follow the schem, but did follow the silk screening for the resistors feeding the Vactecs from the 5V DC rail.

Instead of 470, 680 and 1000 ohms, 47, 68 & 100 ohms were installed !!

So 30 to 50 mA flowing instead of 3 to 6mA.

I replaced the wrong Rs and fitted new LEDs into the same Vactecs for a total cure. Got a secret way for doing that.

The gay girl was not very pleased, cos she got another hefty bill from me - nearly all for my time.

Teach her to buy absurdly heavy, 120VAC amps in the USA co they are cheaper than out here. Then wind up with no warranty.

.... Phil

Reply to
Phil Allison

Which mall was that?

--
 Thanks, 
    - Win
Reply to
Winfield Hill

Emerald Square, down by the RI line in good ol' Attleboro, MA:

They eventually got around to replacing the malfunctioning bulbs.

I misremembered the architecture though the columns are straight and the bulbs are all in these "channels" running up the side of sconce-like flair at the top of the columns. The way they're channeled might have something to do with the failures:

Mall was built in 1989 and the big place for all the teeny-boppers in the area in the 1990s. It's a bit tattered and tired since its heyday with a number of vacant storefronts but hasn't completely closed, though. A lot of it is women's clothing and shoe stores now which was probably a prudent way to re-orient.

Reply to
bitrex

It's tried to keep up with the times a little, there's a charging station there with all the connectors for every type of AC and DC fast charging as far as I can tell. It's a little hard to find it's in the rear on the ground floor of the mostly closed parking garage structure from better times.

There's only one bay for Level 2 AC but it's all-you-can-drink and free all the time.

Reply to
bitrex

But even so, it was a huge advance from candles and gas lamps.

--
John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
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Reply to
jlarkin

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** One of JLs better non sequiturs.

..... Phil

Reply to
Phil Allison

The CFL business was an illegal disaster: Forced sales of an inferior,more expensive, more costly, more polluting product. Lies abounded.

Reply to
Robert Baer

Halogen or arc.

Reply to
Robert Baer

tinstaffl

Reply to
Robert Baer

They give me a dollar's worth of electricity when I choose to come to their fine establishment and I always spend at least $10 there, sounds like a business model to me. I could always go some other place...

Reply to
bitrex

There's a fee for the super-duper speedy ones.

Reply to
bitrex

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