Landscape LEDs - a little less power

I have noted in a previous post that I still had yet to convert my landscape lighting system to LED.  Foolishly, I thought warmer weather would be a better time.  In fact, it isn't.  I hate bugs; bugs like warm weather.  If I want to work on the system without bugs around, a bit of a chill is preferred.  This month, I finally got on the system.

First, let me describe my system to you.  I have (pics to follow):

• 7 post pathway lights (1 broken one in my garage, so no longer used) [30 W]
• 4 small uplights (on each of the pillars of my house) [30 W]
• 7 well lights (one of them not quite in a well) [50 W]
• 6 deck spotlights [30 W]
• 1 flat spotlight [50 W]

Pathway lights on the garage side of the house

A well light in the backyard

Spotlights coming off the side of the deck

A closer look of a deck light with the outer tube removed

The rear stone wall flat spotlight

Up close to a well light

The connectors of a well light - easy to replace

If one does the math, that leads to total power consumption (assuming all bulbs are functioning, which wasn't always true) of 910 W.  The system was running on an electromechanical timer for 5 hours a day.  Assuming I'm paying 12¢/kWh, that leads to an annual cost of:

365 days/yr • 5 hr/day • 0.910 kWh/hr • 0.12 $/kWh = $199.29/yr

Call it $200.  Not terrible, but money.  I had two objections to the system as it was:

• Bulbs would die and need to be replaced
• The timer was only a "good enough" solution.  It would turn on too late in winter and too early in summer.
• I was spending more money than I needed to get the same amount of lighting and aesthetic benefits.

So on to the LEDs.  I was able to purchase all that I needed on Amazon but from random Chinese brands (VStar, Simba Lighting, and i-Shunfa).  Where are Philips, Sylvania, and GE on this?

This is the replacement impact of the LEDs:

Style	Lightbulb Type	Bulb Count	Original Power (W)	LED Power (W)	Per Bulb Savings (W)	Total Savings (W)
Pathway Light	G4	7	30	1.5	28.5	199.5
Small Uplight	MR16	4	30	5	25	100
Deck Spotlight	MR16	6	30	5	25	150
Well Light	PAR 36	7	50	9	41	287
Flat Spotlight	G4	1	50	1.5	48.5	48.5
Total		25				785

Substantial savings on a power (Watt) basis, for sure.  You will note that the ratio of original to LED wattage for the pathway lights is very high.  Indeed, I may be misestimating the original incandescents because the 1.5 W LEDs light up the area just about as much as the original bulbs.  For the flat spotlight, however, I will have to replace the 1.5W LED with something much larger to get anything close to the original illumination.

The timer was the other part of the landscape lighting that I didn't like.  When I started researching alternatives (seeking a lat/long timer similar to my wall switches) it finally hit me that I can just use my TP-Link WiFi plug instead.  It was currently being used to turn on for an hour and then turn off a light in my upstairs office to make somebody think that we could be home.  Not a great use case.

I plugged it in, but then found out that I didn't have enough room to plug in the transformer and still get the cover on it.  After starting to research low-profile 90º plug connectors, I realized that one of my extension cords had the same end and probably would do the trick.  It took some fiddling with a velcro strap and then some time to connect to the WiFi, but it is now currently on a dusk-to-11pm schedule and has been working well.

In the end, this is what it looked like:

The cost of running the system now will look more like the following:

365 days/yr • 5 hr/day • 0.125 kWh/hr • 0.12 $/kWh = $27.38/yr

So I will be saving $171.92 per year!  That exceeds the cost of the LEDs of $152.43 (with some spares) and thus my payback period is only 10.6 months (much better than 8 years ago when it was ~20 months).

Finally, I will likely now install the Volt Spotlight Expansion Kit that I've had for a few years.  Originally, I had planned on installing it at my old house.  I decided to pass on that and am now glad that I did.  There are a few additional places I'd like to light up in my back yard (particularly the gate to my back fence) that the addition of the 20 W (and $4.38/yr) that these four lights bring will be worth it.

Sunset to Sunrise Lighting

In Outdoor Lighting Quest, I described my 2012 decision to make all of the lights on the outside of my house to be LED.  Lighting is the first line of defense for home safety.  My calculations showed that after three years, I would have saved ~$375, which would have been through 2015.  I ultimately sold that house in May of 2019, and my calculations showed that I actually saved about $1,400 or $200/year.  Not bad and that was with much more expensive LEDs.

One of the first things I wanted to get sorted out at my new house was getting lighting at all of the entrances of the house to be on from dusk until dawn.  At my last house, I did this Z-wave light switches and initially with a MiCasa Verde and eventually with a Samsung SmartThings hub.  It worked for the most part, but some of the lights would somehow routinely get "forgotten" by the system and I would have to reset them and re-add them.  It was a mild hassle and less reliable than I really would have liked.

When we moved into our current house, the lights on the front of the house (garage and front door) were on timers.  It worked reasonably well, but you have to strike a balance between the lights turning on too late during the winter and too early in the summer.  I looked around for a better way.

Simple Zwave switches are about $20 now.  I could have replaced the timers with Z-wave switches, but the "forgetfulness" of the system concerned me.  After a bit of research, I decided to go with relatively simple Honeywell FBA 36045 switches.  They were about $30 each (meaning that I spent $150 to avoid having to turn on and off the outside lights everyday).  They are timer-based, but you put in your latitude and longitude and it will adjust your on and off times to match the calendar.  It seemed like a pretty useful solution if it worked.

I started on switches that currently did not have timers on them - the basement entrance light and the door to the Sun Room.  The installations went fine; both had easily accessible neutral wires, which would be the killer if you didn't have.  In addition, it wasn't too hard to figure out which of the black wires was load versus hot.  It took a little bit of reading, but it turns out programming them isn't hard at all.  The latitude and longitude can only be put in as a whole number (which is admittedly probably fine), but it felt like the nearest 10th might have been better.  The switches have been working well since they were installed around March 22nd. 

Two days ago, it was crazy windy and the power flickered here a bit.  One of the time switches appeared to have died (and was just leaving the lights on).  It didn't bother me too much, given that I had already replaced all of the outside lights with LEDs, but it is still wasteful.  The two Honeywell switches that I had recently installed weathered the flickering without problems - they purport to have a battery that will keep the time for up to four hours.

I decided today to add one to the side door and replace the timers on the front and garage lights.  I was successful, but it did take some time.  After some careful rewiring, they all seem to be set up properly, but we'll find out for sure this evening and tomorrow morning.

These new switches will not be saving me money, ultimately costing me more, given that I will have three fixtures on from dusk until dawn.  But, now all of my house's entrances are lit at night.  And it should only cost me ~ 12 hours x 365 days / year x 12 light bulbs x 3.3 W x $0.12/kWh = $20.80/year.  Almost a steal.

The light switch in the dining room was absolutely packed with wires!

Not to be outdone, the one in the hallway was loaded up with two dimmer switches and a timer switch.  Only one of the four was a normal skinny switch and that one was a three-way (so not super skinny).

All done with the hallway (garage door) light switch.  Waiting on a new faceplate for the one to the side of the house.

I'm approaching an all-LED home.  I made progress on two difficult lights today when I had a burst of energy.  The first (smaller) one was not that hard, it just required another trip downstairs to get a large board to place the light on its side to do the exchange.  The larger light proved much more troubling, though with a ladder, a thick book and long arms, I was able to get it done.  I hope to never have to replace any of these lights through the remainder of my ownership in this house.

Undergoing light bulb replacement surgery on the back staircase light

It is bright and all bulbs are functioning

The thick book has already been removed, but this was the proof shot that all of the bulbs were replaced and they are pretty bright (eight of them)

I have a few areas still left to conquer:

• Six lights in the kitchen are still incandescent due to the LED bulbs of the same number are too long and won't fit.  I would like to use this light fixture much more than we do and if we had LEDs, I would be inclined to do so.
• Bookselves don't have LEDs - I couldn't find the right size when I looked for them.  They are also almost never used.
• Some random bathroom lights upstairs.  I should just get these done.
• Small lights in the ceiling of the bar downstairs.
• Lights in the movie theater.  I could have replaced more, but the dimmers won't work with them and they are almost never on.
• Landscape lighting.  I will undergo this crusade once the weather is reasonably warm and I can be out there identifying both the lights and suitable LED replacements

Another Dead LED: Time for a Disection!

One of my first generation (for me) Feit "PAR" 30 LEDs just stopped working in my kitchen.  Which isn't a very good way of describing the problem.  It turned on, at super low brightness.  Not like L80 failure.  It all of the sudden went from a very bright bulb, to flickering occasionally, to flickering almost every time it was turned on, to not glowing brightly.  The bulb in question is about seven years old, but still disappointing that it is going.  Many other of these bulbs in my house are still going strong.

I'm not knowledgable enough to know what likely failed, but I thought that I would take advantage of the failure to see what was on the inside.  I did a destructive disassembly of everything but the circuit board.  I can say definitely that I did not expect the circuit board to be so complicated.  I'm half inclined to open one of my newer, much lighter LED bulbs to see how they've been simplified over time.

In any event, here are the pictures of the disassembly, step by step, with my amateur descriptions of what is there.  Further conclusions (if any) will be at the end.

This bulb is dominated by the aluminum heat sink that surrounds it.

Looking at the business end of the bulb - 7 actual LEDs

After removing the three screws you saw in the first picture, I was able to wiggle the top of the bulb, but couldn't remove it further.  Time to try the other end of the bulb.

The plastic lens popped off without too much effort.  It revealed four screws - three of which were required to remove the plastic insert plate.

Plastic plate removed, exposing the metal plate that has the actual LEDs sitting on it.  Some identification markings from Feit: ALPCB0589 Rev1 which doesn't mean anything to me, or the internet.  The positive and negative wires bringing the (presumably) DC power required to make the LED's go bright are exposed.  I had to cut them to keep going.

Now I was able to remove the aluminum heat sink from the bulb.  Here was my first surprise: the aluminum heat sink is only about half the weight of the bulb.  I had assumed it was the heavy part.  The core turns out to be pretty heavy too. 

To keep going, I had to start breaking the center core.  It was a hard, but reasonably brittle plastic that allowed me to dig down a ways.  I'd eventually get stuck just using my Nest screwdriver and had to bring in more destructive tools.

Just some perspective of the working part of the bulb - it is tiny, a super thin plate.

Maybe the plate is not metal: it looks like there is a super simple (in series) circuit on the surface?  Why would they choose to do it that way instead of in parallel?  Seems odd.

I've broken all of the inner core that I could with the screwdriver.  Inside there is silicon or some such substance around everything.  The circuit board is already way more complicated than I had expected it to be.

The other side.

Using some vice grips, I pulled off the E26 connector.

The vice grips were also useful to crack off the remaining plastic.  After that it was just clearing out the silicon.

Given the simplicity of the back of the circuit board, it came off in one easy piece.

Here is the top of the circuit board as much as I cleaned it off -- took way too much time even though you can see a ton of silicon still on it.  The right is the 120VAC input, the right is the DC (IDK what voltage) output.  I would guess that the exposed copper coils are a transformer bringing the AC voltage down.  I recognize some resistors and some capacitors elsewhere, but not sure what may of the other pieces are (like the three big brown things on the top and top right of the board).  I'm also not sure what the yellow covered device is (though presumably, it is an inductor).  In the end, this is almost certainly a constant current power supply shoved into the bulb.  It's just so complicated.

Why a constant current power supply needs multiple chips on the back is a mystery to me.

Here are my conclusions:

1. First-gen LED's were heavy due to both excessively large heat sinks and the silicon goop on the interior.
2. It's easy to remove the aluminum heat sink from Feit bulbs - do it and recycle.
3. New bulbs are not readily accessed like this one.  Likely they avoid both the big heat sink and the silicon goop.  When they start breaking, I'll dig in and see how they are different.
4. LEDs are pretty awesome.  Based on the marking here, I likely bought this bulb in the early part of 2009.  It's the early part of 2019.  I'll take a 10 year replacement cycle.  That being said, I'd gladly take longer.

LEDs for Life?

I have spent some time thinking about lightbulbs.  Probably at least partially due to the fact that I'm pretty cheap and loved the idea of the cost savings from LEDs.  A few years after moving into my house, I decided to make all of the outdoor bulbs LEDs (recorded in this post).   Part of my motivation was that I didn't want to change light bulbs anymore and I saw LEDs as a lifetime solution.   I would joke to folks that I didn't get paid to change light bulbs.

Well, some of my outdoor LEDs have started to fail and I'll have to admit that I'm kinda bummed.  Not because they weren't the right answer for my lighting needs, they definitely were.  If my math was even remotely correct, I saved a boatload of money (on the order of $860) despite buying the bulbs for $36 each (and that was a good price - Costco - in 2013).  The reason that I'm bummed is that I have to replace the lightbulbs at all.

When I installed the bulbs, I noted that I expected them to last for 7 years.  That sounds like a very long time in the future, potentially approaching the perspective of "forever from now".  And bulb lifetime, as estimated at that point in time, was going to be based on the light output degrading to only half of what it had originally been.  Some of the bulbs, however, have not lasted 7 years.  I just replaced two: one was flickering (spending more time off than on) and the other was just out all of the way.  That wasn't the way it was supposed to be.  They were supposed to last forever!

I've replaced the bulbs with new Feit bulbs that cost 1/12th the cost of the original LEDs, but I'm just a little bit sad that the LEDs are not lifetime bulbs.

Closer to "All LED, All the Time"

I have been writing, albeit sporadically, about LEDs since 2008.  I've been super nerdy and calculated the payback on LEDs for daily outdoor lighting at my house.  Based on that post (and the fact that it is more than four years later), LEDs have been good to me.

I've wanted to get to the point where I only had LEDs in my house, but I've been limited by four problems (1) the under-cabinet bulbs in my kitchen and (2) the landscape lights in my backyard (3) I had found fluorescent replacement lights to be very common or inexpensive and (4) I had halogen-based light fixtures.  Slowly, I'm getting past all of these barriers and making progress toward only LED lighting in my house.

Here's how my solutions to the four issues has gone.  By the numbers, see below.

(1) I recently found some good candelabra base corn-cob LEDs on Amazon.  They are bright and I've ordered another 5 after the first 10 have worked out.  Now, I just need to figure out get the bread box lit in the corner.

Under-cabinet lighting!  (see the dim area in the corner that used to be the bread box).

Hard to tell they are corn cob from this view, but quite easy to see in the reflection with your naked eye.

(2) I found a good T10 replacement that was svelte enough to fit into Cast Wall lighting fixtures that abound in my backyard.  Unfortunately, it was super expensive ($20).  Just recently, I found a package of 20 LED bulbs on Amazon for $50.  Given that I needed 19, this was perfect.  And $380 wasn't a particularly attractive purchase price.  My wall lights had been installed when the backyard was redone in 2012, but most of the bulbs have burnt out by now.  (I had originally thought that the wiring was bad, but it turned out to be the simpler problem of just burnt out bulbs).  LEDs should basically last forever and limit my need to do awkward replacements.  And they are 2.6 watts instead of 40 watts.  So now I'm contemplating adding some more lights with all of those spare watts that I have on my transformer.

Bright indirect landscape lighting.  Only beware that many of the LEDs of the T10 size are really designed to work via DC.  If you run them in an AC circuit (as is my landscaping lights) there will be a 60 hz flicker.  This isn't too annoying for indirect lighting

(3) Fluorescent replacements are readily available and quite good.  I bought four two foot units and six four foot units.  Both are well-rated on Amazon.  Most of the bad feedback is stupidity on the part of the customers.  Just be sure that you are ready to do some (very simple) rewiring of the units.  I pulled out and threw away the ballast on all of the units that I replaced.  See pictures and descriptions below.

Very well-lit upstairs hallway

I removed the diffusers on the 4' units - they are being used in an indirect application already, so I figured it would just dim the light.  I also stapled Aluminum foil on the sides of the trench they are sitting in to help reflect light.

The 2' LED bulbs lighting up the (very messy) loft

By removing two screws, you can easily remove the diffuser on the 4' bulbs that I installed.

I don't know where the external diffuser is for this light in my laundry room, so I left the integrated diffusers on these 4' LED bulbs.

(4) I had some Ikea wall sconces and a bathroom light that used halogen bulbs (for which there is no ready LED replacement).  I ended up replacing the Ikea sconces because a past renter had broken the glass piece on it.  I replaced it with a $40 LED only fixture that I expect to last the lift of the house.  The one remaining bathroom fixture will be replaced over the next week with a light fixture that can take LED bulbs.

Old, Ikea halogen-based wall sconce

The new unit on - hard to get a sense of the relative color temperature between this picture and the last, but the LED is closer to daylight (preferred by me).

Further notes on LEDs:

• I've had bad experiences with LEDs five years ago from low light output (lumens) or flakey electronics that die reasonably early (days).  
• Light output has gotten uniformly better.  Just keep an eye on color temperature and make sure you are getting what you want.  On Amazon, color temperature and lumens are always available.  If you are skeptical of light output, check out how many watts it's using.  Compare to other bulbs who claim the same lumens.  Nobody has super fancy proprietary LED technology right now, if it seems to good to be true, it is.
• With respect to the early end-of-life on cheap LEDs, I now always do a 24 hour test of the bulbs.  This is nothing complicated, just keep the LEDs on for 24 hours.  All of my recent bulbs have passed the test with flying colors.
• I still have six 4' and two 2' fluorescents in closets around the house.  And two 8' units in the garage.  Most will be harder to rewire due to the restricted working area, but not too much of a problem.  They don't get used much, so there isn't a hurry, but I would like to see them go at some point.
• I still have CFLs in my garage and furnace room sitting in porcelain light fixtures.  I think that there are about 8 total.  I'd like to replace them with high output corn cob LEDs at some point, but I'm not finding any compelling options at the moment.  At that point, I will reach full LED saturation (excluding inaccessible bulbs, such as in my oven).

All About Lightbulbs (not really)

[Less of a Draft as of 2013-06-24]
So my wife tells me that I know more than anybody should about lightbulbs. This is likely true, but I do find them interesting and useful to know about. I also like the thought of saving money on more efficient light bulbs. This quest for efficiency can be found in my previous post here. A few thoughts about light bulbs:

1. There are really four lightbulb options at the current time (though most folks are probably thinking only about three). They are LED, CFL, Incandescent and Halogen. The last is the one most people haven't seen in household applications (flashlights and cars, yes). Halogen turns out to be more efficient than incandescent and thus avoids the coming federal lightbulb crackdown.  They also have fair "normal" color temperature.
2. Some perspective, a 60 watt incandescent is equivalent to a 14 watt CFL and a 10 watt LED. That is a 6:1 energy advantage for LEDs over incandescent, but an only a 3:2 advantage over CFLs. See this chart.
3. The big difference between CFLs and LEDs is that the LEDs lifetimes are drastically longer. That is to say 50,000 hours versus 10,000 hours for CFLs (versus a measly 1,200 hours for incandescent).  This, I believe, is even a bigger deal in practice than is the case for the rated numbers.  See 5 below.
4. LEDs typically don't die (see exception at point 12). Their lifetime is considered over when their brightness is half of its initial brightness.  That said, I don't know what LED Lumen calculations are made on: beginning of life brightness or end of life?  (If you know - please write in the comments)
5. CFLs usually don't last as long as they are rated. This is very much dependent on the application, though. If you use a CFL in an area where the light is likely to get turned on and off frequently, the CFL won't last. Apparently, they need time to cool down before being turned back on again.
6. According to the DOE, the average house has 40 sockets in which to put lightbulbs. When I went through my house, I found a few more. To be specific, there are 186 bulbs in my house (not just sockets, but lamps too). That is a bunch.
7. If the average LED bulb costs $20, it would cost $3,720 to fully outfit my house in LEDs.  I am a fair way down that road, but I haven't gone all of the way.  Many of the bulbs just don't get used (or left on) enough to justify the switch.  I'm also positive that the LEDs  won't get reflected in the sale price of the house when I do sell it.
8. A bunch of bulbs in my house is an understatement. If all of the lightbulbs were on in my house and fitted with incandescents, there would be an electrical load of 13.5 kW (or about 112.5 amps).
9. The average household uses 2,100 kWh per year on lighting. That only equates to about $210 per year in electricity costs. Unfortunately, with all of our additional lights, I spend more than that per year just for the outdoor lighting (with the LEDs). Details are here.
10. The coming federal limits are actually already starting to take effect. See here. Best part is the labeling requirements which force manufacturers to provide some easily comparable numbers. The Nutrition Facts box on a box of cereal is a good analogy.  Unfortunately (IMHO), the requirements don't go far enough. They should provide a clear "cost of ownership" tag that shows how much it would cost to own the bulb over a 5 year period.
11. Don't install LEDs in your house if you think that you might move within the next couple of years. Unless, that is, you really really don't like to replace light bulbs. Or if you leave the lightbulb on all the time, like a night light.  Or, if you have turned into your father (maybe mother, but in my case it was exclusively my father) and have started complaining to family members for leaving lights on.  With LEDs, I find myself much less likely to complain.
12. I have used this (finding lights on in areas with no people) as a means of targeting bulbs in my house for replacement to LED.  Wandering around the house when I'm not normally there (middle of the work day) or in the morning or last thing at night is a great way to find the likely culprits.
13. Don't buy cheap LEDs.  I bought a set of three $7 GU10 (this is a reference to the connection type on the bottom of the bulb) at Amazon and the electronics gave out after only three months or so.
14. My go-to brand for LEDs is Feit.  I've never gotten a bad bulb from those guys and they have pretty cost-competitive products.  Costco carries a fair share of their bulbs and I was able to buy some from Home Depot, as well.  I am not paid by Feit, but I would totally sign up to be a "brand ambassador" or some such thing if it were offered to me.
15. LED light bulbs are still not available for every application that I have at home (at least not from remotely mainstream companies).  I have under counter lights that use bulbs typical denoted as "exit sign" bulbs.  They have a candelabra base and straight sides.  I can't use candelabra bulbs because there isn't sufficient clearance (those bow outward).  I will wait until I can buy either Phillips or Feit bulbs for these (burned too many times by off brands).
16. This may be obvious to most, but more efficient light bulbs save you money in two ways during the summer: (1) less electricity to generate the same amount of light (the super obvious way) and (2) less electricity to cool your house from the waste heat generated by your lightbulb.  You should have roughly 1/5 the waste heat to cool.  This isn't a huge downside in the winter when you are heating the house anyway, but heat generated by electricity is typically not the most cost-effective means of doing so.  I don't have good numbers on this, but this post suggests a high cost (as does my childhood where I lived in upstate NY and had baseboard electric and got to hear my dad complain all of the time about it).
17. Don't get hung up on the cooler color temperatures of a LED versus an incandescent.  LEDs have come a long way and you may very find you prefer the slightly cooler temperatures than the (IMHO) overly warm colors from old-school bulbs.
18. Most LED bulbs can be made to dim these days.  Doesn't seem like this should be a consideration for most usage, but they dim and dim well.
19. Beware of noisy LED bulbs.  I know folks who have found this to be a problem with a common buzz of fluorescents in the past, but it can be an LED problem, too.  This is particularly important for bulbs that will be right next to your bed or some other work space, probably less important for recessed lights.  I bought a Philips 12E26A60 LED bulb (reviewed here) and put it in the lamp next my bed.  I had to switch it out; it buzzed.  I swapped it out with a Feit 60W replacement bulb and am much happier with the silence (and its brighter).
20. While on the subject of Feit, I believe that their 40W and 60W bulbs are great replacements for your standard light bulb.  The only thing to be careful of with the 60W replacement bulb is that it is a fairly big bulb.  Make sure it fits in the desired space envelope.
21. Don't worry about the delay in an LED lightbulb turning on.  Many now have essentially no delay.  Others do, but when they turn on, they are all of the way on.  I've had many of CFLs that took way too long to actually brighten.  They were perhaps 30% bright instantly, but only 100% until about 5 minutes in (maybe it wasn't that long, but it sure seemed like it was).
22. Most LED light bulbs weigh substantially more than their incandescent cousins (with CFLs generally being in the middle).  Mostly, I don't think that you should have to consider this as a factor given that most light fixtures have between one and three lightbulbs.  That said, fixtures for which there are many bulbs (I have a chandelier that takes twelve 60 watt bulbs), this can add up to a substantial amount of additional weight.  Hopefully not enough to tear anything out of the ceiling, but consider it.  [TO DO: add actual weights of some bulbs]
23. Essentially all lighting fixtures have a max wattage on the bulbs driven by heat dissipation requirements (and the resulting fire hazard).  Using LEDs, you can turn a fixture that has a maximum 60 Watt bulb into something much brighter (and perhaps more functional).
24. As with all bulbs, pay attention to how light will be distributed from the bulb.  A "normal" light bulb is expected to disburse light in all directions, if not equally, close to it.  LED replacements can have somewhat different patterns and may not look good in your existing lighting fixtures.  For recessed lights, the LED bulbs should say if they are narrow or wide (120 degrees is about the widest you'll find).

Another Set of LED Bulbs

I finally found some GU10 LEDs that look like they should be useful.  Again, its Feit bulbs that seem to be hitting the sweet spot.  $11 per bulb, almost half the price of other brands (found at Home Depot in Reston, VA).  I bought three to start to replace the terrible bulbs I had bought at Amazon.  Read the reviews of that one - you won't buy it.  As for Feit, I'm pretty comfortable that they will last.

Below is my email addressing this subject (LED lightbulb replacements) sent to Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution fame.

Tyler,
Long-time follower of your blog.  I don't know if you respond to questions, but in the off chance that you do, I have a question that came up in my mind after I bought some LED lightbulbs at HomeDepot this morning.
I haven't seen this addressed elsewhere, though I will admit I haven't searched too extensively (but Google Scholar has been part of my attempt).  In any event, this might be an interesting topic for discussion given your ability to write clearly and distill issues down to their core.
So, consider the homeowner seeking to manage their lighting needs.  For instance, if a lightbulb goes out at the home, the owner would want to be able to replace it immediately and therefore requires a stock of unused bulbs.  However, on the last trip to the store, the homeowner decides to purchase LED bulbs due to a desire to (a) save money (b) not be the cranky dad that yells at the kids for leaving the lights on (from personal experience, this tendency is much reduced if the wattage is 1/5th that of incandescence) and (c) not change lightbulbs in the future.  (b) and (c) are hard to quantify, let's assume for the moment that their economic value is zero, along with the cost of changing a bulb.  When the homeowner returns home, she determines that all of her lightbulbs are functioning.  She has a nagging feeling though, that it makes sense for her to pre-emptively change bulbs to the LEDs given that her $20/bulb investment will otherwise go to waste.  What is the right framework for her to think about this problem (I suppose a standard DCF analysis could be used)?  Are there other investments that follow the same pattern?
It seems obvious to me that if what I said about (b) and (c) is true, she should immediately change the bulbs.  Relaxing the assumption that changing bulbs has a cost could potentially change that conclusion if the costs were high enough.  Do you agree?  Do you know if this has this been part of the energy efficiency discussion?
Regards,
Mark
http://stepbeyondgadgets.blogspot.com/

(Update 2013-06-15 17:15) Tyler was gracious enough to provide a quick response to my inquiry:

There is clearly some attention cost, and what economists call "S-s" rules seem to apply here, in any case I will ponder this more and blog if I come up with something...

Tyler

Looks like I have some research to do.  I will post later, if I think I have something interesting to say based on that.

A New Bulb

The only lightbulb on the outside of the house that was not an LED was the CFL that was lighting the stone chimney that is on the front of the house.  It was a CFL because I didn't have any LED's that fit in the light fixture.  Well, that bulb is dead.  I'm not sure that I should be surprised, but it was annoying giving that it is the only bulb on the outside of the house that requires the aluminum extension ladder to get to.  Fortunately, I combined changing this bulb with hanging the icicle lights, so it wasn't too much extra effort.  Let's hope that this bulb lasts for its rated lifetime of 30,000 hours!  (that would be roughly 8 years)

Is that a speaker or a light?

I saw the IAV Light Speaker yesterday in an email from SmartHome. Pretty cool concept: a virtually hassle-free installation for wireless speakers. I haven't seen any reviews to know if they are worth anything (but would be willing to test them out for the manufacturer if they asked). Immediately, though, here are some problems (IMHO) with their approach:

1. They are wireless, but the website doesn't have any information about the wireless technology (or even band) that is used. There is some information on this HomeToys press release-like article. But that is just enough to be concerned about wifi interference.
2. Its not clear that the speaker and the LED components are modular. What if one dies and the other still works? This seems like a problem.
3. High price - seriously, $200/speaker of unknown sound quality? $800 just to get started. Nope. No matter what you save in installation, this will be too high a barrier to most. Get it down to $100 for the base station and $100/speaker and I think you have something.
4. No digital audio in option. It seems that this would have been easier (and a path of lower sound quality degradation) than their approach. So it goes from Analog at base station input toDigital for wireless transmission (presumably?) to Analog to be played by the speaker. Why not skip the first A/D conversion?

Still, a pretty cool concept that has some serious potential use in my house full of recessed lights!

The New Hue: Review of the Philips Hue

A friend recently shot me a quick email asking if I was planning on getting the Philips Hue, noting that it was currently for sale at the Apple Store. I had never heard of it, so I had no immediate answer.  It didn't take long to convince me; after checking out the product for a couple of minutes, I placed my order and then went off to Mexico for a planned vacation.

This was very much of the same concept that I had laid out in a blog post four years ago. I was pretty excited to see the product in a commercial form. The Hue arrived yesterday, right after I got back from my trip; I had to open it right away (while eating dinner). Check out this (much more complete) review on Geek.com if you are interested in an alternative perspective.

 In the box

• 3 "connected" lightbulbs
• Zigbee hub
• Power adapter for zigbee hub
• Ethernet cable

Out of the box

Super easy setup, especially for how I was planning on using it. My plan was to put the three lightbulbs in the overhead light above our couch. One idea was that it could dim to red while watching a movie to provide a bit of light ("movie mode"), but not be disturbing our eyes to watch the movie (our son constantly complains if we have the lights on during a movie or TV show). This light is not far from my main 24-port ethernet switch (which still has roughly half its ports available). I followed the instructions on the box:

1. Screwed the lightbulbs in
2. Turned the lightbulbs on
3. Plugged in the zigbee hub (both ethernet and power)
4. Downloaded the free Hue app for my iPhone
5. Fired up Hue and began to play around

First Impressions 

When I turned the light switch on, the bulbs lit up. So far so good. After connecting the Zigbee hub and loading the Hue app, the app directed me to push the button on the hub. I didn't get a great "click" sensation from doing so, but soon the app was off and running finding the light bulbs. I was then given a series of lighting "scenes" that I could adjust the lights to. It was pretty cool to mess around with them and they all seemed like their names suggested.

Movie Mode 

Getting the lights in to movie mode took some tinkering with the app. Finally, I ended up using the feature to set the color to that of a portion of a picture (forcing me to find a picture in my photo library with a nice solid red). This worked except for the bulbs were a bit bright. After more messing around, I was able to control the bulbs from the brightness / tone configuration screen. There was no solid confirmation that my changes had been saved, but apparently when any change is made, it is kept.

Turning the lights off

When I was done watching MNF, I turned off the lights and left the room. But at the back of my mind, I was wondering what would happen the next time the lights were turned on. Fortunately, what I consider the "right thing" happened: they turned on to be normal white light bulbs. I like the flexibility that they will do funky stuff when you direct them to, but otherwise will just be normal lightbulbs. You don't need to always use your iPhone just to turn on the lights (that would be supremely annoying).

Brief Comment on the Technology 

The bulbs communicate to the hub via Zigbee. Zigbee is based on a mesh network concept that should mean that every additional bulb expands the reach of the network. Unfortunately from what I've read, Zigbee implementations tend to be proprietary and thus you won't be able to control this from a MiCasa Verde Vera or other home controller without a special extension package. [Aside: this could be simpler than I'm suggesting depending on whether the Philips Zigbee hub has a nice API to interface with it.  I would have signed up to be a developer to know more, but apparently they are still "developing for developers"]  The Zigbee hub connects via wired ethernet (potentially a problem for your setup) to the rest of your home network (including your WiFi). Your phone connects via 802.11whatever to your WiFi router. My setup certainly does not test the bounds of possibilities here - the Zigbee hub was placed within 10 feet from the light fixture. Thus, I don't have anything useful to say about practical distance limitations for this setup.

One Step Beyond

First, some thoughts on my setup and then some criticisms. I have three bulbs in an overhead fixture. To the left and right of the TV there are four recessed lights for PAR 20s (two on each side) that the Philips Hue bulbs will fit in. At some point, I will spring to replace all of them to complete the room mood. Unfortunately, at the current price point, its going to be hard for me to do this. It would cost $60 x 4 = $240 just to finalize this. Ouch. For now, the Phillips Hue is just a fun toy. Someday, maybe more than that.

Improvements

It looks like Philips is towing the Open Source line for the moment. They are looking for developers to extend the Hue setup. Hopefully, the developers will add these capabilities soon:

• Party Mode: Dance to the music. Seriously would have made for some cool commercials. Not sure what they were thinking by leaving it out. That said, how complex would this be? Could AirFoil/AirPlay be used (using an iPhone as a receiving speaker with an App running to convert the music to light pulses)?
• Grouping of bulbs: Perhaps there are a few interface features that I'm not aware of, but it seems like it'd be difficult to have too many bulbs distributed through 
• Power meter: should be a trivial addition for the app to tell you instantaneously how much power the light bulb(s) is(are) using based on the current light settings.
• Room mapping (real scenes) and programming: It would be cool to be able to create more complex scenes that would be based on both interaction of paint color and a transitioning scene. Simple ideas would be to have a strobe effect (I have three bulbs in a circle on the overhead light) or a wave washing across a room (from left to right) or circling the room. Fancier still might be to have light patterns that could mess with your mind. I can see some OK Go!-like videos in the future here.
• Web-based (remote) control (oops - looks like this already exists - should have poked around the Philips Hue website a bit more.
• Different bulb shapes (this is supposedly in the works).

Outdoor Lighting Quest

This probably should have been something that I did the first week we moved in here, but I have finally gotten to the point that every outdoor light works and is functioning. Here is the finished product:

The front (from a vantage point around the middle of the front yard)


The back We have heard that lighting is one of the keys for good home security - more important than a fancy system. This was told to us by somebody who sells these systems for a living (and owns his own company). I finally decided I should make this happen.

The road to get there was not trivial and involved learning that we had more lights than we thought. Specifically, we didn't realize until recently that the main outdoor light fixtures had elements pointing in the upward direction. Makes sense given how tall the light fixtures are, but we just didn't know. Also, we didn't know that there was a light facing downward on the chimney. All news to us.

Now for some LED fun. If we lit all of the lights in the front of the house with incandescent bulbs, we'd be burning close to a full kilowatt - or 910 watts. This assumes that each of the fixtures would have a 65 watt bulb, which is reasonable for the PAR 38s. So if we were to leave the lights on an average of 10 hours a night, it would cost us $365.37 per year to light up the front of the house at a rate of $0.11/kWh (roughly our current rate). With the LEDs (and one CFL, cause the LED wouldn't fit in that space), we are burning only 243.5 watts. As a result, we will be saving $267.60 per year on electricity costs. However, the bulbs do cost more.

A cheap set of 65 watt PAR 38 lightbulbs costs $2 each. So for our 14 lightbulbs, lets assume a baseline price of $28, which would probably have to be replace every other year. I recently bought the PAR 38 LEDs at Costco for $36.99 (12 in use) and a PAR 30 for $29.99 (one in use) and the CFL (one in use - about $7). The total cost for the LED arrangement is a lot. Without going into too much more detail in words, see below:


The one aspect that the above chart ignores is the cost of changing lightbulbs. Though my labor in actual terms is free, I'd like to believe that my time has some non-zero value. The LEDs should last somewhere in the range of 7 years, while its unlikely that the incandescent bulbs will last more than two. In fact, the LED's should never burn out totally - their end of life is defined by only outputting 50% of their original brightness due to a degradation of the phosphorus, which happens due to the heat). That said, I don't know how these bulbs will perform outdoors. There will very cold days, where its not likely that the bulbs will heat appreciably at all and other summer nights where they will be hot. All that said, not having to think about these bulbs for the next seven years is probably worth another couple hundred dollars (even if only $30 per year -- that's still $210). I know that this is one of the drivers of adoption of LEDs for businesses - and I think it definitely factors into my thinking, too.

Finally, here are some pictures about the process for getting everything set up:


This is the "new" light


Its actually a long ways up there; this is the view from the bottom


And from the side


I was also replacing a bulb here - note the bottle of water placed on the top to help disuade any birds from building nests there, which is what happened last year. The birds crapped all over the porch and generally made a mess of things. Not terribly awesome - we were hoping to avoid it for the future - and are looking for a more permanent solution.

Ultimately, the front and rear house lights are going to be controlled by my Mi Casa Verde system that I purchased a while back, but have no hardware running on. As soon as I figure out just what types of switches I have (2-way versus 3-way, etc.) and which ones will work from a systems integration perspective.