LED Light Bulbs

[ab4d]

Hi All,

I just want to pass on this information along for anyone considering LED lighting for their home. The Ecosmart 65 watt LED canister light conversion units (with CREE technology) sold at the Home Depot, seem to be RFI free.

Lowes sells conversion units too by Sylvania. However be warned, they only work with the canisters that have three springs holding the trim ring, mine had the two legged V spring. I learned this after purchasing one of the Sylvania units. I cannot attest to whether they are radio friendly. The Ecosmart bulbs seem to work with any standard 6 inch canister light.

I scanned around the HF band after installing them and did not detect any RFI. In my kitchen, there are 8 of the canister lights that are constantly on a good part of the day and night when we are home. Over the past few months, we slowly changed all eight incandescent bulbs (520 watts total draw) to the LED units that now only draw 76 watts.

I considered the CFL first, but I've never been a big fan of the CFL bulbs. I've had several fail in a short period of time, and the last one I installed, let out a big puff of smoke instantly after it was turned on. The new LED bulbs are brighter and run cool to the touch too.

73

 

[6meter]

I've been thinking about installing the LED light strips along the underside of the top shelf of my radio bench.

But from what I have heard they have really bad RFI.

 

[ab4d]

I've been thinking about installing the LED light strips along the underside of the top shelf of my radio bench.

But from what I have heard they have really bad RFI.

I guess it depends on the quality of the power supply. If you ran them off a linear supply rather than the cheap switching supplies that come with them, they would probably generate no noise.

Nevertheless, I've never used the LED strips, but I wanted to put the info out there as an alternative to the CFL's, which I don't really like, because of the mercury content and other reported issues.