ROTD thread

[chazmo]

OK, I made up "rant of the day" as a new acronym. If this thread gets offensive at all, I'm gonna' shut it down, but I thought I'd try. It could be fun.

Well, a couple of days ago I was ranting about modern electronics and their awful connectors in a separate thread. I really appreciated what other folks had to say about that, and the fact remains that misery LOVES company.

Alright, so my rant today is about consumer LED light bulbs.

I get really ticked off at the way LED bulbs that I've been buying behave. I'd say a full third of them just don't work well out of the box. And then another third of them start blinking and flickering for no apparent reason within a month.

These LED bulbs are/were always supposed to last longer than incandescent bulbs, and yeah they're supposed to draw less energy, and yeah the good ones are really whiter (NOT bluer!) than incandescents...

But, jeez... It's either quality control from the factories that are building this or some inherent weaknesses in the circuit boards or cables that these guys use for their LED arrays, but they are mostly a huge disappointment to me.

 

[Opsimath]

OK, I made up "rant of the day" as a new acronym. If this thread gets offensive at all, I'm gonna' shut it down, but I thought I'd try. It could be fun.

Well, a couple of days ago I was ranting about modern electronics and their awful connectors in a separate thread. I really appreciated what other folks had to say about that, and the fact remains that misery LOVES company.

Alright, so my rant today is about consumer LED light bulbs.

I get really ticked off at the way LED bulbs that I've been buying behave. I'd say a full third of them just don't work well out of the box. And then another third of them start blinking and flickering for no apparent reason within a month.

These LED bulbs are/were always supposed to last longer than incandescent bulbs, and yeah they're supposed to draw less energy, and yeah the good ones are really whiter (NOT bluer!) than incandescents...

But, jeez... It's either quality control from the factories that are building this or some inherent weaknesses in the circuit boards or cables that these guys use for their LED arrays, but they are mostly a huge disappointment to me.

It's good to hear I'm not the only one not happy with LED. Or bulbs in general. Remember when lightbulbs would last a loooong time? Years maybe? (We're talking '60's/70's.). Then their lifespans got shorter and shorter. I wrote the date on the neck of the kitchen bulb I just had to replace because the one before it died so quickly, both LED from the same pack. The dated one lasted one month.

I guess they do draw less energy since they're mostly dead.

 

[JohnW63]

" they're mostly dead." Take them to Miracle Max. He does wonders with cases like that.

 

[GAD]

Bulbs today are built with lifespans. If you buy cheaper bulbs they won't last as long. If you buy the better bulbs they last longer.

Ever stand in the store baffled by all of the stupid variations of lightbulbs? I have, and the deeper I delved the angrier I got.

First, GE has Refresh, Relax, and Reveal because Marketing got involved and decided that descriptive terms like Daylight and Soft White were too old-fashioned even though they're still on the box in smaller print.

Then they split out the bulbs into pretty much unexplained "levels" that, at least at Lowes, puts the good bulbs on the top of the shelf and the cheap bulbs on the bottom, only it isn't like it used to be where cheap just meant generic. No, the new cheap bulbs are designed to not last as long so that they're "cheaper" but you end up spending more because they fail so often (this is wide-spread in consumer goods these days and is part of what people refer to as "tax on the poor").

All of it is planned obsolecense because it is very possible to make LED lightbulbs that last 50 years. They just know that doing so would put them out of business because repeat customers are their lifeblood.

Finally, those LED lightbulbs are a ring of individual LEDs and the bulb is wired such that if one fails they all fail. From Wikipedia:



There have been some recent excitement about people "fixing" dead LED lightbulbs by shorting the dead segment which renews the ring. Don't do this. While it probably works on most bulbs, insurance won't pay for your house when it burns down because you did it wrong.

 

[GAD]

" they're mostly dead." Take them to Miracle Max. He does wonders with cases like that.

Mmm. Very perky, like a nice MLT - a mutton lettuce and tomato sandwich when the mutton is nice and lean...

 

[Guildedagain]

" they're mostly dead." Take them to Miracle Max. He does wonders with cases like that.

 

[Nuuska]

Interesting

I have LED-lightbulbs all over my house. I used to have a chain of 100 el-Cheapo bulbs on my backyard fence.

Only time ever I had flickering problems was w dimmers. But that flickering is feature of the dimmer w too little load. With a 40-60W filament bulb in same circuit would make dimmer work right and LED-bulbs follow.

Them 100 el-Cheapo's from China lasted various lengths of time. Right now I have 5 of them that have been constantly on since last September - they're in my basement hallway - massive 1W power consumption each . . .

For me there's no return - just avoid the obvious crap.

 

[Opsimath]

I like the idea of an ROTD thread.

Looking for more rants. Anyone?

 

[chazmo]

I was trying to come up with a rant yesterday, Cynthia... But, we're having such outstandingly beautiful weather here (today too) that I simply couldn't bring myself to bitch about anything!

 

[Default]

I could rant about a bunch of stuff, but I don't have the energy. I had Friday and Saturday off, and I pretty much slept through both days.

Ok, I know a rant. Adderall shortages, and how my prescriber says, "It's to cut down on people abusing it."

I always tell her that it would be a lot easier to make meth in my bathtub, than to go through the legal process to abuse the pittance that I take.

 

[davismanLV]

Driver Rant Alert: When you're sitting at a signal that's fairly busy with a left turn arrow. So of course, driver #1 is on their phone. The green left arrow comes, and then I start leaning on my horn no matter how far back I am. Do they put their phones down? No. They look left and right in the mirrors wondering where the honking and noise is coming from (still holding their phone) and only after far too long do they look up and see the light turning from yellow to red and they floor it, making them the ONLY car to get to turn left on that brief green arrow.

By this time, I wish I had torpedo launchers on my truck because someone needs to die. It's just the RUDEST THING EVER!!

There now, I've SAID IT, and I'm GLAD!!!

 

[GGJaguar]

I wish I had torpedo launchers

If you get some, please let me know where you got them. They could come in handy.

 

[Guildedagain]

 

[adorshki]

By this time, I wish I had torpedo launchers on my truck because someone needs to die. It's just the RUDEST THING EVER!!

If you get some, please let me know where you got them. They could come in handy.

My weapon of choice:

 

[GAD]

Here's a rant for ya:

I like to build electronics kits. That's likely not a surprise by now, but I bought a pretty complicated kit that's an LED clock comprised of nothing but discrete components. No chips, no batteries: just resistors, capacitors, diodes, and transistors. Fun!

Well, the designer for some reason decided that he would design his own code for these components instead of, you know, following the standards for PCB markings that have existed for like 75 years. Here's a piece of the board:



For those not familiar with PCB layouts, here's a section of another PCB that's properly marked:



Every resistor has a number (R15, R17, etc.) along with its value (10K, 47) and that makes troubleshooting possible because you can figure out which component on the schematic matches the marked components on the boards. Some boards are better than others, but any labeling is good labeling.

The manual comes with a key and the bags of components have the symbols on them, which is nice when there are literally 650 diodes to solder. I guess this makes it easier for beginners maybe, but this is not a beginner project (there are 2000+ components) so... why? I will say that it did make populating the board fairly easy since I didn't have to read, because reading is hard, and that's all well and good, but...

The clock doesn't work.

Luckily, the manual comes with a troubleshooting section, theory of operations guides, and schematics. Yay! The schematics even have helpful comments that look like this:


Awesome! Only the components on the schematic are labeled according to the standards (which is great) but there is absolutely no way to reference where any of these components are on the board!

WHAT - THE - ...

I think there's something fundamentally wrong somewhere early in the chain because while the power supply is putting out a nice 60Hz square wave, none of the flip-flops seem to be doing anything and I get that same nice 60Hz signal everywhere on the board. But the seconds LED lights with a random number, so that's nice (and proves that the LED decoder circuit works) but since there's no 1Hz signal feeding it it just stays on whatever random number it started on.

The problem is that I'm really good at soldering so it makes me cocky, but that doesn't discount the fact that I'm really good at soldering. I did learn some humility when I built the relay computer because I went too fast and missed some connections, so now I'm slightly less cocky and much better at troubleshooting, but I'm also not the guy who clearly bothered the designer to the point that he felt the need to write things like, "It can't be a reversed electrolytic capacitor because I warned you about that three times already, but check it again anyway" in the troubleshooting section of the manual. Ever meet an Angry Old EE? I used to work with them and this guy seems to just ooze Angry Old EE energy.

The guy who designed this sold off all his kits to an online magazine company called Nuts and Volts (where I bought it) years ago, so I don't think I can even get in touch with him, though I get the feeling he'd just yell at me for being stupid. I found a guy who blogged about building this clock - in 2012, so I'm sure he'd remember every little nuance. Oy.

After wasting way too much time troubleshooting I decided to just trace out the entire power supply section with a continuity tester to see if I can correlate the board with the schematic. Six components in I get to C6 on the schematic which does not appear to exist on the board.

Anywhere.

I'm mostly frustrated because I am definitely not an EE but maybe if he'd just LABELED THE DAMN BOARD I could just finish the stupid clock and get on with my life.

And that's my rant. Thanks for reading.

 

[JohnW63]

That is what happens when a group of people get together and come up with a way to have a complicated thing be built by people who don't build complicated things and don't want to need to read about it.

 

[adorshki]

I break out the paintball gun for lowlifes who leave fast food trash in the street.
Is there a paintball gun for phone trees?

 

[chazmo]

Here's a rant for ya:

I like to build electronics kits. That's likely not a surprise by now, but I bought a pretty complicated kit that's an LED clock comprised of nothing but discrete components. No chips, no batteries: just resistors, capacitors, diodes, and transistors. Fun!

Well, the designer for some reason decided that he would design his own code for these components instead of, you know, following the standards for PCB markings that have existed for like 75 years. Here's a piece of the board:



For those not familiar with PCB layouts, here's a section of another PCB that's properly marked:



Every resistor has a number (R15, R17, etc.) along with its value (10K, 47) and that makes troubleshooting possible because you can figure out which component on the schematic matches the marked components on the boards. Some boards are better than others, but any labeling is good labeling.

The manual comes with a key and the bags of components have the symbols on them, which is nice when there are literally 650 diodes to solder. I guess this makes it easier for beginners maybe, but this is not a beginner project (there are 2000+ components) so... why? I will say that it did make populating the board fairly easy since I didn't have to read, because reading is hard, and that's all well and good, but...

The clock doesn't work.

Luckily, the manual comes with a troubleshooting section, theory of operations guides, and schematics. Yay! The schematics even have helpful comments that look like this:


Awesome! Only the components on the schematic are labeled according to the standards (which is great) but there is absolutely no way to reference where any of these components are on the board!

WHAT - THE - ...

I think there's something fundamentally wrong somewhere early in the chain because while the power supply is putting out a nice 60Hz square wave, none of the flip-flops seem to be doing anything and I get that same nice 60Hz signal everywhere on the board. But the seconds LED lights with a random number, so that's nice (and proves that the LED decoder circuit works) but since there's no 1Hz signal feeding it it just stays on whatever random number it started on.

The problem is that I'm really good at soldering so it makes me cocky, but that doesn't discount the fact that I'm really good at soldering. I did learn some humility when I built the relay computer because I went too fast and missed some connections, so now I'm slightly less cocky and much better at troubleshooting, but I'm also not the guy who clearly bothered the designer to the point that he felt the need to write things like, "It can't be a reversed electrolytic capacitor because I warned you about that three times already, but check it again anyway" in the troubleshooting section of the manual. Ever meet an Angry Old EE? I used to work with them and this guy seems to just ooze Angry Old EE energy.

The guy who designed this sold off all his kits to an online magazine company called Nuts and Volts (where I bought it) years ago, so I don't think I can even get in touch with him, though I get the feeling he'd just yell at me for being stupid. I found a guy who blogged about building this clock - in 2012, so I'm sure he'd remember every little nuance. Oy.

After wasting way too much time troubleshooting I decided to just trace out the entire power supply section with a continuity tester to see if I can correlate the board with the schematic. Six components in I get to C6 on the schematic which does not appear to exist on the board.

Anywhere.

I'm mostly frustrated because I am definitely not an EE but maybe if he'd just LABELED THE DAMN BOARD I could just finish the stupid clock and get on with my life.

And that's my rant. Thanks for reading.

Excellent rant, GAD. I applaud your effort to make a very peculiar kit work. I really wonder why the designer did things this way.

 

[GGJaguar]

Here's a rant for ya:

Yikes! Makes building a tweed Champ clone look like a walk in the park.

 

[Guildedagain]

People who throw fast food leftovers in the street really are "special".

As I was picking up ant covered french fries and tartar sauce containers from the curb back in the city years ago, I asked my neighbor's wife who was standing on her porch watching me "Who the hell does this?" and without a hesitation and a smile she said "I do!".

People...