10 years of headaches/migraines

[Chris_Allen]

After 10 years of suffering headaches pretty much everyday, I finally traced my problem to these bastards!



The spectral power distribution of Fluorescent lighting is uneven, having spikes is certain bands of the light spectrum.

The office I sit in is now replacing the lights for LEDs and I've changed all my monitors and TVs to remove fluorescent back lights and now everything is amazing!

I still have to avoid the supermarkets, large chain stores, shopping centres etc but at least I know why or sprint through them quite quickly. Hopefully, LED lighting will become cost effective enough to be replaced in these locations. The timing maps against the death of incandescent bulbs and the introduction of flat screens.

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

Florescent will go the way of incandescent within 10 years, as LED reaches the economy of scale to bring the price down, if only because LED uses half the power that florescent does.
You probably haven't experience it yet, but LED interior lighting in a car is spectacular. It almost makes me want to go out at night to open the trunk of my new BMW just to bask in it.

[NukePooch]

I agree...florescent lights are the debil!

Reminded me of this movie...especially beginning @ 3:45.

[88h88]

If you don't notice the LED flicker then more power to you! I have LED bulbs in a lot of rooms in my house and I find it massively annoying at times, it's like being drunk without the nice warm feeling inside.

[Chris_Allen]

Isn't the flicker down to the transformer only converting one side of the AC wave to DC?

[88h88]

No idea, I have no expertise on the subject. I just find it weirdly annoying.

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

Isn't the flicker down to the transformer only converting one side of the AC wave to DC?

I can't say for sure, but it would indicate that the DC is not adequately filtered to remove ripple. Even if it was only using half of the AC wave adequate filtering would prevent ripple. You never see LEDs on electronic gear flicker, because the power supplies have adequate filtration.

[WB]

The spectral power distribution of Fluorescent lighting is uneven, having spikes is certain bands of the light spectrum.

Since I have birds flying around my house I did a lot of reading on indoor lighting. I think the 3 key points are flicker rate, the spectral analysis, and a bulb's color rendering index (which is improved by a smooth spectral curve).

A few years ago I switched over to LED lighting for most of my house except for the kitchen which had a terrible T12 fluorescent fixture that I didn't get around to changing. Because I have birds I was concerned about the 60 Hz flicker rate in the kitchen and decided to do some research on proper full spectrum lighting suitable for birds. There's a lot of information on this subject and won't bother getting into it but I ended up installing a T8 4 bulb 4' fluorescent fixture in each room on the main level loaded with expensive Philips F32T8/TL950 bulbs and I absolutely love the flicker free even full spectrum lighting. After seeing the difference I only use the LED bulbs for task lighting now. These Philips bulbs have a very high 98 Color Rendering Index rating (100 being the noon day sun). Most fluorescent bulbs (especially compacts) and LED's don't come close that rating, usually being in the 70-85 range.

For consumer grade fluorescent bulbs the manufacture aims for high lumen output at the expense of smooth frequency response. The full spectrum bulbs are only 2000 lumens vs 3000 for the spikey cheaper bulbs. I'm not trying to convince anyone to do what I did, but I love the Philips bulbs and won't go back to LED for main source lighting in my house. The difference was just too dramatic.

[horst]

If you don't notice the LED flicker then more power to you! I have LED bulbs in a lot of rooms in my house and I find it massively annoying at times, it's like being drunk without the nice warm feeling inside.

Could be that your LEDs are running with un-rectified transformers?

[88h88]

Possible, the guy that installed them is an idiot.