LED bulbs

[WB4JFI]

LED light EMI is all over the spectrum, literally!

It’s not usually the LED itself that generates the RF, but rather the driver electronics.  Cheaper ones can generate a TON of RF, usually they went cheap on the filtering and shielding.  

I have installed LED lights and fixtures in most of my house now.  When we had our kitchen remodeled, we did ALL LED fixtures, except for two chandeliers.  I have since installed after market LEDs in those two as well, except for ONE 60W incadescent that is there to keep the X10 controller happy.  I also have LED floodlights outside.  Throughout the rest of the house, I have replaced most of the regular bulbs with LED versions from Costco.  Our local utility has provided significant instant rebates two years in a row, which I took advantage of.

I have not had a significant amount of RF noise coming from the LEDs.  I cannot say the came for CFLs.  I had a CFL on the other side of the house that took out all of HF when it was on.  Since I HATE CFLs anyway, and the gov’mt mandate even more, I put a regular bulb back in until I could get an LED replacement.  (Let’s start a movement to bring back the 100W incadescent bulb, as oil is now cheap again!!  kidding)

I did have one replacement LED bulb that was noisy, it came from Walmart, and was rather cheap.  I ended up taking the package back.

I still have eight florescent fixtures in the house, and I just bought four LED replacement fixtures.  Two of these are in the shack, so this will be a good test.

Bottom line, is that you need to test the specific LED bulb or fixture to see how much RF trash it generates.  With replacement bulbs, the driver is actually inside the bulb itself.
73, Terry, WB4JFI


From: Mitch Buchman 
Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2015 1:12 PM
To: Richard O'Neill 
Cc: tacos at amrad.org 
Subject: Re: LED bulbs

Has anyone done any EMI testing on these bulbs? I have had some errant behavior with the transceiver in my garage door opener after replacing an incandescent bulb with an LED bulb. The bulb sits inches from the radio and I haven't taken the time yet to characterize these bulbs with a spectrum analyzer.


Mitch Buchman, KB3MYC



On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 1:02 PM, Richard O'Neill <richardoneill at earthlink.net> wrote:

  Karl,

  I don't have the newsletter but may I assume your procedure is akin to this one?
  http://www.instructables.com/id/120V-LED-bulb-on-12VDC-190MA-The-hack/#step2

  Richard 

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