These tubes were briefly sold at an unusually low cost on eBay, so I bought one while they were available. It's a 4-foot T8 (120cm) tube that uses about half the power of a conventional fluorescent tube and pretty much puts out half the light too. Fluorescent tubes will be brighter and last longer than their LED replacements at this point in time, so it's unfortunate that companies that have been duped by salesmen into replacing their tubes with LED ones will end up paying the price. Especially as the process of fitting them involves the fixtures internal wiring being butchered by gangs of "lighting retrofit specialists" (labourers) in a manner that will leave them in an unknown electrical condition and incapable of taking ordinary fluorescent tubes again without serious rewiring by someone who actually knows what they're doing.
This type of tube has the end pins shorted and requires live (hot) at one end and neutral (return) at the other. The newer ones may require live and neutral at just one end to reduce the risk of a shock from the other end while fitting the tube. Sadly, this means that a tube like this will short live and neutral completely when inserted. So whoever came up with that "safety" idea is a dick. Especially when any real electrician would not finger the other end of a tube as they inserted it in the first place as even a conventional tube can ionise and give you a shock if you touch the pins at one end while shoving the other end into a live socket.
These tube style lamps seem to commonly use buck regulators which means that the LED strips are not isolated from the mains voltage. The strips slide into an aluminium extrusion that supports the strip and cover, aids with heat dissipation and has screw-channels to allow end caps to be attached.
Under fault conditions like physical dents, water ingress or manufacturing issues it is possible for the entire aluminium extrusion of the lamp to become live. Keep this in mind as it's inevitable that someone is going to get injured at some point, especially if they are touching a grounded reflector as they insert a faulty tube.
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and unusual lamps for disassembly at:-
http://www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm
This type of tube has the end pins shorted and requires live (hot) at one end and neutral (return) at the other. The newer ones may require live and neutral at just one end to reduce the risk of a shock from the other end while fitting the tube. Sadly, this means that a tube like this will short live and neutral completely when inserted. So whoever came up with that "safety" idea is a dick. Especially when any real electrician would not finger the other end of a tube as they inserted it in the first place as even a conventional tube can ionise and give you a shock if you touch the pins at one end while shoving the other end into a live socket.
These tube style lamps seem to commonly use buck regulators which means that the LED strips are not isolated from the mains voltage. The strips slide into an aluminium extrusion that supports the strip and cover, aids with heat dissipation and has screw-channels to allow end caps to be attached.
Under fault conditions like physical dents, water ingress or manufacturing issues it is possible for the entire aluminium extrusion of the lamp to become live. Keep this in mind as it's inevitable that someone is going to get injured at some point, especially if they are touching a grounded reflector as they insert a faulty tube.
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and unusual lamps for disassembly at:-
http://www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm
Hey Big Clive I just got a bunch of these tubes and they can be used with or without the ballast. I removed the ballasts to save energy and reduce heat. I noticed through that the tubes had L and N at one end but they other end was just N on both pins. And the two pins were shorted out. This means if you rewire the fitting according to the instructions that come with the LED tube, then you must not put the tube in backwards or you will connect live to neutral. Any thoughts?
Do you find in general swapping incandescent lighting for LED lighting you end up with a much lower light level and in most (all my instances of doing this) a very bad colour cast due to the LED lighting being warm white and giving a yellow cast to everything, making all things a very off shade of their original colour?
I recently (July 2022) tried some Asda 100 Watt Equivalent = 1521 Lumens LED BC light bulbs. Great, I thought, there is no plastic skirt around the base/glass bulb to cast a shadow halfway down your wall and that leaves a very dark ceiling.
I currently use 100 watt incandescent light bulbs that are marked as the equivalent to 1250 lumen. I have no idea how Asda measures the luminescence of their LED light bulbs that are marked as equivalent to 100 watt and 1520 lumens. The 100 watt incandescent light bulbs that are marked as the equivalent to 1250 lumen were far far far brighter than the Asda 100 Watt Equivalent = 1521 lumen LED light bulb and the colour cast of an incandescent light bulb is closer to being correct colour balance than the LED light bulbs I tried.
I am sorry to say, I still don't use LED lighting in my house because the LED lights are too low a light output and too close to being a yellow light than white light.
I'm sure if I put enough of these Asda LED BC light bulbs in the room, the room would be bright enough and if I added a blue filter it might whiten the light output, but to add enough light bulbs would defeat the current ideas that LED lights are more efficient than incandescent light bulbs, I guess they are if you are happy living in the "dark".
I am still waiting to find an LED 240v Bayonet/BC/B22 CAP light bulb that I can swap for the 100 watt incandescent light bulbs I currently use without sacrificing the amount of light and the colour temperature of the lights.
Regards,
K Watt.
i had one fall out when i fitted the 2nd one in a twin 70w fitting quite fiddly lol
Lol that thumbnail is ethereal man ๐คฃ
I gotta say clive this is one time ill disagree with you, led lamps are much much brighter than the fluorescents, ive worked on both. It all depends on how high of quality the led is. In most office cases i actually end up getting called back to take out led tubes as they are too bright for the people working in the office, and its not the color we dont put anything up thats above 4000k unless its a special circumstance. In most cases the tubes i install are taking off much more than 50% of the power. And ive worked alongside contractors who think their electricians because they can rip out some wire and install an led, and i agree, they leave sloppy work and only care about the numbers they put up not how the next guy is gonna have to deal with their mess.
Can you replace the leds with colored led smd 5050 tape??
I don't know why T8 LED prices are still high. The cost to construct them isn't high. The demand is very high but price sensitive.
The same situation was faced with E26/E27 LED bulbs, and the manufacturers adjusted their prices to meet demand. Why not with T8?
when i insert the small tubes i hold the glass with my fingers … if its the 6ft tubes i hold it with both hands then rotate it its piss easy lol
we converted all the t8s in our house to use led tubes. powered at one end only. i bought a bunch of these in 8 packs at about $10 each on amazon. and several of them have failed. ours looked like these, but did not have the motion detection feature. i saved the parts and was tryinv to determine the forward voltage of this strip. thanks for mentioning it in this video. i bought a small boost converter to power these high voltage strips amd also those tiny filiment ones. now i just need to figure out what to do with them. my led strips were โgluedโ very poorly to the frame and did not sit in a track as you have mentioned here.
On miniature You looks like some kind of "Ohms law monk!"
Like it;-)
We've been slowly butchering (lo) the fixtures at work replacing them with led tubes over the past few years. We've only had 2 out of a couple hundred fail. They'd start turning off and on
Is there a chip of the same size that gives 60 volts and 11 amperes
Some of the radar sensor I have taken apart and used for amateur radio hacking have used free running oscillators some have a DRO and are sorta set to a frequency. The free running types would change by 100โs of MHz just by changing the loading and parasitics the DRO type seems to stay somewhat stable say 50MHz of drift with temp and loading. My guess is the fact they are all over the place and are operating in CW or FM CW mode you would see very little interference between modules.