LED "night" lights

[Lug_Nut]

I've three EL wall mount night lights, one at the top of the stairs, one on the first floor illuminating the lowest stair, and one in the kitchen next to the switch for the flourescent over the sink.
These three allow me to navigate from second floor bedroom to first floor kitchen without turning on lights and waking the later rising Mrs.
I recently become enamored with a wind-up LED flashlight that seems to always get lost only to be found next to the similar size and shape TV remote or computer mouse.

[bzipitidoo]

The LED night lights are cheap. I've seen as little as $2 to $3 for a pair. Many of them also sport a light sensor.

It's good that they're cheap, because we've had 2 fail. Just 2 days ago, an LED replacement for a mini screw in bulb died. That bulb was never totally off because the outlet it was plugged into was wired to an illuminated light switch that lit itself by trickling a little electricity through the circuit. That trickle wasn't enough to light up a 3 watt incandescent, but the LED replacement did light up. The other failure was one of the plug in ones. When the main light (a compact fluorescent) was turned on, this particular night light would flicker very rapidly, and you could hear it making a high pitched buzz. The night light would finally stay off when the CF light had brightened up enough.

If LEDs are weak at handling odd setups, that doesn't bode well for my plans to use them with dimmers. Ballasts for CFs must be specially designed for dimmers, I thought that like incandescents, LEDs were perfectly happy with whatever garbage electricity wave you fed them.

[Snax]

I think the LEDs themselves are probably not what failed unless they were being overdriven to start with. Most can actually be overdriven quite a bit with pulsed power, so my bet is that the control circuitry for them is what crapped out.

[thecheese429]

Originally Posted by Snax

I think the LEDs themselves are probably not what failed unless they were being overdriven to start with. Most can actually be overdriven quite a bit with pulsed power, so my bet is that the control circuitry for them is what crapped out.

LED stands for light emitting diode.
they last forever unless you put them on higher voltage than they are made for. because they are basically diodes, you could put 40 3 volt led's in series and plug it straight into the wall, Europe or America.
they're really cool to play with and there are even colored and/or superbright ones.
Snax - they don't even control circuitry, it's the nature of a diode and the way they are built that makes them durable.
not to mention that they are made of something that you can hit with a hammer and it'll be fine.

[Snax]

Originally Posted by thecheese429

Snax - they don't even control circuitry, it's the nature of a diode and the way they are built that makes them durable.
not to mention that they are made of something that you can hit with a hammer and it'll be fine.

But you can't just plug ONE into an outlet. You need something to limit power, a control, even if that is just a resistor, it's still a control. Otherwise you don't have an LED, but an electrical firecracker.