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...is a mix of "That's pretty cool" and "Why can't they get it right?"
I recently replaced the last regular incandescent lights in/on the house with LED bulbs. 60W equivalent, on sale for 99 cents each. These are on the front porch and don't see a lot of use, but at 99 cents why not be done and then likely never change those bulbs again? And the yellowish 3000K color temperature doesn't much matter there. Meanwhile back of the garage is an enclosed area that had a CFL but on older LED has replaced that. It's more so that in the Winter, the light comes on rather than glows dimly for a while, which annoys me. Again, the color temperature (the truly atrocious yellow 2700K) isn't very important there. Pretty cool. Well, not too bad.
A few weeks back the office lights were changed. They had been nice 4000K bulbs, but alas they were truly junk electronics (the cheapest Chinese stuff there was, it seems. Not inexpensive, cheap.) and so were replaced by a set of Sylvania bulbs. These are slightly more yellow, but at a tolerable near-white 3500K. And these are 75W equivalent and have fuller emission pattern - the room is brighter and not just in spots, but all over, as it should be. Pretty cool.
The old Wal-mart small LED bulbs in the downstairs bathroom have been swapped out for a couple LED filament-alike tubular bulbs (the fixture was made for a pair of tubulars). The room is yellow anyway, so the color isn't critical, but is brighter and the bulbs look right. And the bulb at the top of the stair well is a four-level thing that can be switch-controlled to select from 60W equivalent down to nightlight (that uses a whopping 0.3 Watts). Pretty cool.
And then there's the vanity in the upstairs bathroom which use six bulbs. Right now, and for the foreseeable future, they will be the old small 70 lumen Wal-mart bulbs rather than big G25 globes that really would look better there. Sure, I can get G25 globes - if I want more than 25W equivalent (SIX bulbs - I neither need nor want anything brighter) or would settle for the atrocious 2700K (or less, ouch). 4000K would be ideal. 3500K would be alright. I might even settle for 3000K if the brand was good and the price was right. Why can't they get it right?
The only incandescent lamps left in the house are appliance and indicator bulbs. There are also a few fluorescent tubes (two linear, one circline) still in service.
Sometime last year I bought a fancy bluetooth-enabled LED bulb (name: iSuperBlue) that could be controlled from a phone. It's one of those good ideas that doesn't quite work, at least not yet. The idea is neat: An LED bulb that be controlled somewhat remotely by a device you're likely to have with you anyway. The color can be changed. The brightness can be changed. By using the phone's microphone, the light can change with sound for some effect. The light can blink or fade on and be used as a visual alarm clock. And it can do that, sort of.
It's a real rascal to get the bulb and the phone to pair up. If the connection lost, by say, walking away with your phone, it can mean needing to cycle power to the bulb and restart the phone. Not a very friendly remote control setup. If I had only my current in-use phone, the bulb would be pretty much useless - turning it on by the main switch has it cycle through some colors, which might be a nice diagnostic, but is lousy for a "light up this area now" bulb.
Fortunately, I had my old (smart)phone and it can do bluetooth. As long as the power stays on, and the old phone remains parked on my nightstand, the pairing holds. The fade-on is nice, but it's a set speed and the final brightness seems to be less than full or the way to set it is not at all obvious. I'd like to slow the fade on and make it more dawn-like, have it come to full brightness, or at maybe even start red or pinkish and change to white - like real dawn does. That would seem a great, slow, easy on the system aid to waking. Since I currently work nights, the simple expedient of opening the blinds won't provide this.
But with the old phone as a dedicated remote, and giving up on a nicer fade-in, things are workable yet still amiss. Sometimes the light fades on and is simply on, as I wish. And sometimes it blinks or fades brighter and dimmer and brighter and dimmer, cycling - something I do not want. Sure, it might wake me up more effectively, but also more annoyingly (and I have a sound alarm, to be sure, anyway) and once awake I want a steady light. As if that wasn't irksome enough, the app for this thing is not just flaky about bluetooth. The alarm [SNOOZE] [DISMISS] buttons are fine and work as expected. The simple "ON/OFF" button is part button, part dial (dial the brightness). But it's not at all easy to just turn the thing on or off without changing the brightness. And the button is a circle.. and somewhere near that circle, but not exactly matching, is the active ON/OFF area of the screen.
I like LED lighting. I like the idea of this bulb. But no matter how much I like the idea, I do not like the lousy way this one "works." I'm keeping it, as I can get it to sort of do what I want, but will NOT buy another of this make, and I suggest nobody else buy any iSuperBlue either. Wait until someone else does it right.
What needs to be done to do it right? Absolutely required:
1. The bluetooth connection needs to resume/reconnect automatically and reliably.[1]
2. The ON/OFF region of the screen should be the same as, or at least within the ON/OFF image on the screen.
3. The brightness control must be 100% independent of the ON/OFF control.1
4. App features that demand a phone MENU button should be moved - not all have this as hardware, alas.
5. Blink off means blink OFF, and it stays off.
Be nice to have:
6. Control of fade-on speed.
7. Control of initial and final color (and brightness) of fade-on.
I expect someone will get this right, eventually. But it's going be a while before I risk more money on a device like this. I'll want to know the thing will work correctly.
[1] No, I do NOT want a "wifi" controlled bulb. How do I set a proper password or such, at a minimum? And I'm not about to let things be open to the point where some neighbor or drive-by can control MY light(s).
The main light in the kitchen is in the center of the ceiling and if you are at the sink and there is no light from the window, such as at night, you cast a shadow right on the area you are using. Thus there is a light over the sink. This was a fluorescent tube, which was nice as it was lower power and lower maintenance than the incandescent that was originally the central light source. That central incandescent bulb was replaced some time ago, first by CFL, then by LED.
The light over the sink would sometimes start almost as soon as the switch for it was flipped. More often there was a noticeable lag. And increasingly it was enough to make me wonder "Did I flip that switch or not? If I did, shouldn't the light be on by now?" A while ago I had finally had enough and ordered a replacement tube. This tube was LED and not of the new 'direct replacement' variety, so I had to redo the fixture wiring to eliminate the ballast and starter. A simple matter of wiring...
Except whoever committed the installation was, how shall we say... oh yes, an imbecile. There were already several junctions and patches, it seemed. The mounting to the ceiling was (and alas, remains rather) dubious. And to add the cherry to dubious cake, he put the switch on the neutral wire. For those unfamiliar with US household wiring: That's bad. It means even when 'off' the light was 'live'. This might not seem important for a light up in or near the ceiling, but it's bad practice and shoddy workmanship. It also has me wondering what else is screwed up in this place.
It took longer than I cared for, but the fixture has been rewired, with the 'live' or 'hot' line switched (so when the lamp is off, it should all be effectively at ground level voltage: 0). and the LED 'tube' installed. I like that it seems to be easier to specify color temperature for fluorescent tubes and their replacements. I didn't have to hunt through seemingly endless 2700K (yellow) and 5000K (blue) and 6500K (very blue) options to find the 4000K (white) option I actually wanted. There is still a slight delay between flipping the switch and getting light, but it's reliably under a second.
Photo-obsolescence
13 June 2015 10:21
On my desk are were four light bulbs. They are not classic incandescents, nor the slightly more efficient (less inefficient) halogen bulbs. These are compact fluorescent bulbs, and there is nothing actually wrong with them. They work. They do have the issue of slow-start and taking a bit of time to come up to full brightness, indicating they are now some rather early models. The fixture they were in now has LED bulbs which if they do not turn on instantly, the delay is so minor as to be readily ignored.
A local hardware store had a good sale on LED bulbs in a tolerable color temperature (3000K, not ideal but certainly better than the ugly yellow of 2700K) so I got a few of those and with various swappings, wound up with a few 'spares'. Eventually the CFL start delay of the dining room fixture bothered ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
jmaynard and I replaced the CFLs there with the LEDs.
Now there are, I think, no actual incandescent bulbs in use in the house, aside from small appliance and indicator lamps. Even closets have CFL or LED. There are some incandescent bulbs outside the house, but they see minutes of use per year so there is no urgency in swapping them out. Even a straight tube fluorescent lamp above the sink has been replaced by LED. There is a torcherie halogen lamp - which I would love to change to LED, but the replacements for that aren't quite ready yet, as it's a 300W version and last I checked, LEDs weren't up to that. But I suspect it won't be long before replacements are affordably available.
We now have quite a number of spare CFLs - and not just the four that had been on my desk. They work. They're reasonably efficient. They give a good light. But LEDs are better, thus these join the collection of incandescents (we also have a box or two of those) as obsolete. It's a bit of a weird feeling, as these are not actually defective - they work. But, there is no useful place for them now. And these are the 'fancy' CFLs with the external A19 envelope to mask the spiral and look 'right' in exposed fixtures, too.
I started trying LED lighting in 2009 with disappointing results. In 2010, things were better though the "40 Watt equivalent" was not really a true equivalent, but dimmer. Since then the price has been dropping some, the choice of color temperatures improving, and the brightness increasing. Today I bought two LED bulbs of different make. Both claim to be 60 W equivalent and put out 800 lumens. That might be a bit under a true 60 W incandescent (wikipedia has a chart claiming 850 lm for 60 W) but not by much. They are bright enough.
One is still heavy and has a color temperature still in the soft/warm white range of 3000 Kelvin. The other is a more cool white at 4000 Kelvins (roughly, reading the fine print it says 3880 K) which I prefer.
I will be using the light(er) bulb in a desk lamp and the heavier one, for now, in the office to replace the not really 40 W equivalent that went out. I plan to eventually change out all the office fixture with the new, brighter, whiter bulbs like the desk lamp will have.
The downside, such as it is, is that the new LED bulbs use almost as power as equivalently bright CFLs. But they are instant-on, which is a bonus.
The "burnt out" LED that is being replaced is frustrating. It didn't last even half a year (though all the others are still going, so far), but it's not completely dead. If I push this way or that, it will light or flicker a bit. This screams "cold solder joint" to me. It would be simple to fix - if I could get at the solder joints. The bulb is not made to be be repaired, so there's no nice obvious way to get it open. I haven't studied it in great detail to see if there's a way that isn't so nice, which won't ruin the bulb in some other way.
Still, it's been more (Moore?) than 18 months since I started looking at LED lighting and I'm finally seeing things about like I want: Roughly 60 W equivalence, a good white (not 2700 Kelvin yellow - eww), and getting lighter in weight. If the efficiency of the drivers can be increased (thus decreasing heat issues) so that they can be used in enclosed fixtures things would be about ideal. Granted, the price is still higher than CFL, but that is also coming down.
I can't see re-lamping the house entirely in LED yet, and perhaps not even at the slow attrition rate of replacing the CFLs as they fail. But as things seem to be going, in a few years I might well end swapping out a few more.
Notice I haven't said a thing about mercury? I consider that to be something that ought to be all but a non-issue. There's mercury in regular fluorescent tubes, in many thermostats, in older thermometers and some other instruments and devices. Those are probably much more significant and yet generally seem to be ignored. While mercury isn't harmless, it's not worth nearly as much worry as some "OMG CFL EVILBAD!" articles try make of it.
They were both LED. One was one of the oddly bluish and dim things I bought a bit over a year ago[1] and the other was a new one bought from Wal-mart of all places. The new one uses slightly less power (1.1 Watts rather than 1.5 Watts) but at least seems brighter (70 lumens) and looks rather like, I am guessing, a 10 Watt incandescent. The glass envelope doesn't keep mercury contained as in a fluorescent nor does it keep oxygen out as in an incandescent, the "bulb" still works. It does seem a bit odd to use glass for low-consumption LED lights. It seems like a good place for a transparent or translucent plastic. Last night I carefully removed the remaining shards of glass and put it into the dining room fixture in the place with its own glass globe.
I've now replaced both of the odd bluish and dim[2] LED bulbs with these newer, better ones. Or if not newer, at least better - and less expensive. The difference is impressive. The light by the back door (inside) is bright enough I have to remind myself that it's not the kitchen light having been left on when I see it from outside. I've also replaced the two CFLs in the downstairs restroom. The result isn't super-bright, but I think it's still probably better than the two incandescents, that had been there for years, which had blackened rather badly.
What brought this on was another CFL failing in the office. I got annoyed that the fluorescent recycling event had just passed and I really was irked about waiting another six months. So I went looking into alternatives and decided to give LED a try and went to Home Depot[3] in Mankato.I didn't get the bulb I expected to, but another that was supposedly better able to deal with the heat in the ceiling fan fixture. It's bright. It's probably an honest 40 Watt incandescent equivalent. It's yellowish, so likely "warm white" (I'd rather have "cool white") but it's something of a spotlight. Fortunately it's aimed in the one area that that isn't too big a deal. I tried one over my desk it's just too harsh.
I've gone looking for what I really want: Ideally something equivalent to about 60 W incandescent (or around 800 lumens) though I'll settle for 40 W equivalent (about 500 lumens), with a diffuse "cool white" or "natural white" light, using little power and thus generating little heat, at a semi-sane price. Things are getting closer, but aren't quite there yet as far as I know. I've seen 40 W equivalents that are close, but have lousy color temperatures (way too yellow or way too blue) or stuff that is still rather expensive. Still, from what I have seen, CFLs might have some real competition in a few years.
[1] I had put those into service on 7 October 2009 as nightlights as they weren't good for much else. There have have been many complaints about the maker/importer, Lights of America and the FTC is going after them. Their response? Remove, but not update, the claims on the packaging. I don't see any reason to give Lights of America any (more) money.
[2] The FTC suit claims that those bulbs put out 74 lumens, which is a bit more than the 70 of the replacement bulbs, so it might just be that the yellowish color is where the eye is more sensitive. However, considering just how great the difference appears, it would not surprise me that 74 is at the high end and much less is typical. For comparison, a 15 Watt incandescent emits about 110 lumens.
[3] Which would have taken the dead CFL off my hands for no charge. Had I known that, I would have brought it.
Sometime this Summer I bought an outdoor rated CFL and replaced one of three incandescents with it. The outdoor lights are used so seldom that it doesn't matter that much, but I was curious about cold weather performance. The last few days have provided enough cold weather that one might think there was a Global Warming demonstration being held in the area.
The light does come one, even at -18 F, though it does so slowly. Instant-on it is not. It seems to do nothing for moment, then the base ends of the tube start glowing, flickering slowly for a bit, before the glow grows through the rest of the tube. Then it's on, but not at full brightness. That takes a few minutes.
The "locker light" motion (passive IR, I suspect, not actual motion sensing) lights with LEDs are work just fine even in this frigid weather. The dollar store alkaline cells don't seem affected by the cold, at least not at the current drawn by the LEDs. It's very nice to not have to fumble around in the dark in this cold to find a keyhole or pushbutton. Putting these lights into place a few months back was a very good idea.
A couple years ago I had some trouble with the battery for the garage door opener remote control and figured it was not just battery age (since I replaced it recently) but cold, so I went and spent a bit on a lithium battery since those were supposed to be long-lived and cold-tolerant. That went dead a couple months ago and it seemed like it had a rather short life for what I had payed for the thing. I replaced it with a dollar store special. It's not even an alkaline, but a carbon-zinc thing. The last few frigid nights (lows have been in the -20 F region the last few nights) it's worked just fine.
The repaired bulb didn't last very long. It's not an outright failure, but looks like a heat issue. After a while the base heats up and seems to go into a protective thermal shutdown. Then it cools down and the light starts up again. It's a slow cycle, but still annoying. I've pulled the bulb again and replaced it with a Sylvania-branded CFL.
Yesterday the warranty replacement LED bulbs arrived. I decided that the office needs more light than they provide. The office is now all-CFL again and looks the better for it.
One LED bulb is in a desk lamp that had been sitting all but unused for some time. That's where the Sylvania CFL came from. I put the lamp in the living room at the end of the couch where it makes a reasonable reading lamp. Since it uses so little power, I won't feel too guilty about not turning it off should I decide to take a nap and not feel like getting up turn off the light.
The other is near the back door and lights up the small area joining the kitchen, downstairs restroom, and laundry area well enough. But it also revealed that I need to change the switch (hopefully just the switch!) for that light: Off isn't really fully off. The bulb still glows, if dimly, when the switch is off.
One of the LED bulbs I bought in early August failed in late August. A few days ago the other LED bulb failed. Since I hadn't sent the one off for warranty replacement, I packed the both of them and the receipts and a letter and sent them off. We'll see how the warranty is and if the replacements are any better.
One failure is a fluke. Two are possibly a coincidence if a darned annoying one. These bulbs are supposed to last 30,000 hours or about 3.4 years of "on" time. They didn't last anywhere near that long. And there's no excuse that I can see for it. They were installed indoors, in a non-enclosed fixture, and were not on a dimmer. They were in a ceiling fan assembly, but LEDs of all lighting systems ought to be truly immune to any vibration from the fan. Yet even incandescents with their fragile filaments lasted longer.
To be fair to LEDs themselves, they are likely still just fine. The circuitry in the base of the bulb is what probably failed. I don't know just what all there is to it. There really should not be much at all to it. If the bulbs had been out of warranty (or were just much less expensive) I'd have taken at least one apart and looked.
The second LED bulb put into service in the office is now out of service. That it gave little light was brought home by the fact that we didn't really notice just when it went out. jmaynard was surprised when he happened to glance at the light fixture. It wasn't a loose bulb, either. The base has that peculiar "electronics that got too hot" smell to it. We both suspect the current limiter burned out.
I did save the original package and the receipt, so we will now see how good the manufacturer's two year warranty is. The light didn't even make it a month. The other LED bulb is still going.
Meanwhile, the room is a little brighter and a little yellower (or less blue) as I've put one of the older CFLs back into service.
It's been a couple weeks of life with a mix of CFL and LED in the office, and battery-powered motion-sensing LED in a stairway. I no longer foresee replacing the remaining CFLs in the office with LED. The LEDs are okkay for filling in the gaps, but they just aren't that that bright, even allowing for the lower equivalent wattage. And they are bit color-skewed.
In the office I was for a time considering going back to a "soft white" for at least one of the CFLs. The somewhat bluish LEDs and the white CFLs result in a cold feeling light. I'd say clinical, but every clinic I've been in was careful not to give this impression. It's sort of like the descriptions in some UFO stories: cold, slightly bluish, almost eerie light. If it was the same white or blue-white throughout the house I probably wouldn't notice so much. But every other room has CFL (or halogen for the living room[1]) that is more of a so-called soft white. The difference can be stark. I am curious enough that I might try switching to all LED in the office, but only as a very short test. I expect the office to remain a mix of CFL and LED unless or until LED gets significantly better: brighter and more of natural white. A more diffuse light would also be a Good Thing. Right now, for general use, CFL wins over LED everywhere except apparent power consumption. I say apparent as I suspect that with current LED technology to get full illumination would require so many more LED lamps that they would use as much power as the few CFLs they would replace.
I can see using LED in places where color and great brightness aren't that critical. A porch light that is only needed to reveal a step and the keyhole seems about an ideal application. Maybe LED lighting in a storage, but not clothing, closet would make some sense as well. If there was a light over a stairway, that's another place that only needs enough light to let you see where the top and bottom steps are.
I bought a couple "locker lights" which are a combination motion sensor and LED lamp. I put one in the main stairwell near the bottom so that it trips before I get there when descending. That lets me see the bottom step without my needing to switch on an upstairs light or carry a flashlight around. Another will go on the porch so that I can easily find the keyhole at night.
The LED lamp still isn't ready for general purpose lighting. It's fine for specialized applications and can fill in some gaps, but CFL wins big on brightness and color.
As I see it:
LED - For applications where efficiency matters more than color or brightness.
Fluorescent - General purpose lighting. (Some can be dimmed and some are outdoor rated, but you have to look for these.)
Incandescent - Specialty applications (appliance lighting, e.g. oven and refrigerator lights). Easily dimmable. Runs cooler than halogen.
Halogen - Slightly more efficient than incandescent and can easily be dimmed.
[1] Which is a dimmable torcherie that would not be a trivial swap conversion to CFL. If/when the halogen fails, I would certainly consider swapping out the socket arrangement to go to a dimmable CFL.
I went looking for a small 40W incandescent appliance bulb for the fridge this morning and while the local hardware store did not have such a thing (the dollar store did, though) I saw something else of interest: A supposedly 40W equivalent LED "bulb" that uses only 1.5 Watts. And while the price was not as low as incandescent, or even CFL, it was about what CFLs were not all that long ago. I splurged and bought one.
Why buy a $10 bulb? Lifespan, heat, efficiency, and just plain curiosity. I'm expecting another CFL to fail in the office light fixture (four bulbs and a fan) and it's tiresome. Mainly because I have to store the defunct CFLs until sometime in October when the folks that deal with fluorescents are in town again. So now it's three CFLs and one LED bulb which has pre-emptively replaced a CFL, which is now a spare.
Here are my initial impressions:
The good: It works. If you like full instant-on, this does it. The light is diffuse enough that in a typical non-horizontal reflector fixture it doesn't seem like a spotlight. It runs relatively cool. The current limiter gets warm, but one can grasp the envelope and unscrew it even after it's been on for some time. I haven't noticed any flicker, something one might expect with AC-powered LEDs. No mercury. And hopefully a really long service life.
The bad: The price is a bit high. This isn't something I'd re-lamp the whole house with, at least not yet, but the next CFL that goes out in the office* will get replaced with LED. It looks like this would not be a good replacement for a horizontally mounted bulb. Also, 40 Watt is the highest wattage equivalency I've seen for sale in person yet. If there were a 100 Watt equivalent at about the same price, the kitchen light would likely be up for replacement. Also, there's no Energy Star logo on the packaging that the local electric service requires for a rebate of some of the cost, but then the rebate is (so far) only for CFL.
The... not ugly: The LED looks bluish when you look at it, even compared to the "natural white" CFLs which are certainly whiter or bluer than the "soft white" yellowish CFLs. The LED bulb doesn't seem as bright or perhaps just not as dazzling, but working under it doesn't seem dim or lacking at all. Checking back, it should seem dimmer as the CFLs are 60 Watt equivalent, not 40 Watt equivalent.
The bulb is a clear plastic globe envelope with 20 individual LEDs near the base. They appear to be indium phosphide with fluorescent powder. When switched off, the internal surface of the diodes glow for a while. The glow is enough to be seen, but not enough to really see by. In a desk lamp fixture, the bulb does not protrude from the reflector at all and even it did, the LEDs would not. Between that and the narrower beam width of LEDs the result is that the light doesn't flood as much of a room as the equivalent incandescent - I checked. The beam width isn't overly narrow, however. It's just more like what you might expect or hope for from a shield or reflector.
Before we converted away from incandescent, the office light fixture had four of them, at 40 Watts. That was 160 Watts total. The CFLs (60 W equivalent) use 13 Watts each, for a total of 52 Watts. The LED uses a mere 1.5, so if when we convert the office fully to LED, the lighting will use all of 6 Watts - one Watt less than an incandescent nightlight.
* Or one like the ones in the office, then one in the office gets moved and replaced by LED.
Stopped by the local Radio Shack last night to get some LEDs so eventually I could shine rather monochrome light around the house and see what happens. They only had, in anything reasonably bright, red and blue. I already have blue. And red, being the longest wavelength and lowest energy of the visible spectrum isn't likely to reveal all that much. All the same, I did get a red LED, and an IR LED just to have something more to play with. They were out of bright green and seem not to even carry bright yellow/amber or orange. That's disappointing. I should've tried snagging some LEDs at the hamfest Saturday. Oh well, there's always Digi-Key, if I can come up with the minimum order.
Got away from the computer(s) for a bit last night and watched, or rather listened to, a couple Twilight Zone episodes while sorting through some things. I need to do more of that - the sorting and such anyway. It's now smaller more organized mini-messes rather than one big one. It's some progress, at least. We moved into the house in January and some things still aren't sorted out, and that's not even counting the stuff just stowed in the attic. Maybe I should pick one room and try to deal with it one day this weekend.
Also need to eat less, and exercise more. With the cooling weather (and seemingly constant rainy forecasts) and early darkness, that gets a bit more difficult. I'm not sure if the park I'd walk in is even open now. Sure, I could do the mall walking thing, but something is just off-putting about spending much time that way. At least my knee is feeling better. I still feel a bit of mild soreness time to time, but nothing really bad. That would also make things difficult.
A while back Fairmont's public utilities celebrated their centennial anniversary. I took a tour of the local power plant and visited the city office where they had some programs and freebies. One of the freebies was a neat little bright blue LED key-chain flashlight. This is a very handy little thing and so I've taken to using it for various things, like illuminating stairways.
Last night I discovered something. Now, when a blue light is shone upon an orange object the usual result is that the object looks dark as there is no orange light for it to reflect. But an empty Tide box shone bright orange in the pure blue (yes, blue, not UV) light. I'd heard that detergent makers added fluorescing dyes to their products, but now I see that trick is used in the packaging too. Presumably to make the box seem brighter (and cleaner, less dingy) than others in the store. I wonder if the other detergent packages fluoresce as well (I expect they do, lest any one of them be allowed an advantage), but I'm not going to buy a sample of all of them to find out.
It might be interesting to get bright LEDs of various colors and see how things look when illuminated by a single color. I suspect the high energy blue is probably the most interesting of the LED choices. A UV lamp might show more.
