- Posted on
Fri Nov 14, 2014 12:05 pm
-
dduff617
offline
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- Posts: 662
- Joined: Jul 05, 2006
- Location: Massachusetts, USA
strange my experience with acoustic noise is essentially the opposite. in the past, i had lots of incandescent bulbs that would "ring" audibly when dimmed on insteon. it seemed that the filament is vibrating at 60Hz plus some overtones, i guess. generally, the dimmer the bulb, the louder the buzz.
compared to those incandescents, i find CREE brand LEDs (the type popularized in the last ~2yrs or so by Home Depot) to be a very good overall tradeoff.
they have great color rendering.
they're available in two color temps: cool and warm with white and yellow text on the package, respectively. (i buy "warm" personally)
the controller is reasonably well-behaved under dimming
- it starts at a fairly low level of brightness. insteon device set at approximately 3% will cause the lights to turn on at (subjectively) about 5-10% brightness.
- bulb output increases smoothly with insteon level up to about 70-80%, then maxes out.
- no flicker (unlike many other brands of LED bulbs i've tried in the past)
- there is (almost) no hysteresis
- there is (almost) no noticeable audible noise
- i have seen no sign of electrical power line noise, RF, etc. (unlike some CFLs)
in regular use, the main fault i've found is that the bulbs are NOT able to really reproduce a satisfactory "ramp-up" from off to on like an insteon-driven incandescent can. instead, they "blink" on abruptly at somewhere about 5-10% brightness. since that is a feature that's been baked-in to insteon since the early days, i've become accustomed to it and i miss it when it's gone.
one other note: i live in MA and i believe at any given time, the electric utilities seem to be subsidizing the prices of a few bulbs of each given type. the result is that there are typically a few of these "chosen" bulbs available at extremely low prices compared to other options. these CREE bulbs have been one of the ones so chosen in my area for most of the last several years - i can sometimes get the medium and low power ones for about $7/ea. while i notice that the high powered ones ("100w equiv") are more like $25-30.