LED clearance sale

[diezmon]

how the hell do you fit that into an N scale engine??

[nickelplate759]

I was on our HOA board when we converted the building lighting to LEDs, and have converted most lighting in our own home as well.

The rated lifetime of LED lights is based on how long they retain 80% of their rated brighness.  It is not usually MTBF.   While we bought industrial LED fixtures (or upgrades) for stairwells, garage and exterior floods, we used consumer bulbs in the hallways since otherwise we would have had to replace fixtures.   The hallway bulbs are on all the time.   Some fail quickly (in a few months) and it's usually the "power supply" that appears to have failed, not the LEDs them selves.  Many more have soldiered on for far more than their advertised lifetime of 25000 hours (the most common lifetime rating for consumer LED bulbs).  25000 hours is 2.85 years of continuous use, and we have some bulbs that have been on for over 5 years.

[Smike]

A slight change in topic: Wallies World has 16' of strip tape color changing LED lights with a remote for $18 in the garden center. Pretty bright and you can change the colors to whatever you want (think sundown or night).

Tri color LED’s are not very bright in my experience even in White mode ( which is all 3 color LED ‘s on) It was  very blue, (cool) and as soon as you adjusted color off of white mode they dropped brightness a lot)  Plus any votage drop is more pronounced as it changes color the further away you get from the end hooked into the power source. Having them as a secondary light source to simulate moonlight or dusk is viable use thou.

[BAZ-man]

The *primary* failure of LED's (and CFL's) is overheating. Note that *many* say: NOT for use in enclosures! The ordinary incandescent or halogens are heaters themselves so no issue. But CFL's and more importantly now LED's are semiconductor and other electronic components which are generally rated for less than 200 F with some much less. LED's also have a 'negative' resistance meaning the higher heat lowers needed their voltage which impacts the range of the driver components.

If your Track Lights can with cans, remove them and just place the new PAR 'floodlight' shape bulb directly in the socket.  You might note that some of the bulbs had 'heat sinks' on them (the metal fin'd parts) need air. For recessed lighting, you can clearly see the replacement LED assembly were designed with these.

[Smike]

Just a heads up, based on @David K. Smith recommendation on Lowes for DYI track lighting, I found that Lowes is selling Project Source DYI track lighting at significantly low clearance costs.

In fact they had a 4 head 48” track kit for $29 (reg $79)  I picked up a bunch of items and LED blubs on Amazon for cheap.