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Remotes and Low-energy lights |
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#1 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Oct 2005
Posts: 501
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Remotes and Low-energy lights
Interesting piece on Working Lunch today. Low-energy light bulbs can sometimes interfere with and stop remote controls working properly because they send out a pulse of light which confuses the IR detector.
Solution is to (a)move the light or (b)change the light to a different make or (c)turn the light off. |
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#2 |
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Join Date: Jan 2004
Posts: 164
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Quote:
Interesting piece on Working Lunch today. Low-energy light bulbs can sometimes interfere with and stop remote controls working properly because they send out a pulse of light which confuses the IR detector.
Solution is to (a)move the light or (b)change the light to a different make or (c)turn the light off. Daz |
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#3 |
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Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: Fylde Coast
Posts: 8,103
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Probably fairly rare. I've had compact fluorescents in my lounge for 15 years, with all sorts of remote controlled equipment. Not had a single problem.
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#4 |
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Join Date: May 2004
Location: Brighton
Posts: 4,796
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Yet another good reason for not putting them in anywhere other than the hall.
They need to do alot of work on them before they convince me to change over to them yet anyway. I want ones that come on immediately, work on dimmer switches and dont require me to buy all new lampshades as they're longer than the standard light bulb. Add in the effects it might have on remote controlled things, I'm getting some remotes on a couple windows and that definately rules them out. I can just imagine me in the middle of winter getting up in the night to go and get a cup of tea, turn the kitchen light on which then interfers with the remote to the window, window opens but I dont realise and all the energy I've saved on the energy saving light bulb has just blown out of the window. To the poster who had the computer that turned on when you turned the light on, did it turn the computer off when you turned the light off, Serious question, you could loose a lot of work like that if it's the case. |
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#5 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Oct 2003
Posts: 249
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There are low energy bulbs that work on dimmer switches now.
I bought one that seems to be working ok. The instructions did warn that dimmers have a minimum wattage requirement as well as the more obvious maximum wattage, and implied that one might have to get a special dimmer switch. The shop, however, reckoned that a good dimmer should be fine, and that if there were problems they would show up immediately. |
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#6 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Dec 2005
Posts: 181
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I have low energy lights all around the house inclufding the living room. These have never interfered with any of my remote controlled equipment. I reckon that must be a very rare scenario.
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#7 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Apr 2006
Posts: 346
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Quote:
Yet another good reason for not putting them in anywhere other than the hall.
They need to do alot of work on them before they convince me to change over to them yet anyway. I want ones that come on immediately, work on dimmer switches and dont require me to buy all new lampshades as they're longer than the standard light bulb. Add in the effects it might have on remote controlled things, I'm getting some remotes on a couple windows and that definately rules them out. I can just imagine me in the middle of winter getting up in the night to go and get a cup of tea, turn the kitchen light on which then interfers with the remote to the window, window opens but I dont realise and all the energy I've saved on the energy saving light bulb has just blown out of the window. To the poster who had the computer that turned on when you turned the light on, did it turn the computer off when you turned the light off, Serious question, you could loose a lot of work like that if it's the case. Been using low energy bulbs for about 10 years - never had any issues at all and you get used to the minute or so they take to "warm up", though newer bulbs are much faster than this.... Still in a couple of years time you won't have any choice as the traditional bulbs won't be available. That's just plain lazy having remote windows unless they are in hard to get to places !
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#8 |
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Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Darlington
Posts: 964
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We used to have this problem with an old ex-rental TV. It took us ages to figure out that the random channel and volume changes were caused by the low energy light bulb. We have these bulbs all over the house now and don't seem to get any interference. I suspect that the modern remotes use more complex control signals (because of the many more functions they control) and consequently these are less likely to be produced randomly.
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#9 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Oct 2005
Posts: 501
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Quote:
... That's just plain lazy having remote windows unless they are in hard to get to places !
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#10 |
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Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: North Derbyshire
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It's really VERY simple - IR remote controls use an IR carrier frequency of around 38KHz (there are various frequencies available, but 38KHz is most common). The remote control transmits bursts of this 38KHz modulated RF, with different remotes using completely different encoding techniques.
The IR receiver IC in the TV or whatever amplifys the incoming signal, filters it (so as to reject anything too far away from 38KHz), and applies AGC (automatic gain control), so that the control can work reliably over a wide range of distances. Normal incandescent bulbs flicker at 100Hz, and this is easily rejected by the IR receiver (which was one reason for using such a high frequency), but low energy bulbs rectify the mains (giving 300V DC), then use a high frequency switching circuit to fed a small transformer to produce a high frequency AC voltage to feed the flourescent bulb. If this high frequency happens to fall around 38KHz?, you have a massive source of modulation for the IR receiver to be swamped by, which will turn the AGC down, resulting in VERY short range, or no control at all. Turning things ON is going to be extremely rare, and only happen with a very poorly designed IR system. So it can happen, it does happen, and it's well documented - but it is still pretty rare, and I would expect more modern lamps to be designed to avoid such problems. |
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#11 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: East Coast of Lincolnshire
Posts: 318
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Quote:
It's really VERY simple - IR remote controls use an IR carrier frequency of around 38KHz (there are various frequencies available, but 38KHz is most common). The remote control transmits bursts of this 38KHz modulated RF, with different remotes using completely different encoding techniques.
The IR receiver IC in the TV or whatever amplifys the incoming signal, filters it (so as to reject anything too far away from 38KHz), and applies AGC (automatic gain control), so that the control can work reliably over a wide range of distances. But... As I understand it , the 38khz filter is fairly wide and the PLL in the IR receiver is designed to lock to a wide range to allow for the wide variation in transmission frequency from the remote , which generally uses an imprecise (cheap) ceramic resonator and has to work with the wildly varying supply voltage of cheap supermarket batteries too . No excuse for the makers of the lamps , but they too tend to use simple (cheap) oscillators which no doubt produce a wide range of harmonics . One simple and surprisingly reliable 'cure' for this type of interference is a section of black insulating tape placed over the infra-red sensor of the affected equipment , cuts down the interference whilst not reducing the range of the average remote too noticeably . |
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#12 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: North Staffs
Posts: 11
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I have some Luxeon LED GU10 bulbs and when they are on my bedside DAB radio refuses to receive any channels, though its FM radio is not affected. Not sure if it is affecting the internals of the radio or the signal, which is from a 'bit of wire' hanging out of the back of the radio.
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#13 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Oct 2005
Posts: 450
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Quote:
I have some Luxeon LED GU10 bulbs and when they are on my bedside DAB radio refuses to receive any channels, though its FM radio is not affected. Not sure if it is affecting the internals of the radio or the signal, which is from a 'bit of wire' hanging out of the back of the radio.
You need to somehow get a better aerial so there is more signal to go with all of that noise. Are the GU10s fed with mains or low voltage? Ian |
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