LED "night" lights

[bzipitidoo]

Been experimenting with those LED night lights you can get at Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and such places. They're pretty good, and they're getting better. So far, the one I like best is this Amerelle Directional NiteLite. Bought a pair a few months ago, then bought another pair a week ago. The newer pair is noticeably brighter. I use one in a reading lamp, with one of those converters that converts a screw in socket to a wall outlet style plug in. (That notion that reading in low light is bad for the eyes is a big fat myth.) The older one was barely enough light and I had to hold the book at just the right angle. The newer brighter one makes books readable at most angles.

They're very nice for that midnight snack or trip to the bathroom. No having to choose between turning on the lights and blinding yourself, or fumbling in the dark. Some of those night lights are a bit too directional with the lighting and will shine into your eyes at just the wrong angle, but can be dealt with by plugging them in upsidedown.

[diamondlarry]

I've had an LED night light in my bathroom for quite awhile now. It has 9 LED's and uses .6W.

[bowtieguy]

how long do they last and how expensive are they?

SVOboy, read your PM!

[DracoFelis]

I've had an LED night light in my bathroom for quite awhile now. It has 9 LED's and uses .6W.I've also used those LED "night lights", as a way to light up hallways with enough light that you don't trip.

And another useful thing I've sometimes done with LED lighting, is to combine the LED light modules with a traditional compact florescent in a multiple bulb fixture. The end result, is that some (dim) light comes on "instantly" when you flick the switch, followed by the CF lighting up a little (a second or two?) later (to supply the main light). This not only solves the problem of getting at least a little light "right away", it also helps your eyes adjust to the brighter light, by first hitting you with dimmer light (the LEDs only) before the main CF light comes on.

Oh yeah, I've also used the "night lights" with those screw in adapters (as the saying goes: "great minds think alike"). Although I sometimes just spend a little more, and directly buy the LED modules that are designed to screw into a normal socket (vs getting the "night lights", and then messing with an adapter). So I guess I've taken both approaches with LED lights for the home...

[Silveredwings]

I have one that has a battery in it so if the power dies, it still works. Also, it doubles as a handheld flashlight.

[Snax]

My favorite ones are actually electro-luminescent. I don't recall the brand, but they use .3W and cast a very diffuse low light. The LEDs as nightlights that I have seem so far are just too bright for my taste.

We did finally replace the night lights in the kid's rooms with LEDs and they don't seem to mind them. It seemed like they were complaining about burnt out bulbs every other month with the incandescent ones.

[ffvben]

I need to put one of those in my hallway, walking around in the dark my brown Chesapeake retriever gets stepped on all the time. I usually don't see the dog untill i step on him.

[csrmel]

i like to make my own night lites. i use old cell phone chargers, or other transformers. i take the cases apart and drill a few holes to add some led's in. then add a small homebrew full wave rectifier and smoothing capacitor. finally plug in the numbers into an led calculator to see how many led's i can fit and what size current limiting resistor i need.

most of the commcerial made led plug in lites use half wave rectifiers and no smoothing capacitor, so there is significant wasted power in them.

i have a light with 45 led's that i made myself and it takes about 4 watts to run. it puts out the equivalent light of a 40watt incandescent. thats ridiculously efficient.

[skewbe]

And the diy led lights should last forever. I've got a few plans for some I bought in bulk. Not the most cost effective in initial purchace but still nice to sport ultra efficient lighting :)

We've also got the LED christmas lights up (replaced the incadecents as they failed). I should see if they register on the kill-a-watt.

Edit: Just checked. 3 strings of LED christmas lights takes 6 watts, one string of incadecents is taking 20 watts. So it is about 10-1 efficiency also.

[Snax]

We bought several strings of the LED holiday lights last year and put two of them up in our wysteria that surrounds the front porch. They have been there ever since and are still working great even after being left on 24/7. Even if they didn't save a penny on energy, just lasting through so much use is a huge bonus.

[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]

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]

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. ;)