LED light bulbs are the future. They're better for the environment and the pocket book. But for some people, certain LEDs lights — particularly holiday lights—are also a problem. They flicker in a way that causes headaches, nausea and other discomfort. Today, we visit the "Flicker Queen" to learn why LEDs flicker — and what you can do about it.Wondering about other quirks of lighting and engineering? Email us at shortwave@npr.org – we might cover it on a future episode!
This article seems sus to me. It describes a bunch of ways to observe high-frequency flicker that, IME, just aren’t a problem. Personally I find flicker stops being a problem above about 60 Hz. I’m sure the threshold varies for different people, but I can’t fathom how anyone could be bothered by a 2000 Hz flicker as the article seems to suggest.
Also, for reference, back before first screen TVs, TVs all flickered at 50 or 60 Hz depending on what country you were in.
I love how you decided it doesn’t exist because you personally don’t notice. Lighting design is a thing.
This is like those people who don’t get headaches and nausea when they watch 3D movies telling people who do get headaches and nausea from watching 3D movies that “it’s not that bad!”
Didn’t Hank Green make done 2d glasses specifically for this?
Nice job misrepresenting what I said.
They stated “IME” and “personally”, understanding thresholds vary per person… but you gloss over that just to try and create an argument. I bet you have blue hair.
The upthread comment says:
What does this part of your comment mean?
It’s actually a helpful notice to disregard everything they’ve said.
Yeah, I can’t upvote that even though the comment is in my defense.
You could hear a 2kHz flicker. It would hurt my head for that reason. I also have certain monitors and earbuds that I can hear the power led and hate it.
Even a 2kHz rate can be a problem when the implementation is cheap and you get weird harmonics that distort the PWM and might create lower frequency flicker. I’m thinking interactions between cheap power supply voltage/current ripple and LED PWM. I personally don’t know enough about this kind of LED implementation to say what could or couldn’t be happening.
The standard AC frequency in the U.S. is 60 Hz, so…
I meant at or above. I never had problems with NTSC displays running at 60 Hz.