For incandescent bulbs the power drop around the zero voltage cross doesn’t last long enough to extinguish the filament, since it’s basically just glowing from being heated. The only lights which actually do “flicker” under nominal conditions are old ballast driven florescent lights. Most modern LEDs rectify the AC and modern CFLs boost the line frequency to like 20kHz to prevent the arc from getting extinguished.
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LodeMike@lemmy.today 2 days ago
No it’s not lol they still flicker out eyes just dont pick it up
socsa@piefed.social 2 days ago
Sasquatch@lemmy.ml 1 hour ago
A lot of christmas lights still flicker. Not sure how they’re wired, but I think they just feed AC to the diode, so it’s off for the negative half of the wave
deltapi@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Modern CFLs use an arc? I thought they were cathode based, emitting UV from forcing mercury vapour to dance
Hadriscus@jlai.lu 1 day ago
mercury vapour dances ?!
NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 2 days ago
Incandescent bulbs like that in the picture don’t really flicker. They might pulsate a little bit but even at their faintest they would still have significant light output.
Some LED bulbs do flicker though, it depends on how they implement the AC to DC conversion. If they flicker, it is easily noticeable to the human eye, especially when looking at motion.
angband@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Flickering lights used to mean a temporary < 1s power outage.
Hope@lemmy.world 2 days ago
It has a 60Hz electric waveform in, and it produces visible light, which is in part a ~500THz wave.
sik0fewl@piefed.ca 2 days ago
Do you think we will ever change our power grid to have a higher frequency so that our bulbs don’t flicker when we record things?
Assassassin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
Good LED bulbs have a smoothing capacitor after the full bridge rectifier. This allows the LED to maintain most of its output during the low points in the cycle, resulting in minimal to no flicker when recording.
MOCVD@mander.xyz 1 day ago
Alright, show me your eyebrows
flyingSock@feddit.org 2 days ago
Buffer the input in a battery then use dc out from the battery to power your lights, no flickering. No need to reconfigure the entire grid and every device on it for niche applications.
iSeth@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
Just rectify the AC, if the voltage isn’t too much.
You don’t need a buffer unless the power fluctuates.
Not a licensed electrician
Thunderbird4@lemmy.world 2 days ago
If lights are flickering when you record videos, you probably need to change the settings on your camera to match your country’s grid frequency. Almost every video recording device will have a 50/60Hz setting somewhere.
Tehdastehdas@piefed.social 2 days ago
How about banning flickering lamps? I’d ban screeching power adapters too.