The Lamp Room

These were some of the first type of LED lights I saw in shops. I think it was around 9 years ago that I started seeing these. Usually they were only in blue and ever VERY VERY dim. Half of the time you would see a spot light and half of them would have failed or be off completely.

Sadly I remember these pieces of crap.
Dim as hell and bluey purple if they were working.
Pure garbage.

I don't even know why they sold them. They were just useless and couldn't even light up a cupboard! The SMD LEDs are much better and brighter. Many manufacturers run them too hard and they fail or overheat. If they were driven well with good cooling lifetime would be increase greatly.

Certainly remember those - to be fair, they go back about 16+ yrs, which is about when I first purchased one. They were ok if you wanted something that looked decorative, but absolutely sod all use for providing any useable light. They did gradually improve, but were never anything that special.

Ah yes, the first LEDs I ever used, they tend to have very poor lumen maintenance, (I’m talking gone within a year)!

Does anyone remember the kind of LEDs that used to be in hotel room bathrooms, that would be permanently on? They were a very relaxing pure blue colour. They must've been something similar to this.

Back in my day as a kid who got a scooter (cheap foldable aluminum scooter that were all the rage), i made my own headlights and signals for it...

The headlight was a protoboard (PCB with grid of holes in it) which i filled with probably 100ish AMBER leds in transparent 5mm package. They were new and amazing to me - i only knew the LEDs from the 90s with the colored package till then. The new ones with the transparent package were much brighter and more interesting

The leds themselves came from some cheap Chinese flashers in the then-equivalent of Poundland, which i chose out of the entire shop assortment by number of LEDs to price (those stupid flashers were the most efficient with 5 LEDs for 2 ILS). The LEDs being of absolutely crap quality with the electrodes not centered in the package, bubbles in the casting, and not all that much brighter than a good 90s red LED. But hey, i had LED headlight on my (non electric) kiddie scooter in 2002 !

Then as white 5mm LEDs started appearing i would be making a new headlight, but by then the scooter was allready wrecked completely (the folding mechanism) and it was too small for me anyway... Instead i made all sorts of other stupid things with it like soldering a single 3mm white LED to thin enamel wire pair (out of a cheap headphones cable), and pretending it to be a glowing orb floating in mid air in a haunted house