• tal@lemmy.today
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    3 days ago

    With the rods of the eye. Your eye doesn’t consist entirely of rods.

    The Wikipedia article says that your cones should be more-sensitive to flashing at higher frequencies than the rods. The rods are what are what pick up light when you’re viewing something through the corner of your eye. What I experience with these bulbs is the opposite of what I’d expect from that: flashing is noticeable and annoying when viewed in my peripheral vision, but gone (well, or on the edge of noticeability) when in the center of my vision.

    EDIT: Well, to be fair, I guess I don’t actually know that they don’t have some sort of power control circuitry, haven’t pulled one apart, so I guess I shouldn’t say that they’re 60 Hz. But unlike typical LED bulbs, they’re narrow; these corncob bulbs don’t have the bulge for space for an electronic ballast. If they don’t have the ballast, I’d be expecting them to run off the wall power directly.

    I wonder if I can go dig up a datasheet somewhere.

    EDIT2: None of the technical material talks about any frequency of the bulb, but you might be right. There’s one other thing power-control thing that you can stick in a bulb that might take up space, and that’s a dimmable power supply. Like, if the wall power voltage drops, those will detect and reduce brightness. This one’s non-dimmable. Maybe that’s where the bulge at the base of LED bulbs comes from — dimmer electronics — and there’s enough space to fit non-dimmable electronics up inside the body of the bulb.