Cheap LED Shop lights

[DPittman]

As noted in a couple of the Amazon reviews, however, it has FUBAR'd my overhead door opener reception. While inside I can usually get it to open/close w/ just one click on the remote, from the outside it's near impossible to get it to work

Well that's interesting and something I didn't know! This new place I'm at seems to have a dang finicky garage door opener and I installed my old shop leds lights in there!!!! I assume they can only cause problems when on?? Strange thing is they sure didn't cause any problems in my old garage?

 

[Susquatch]

Well that's interesting and something I didn't know!

@JustaDB - I had no awareness of that either. I had planned LEDs in our garage, but I think this flips me over to a mix of T15s and incandescent. No way my wife will tolerate any opener issues at all. They will be my fault period. Although I understand it quite well, I don't like dealing with RF noise. It's always a tricky mess to work with.

 

[Doggggboy]

@JustaDB - I had no awareness of that either. I had planned LEDs in our garage, but I think this flips me over to a mix of T15s and incandescent. No way my wife will tolerate any opener issues at all. They will be my fault period. Although I understand it quite well, I don't like dealing with RF noise. It's always a tricky mess to work with.

I have 3 different types of LEDs in three separate buildings, with 3 different brands of remotes and have no problem with any of them.

 

[JustaDB]

Although I understand it quite well, I don't like dealing with RF noise. It's always a tricky mess to work with.

Had a Ham living next door to me, he's since passed on. He had detected some background RF noise some time after I installed the LED's. He asked if I had made any recent changes to the house & we discussed the possibility of the new lights being the source, as I had already determined they were the issue w/ the overhead door remote.

Came over one day w/ a frequency reader of some sort. Put it up against the lights, they were emitting some RF noise, but not at the frequency that he was detecting at home. Was never able to determine the source.

Edit: Just remembered, I tried some ferrite chokes that he gave me, but they didn't seem to have an effect either way.

 

[JustaDB]

Strange thing is they sure didn't cause any problems in my old garage?

Could be different frequency remotes? I forget what mine is.

Put "led lights interfering w/ garage door opener" into your favorite search engine. It's a well known issue & there are tons of articles online.

 

[Doggggboy]

@JustaDB - I had no awareness of that either. I had planned LEDs in our garage, but I think this flips me over to a mix of T15s and incandescent. No way my wife will tolerate any opener issues at all. They will be my fault period. Although I understand it quite well, I don't like dealing with RF noise. It's always a tricky mess to work with.

T15? Do you mean T8 or T12?
I had T12 in the kennel and switched them all to T8 when we put in the geothermal. When we went solar I swapped the bulbs to led and didn't need to change the ballasts. Around 40 fixtures.
The kennel lights were on 14 hours/day 365 days a year.

 

[terry_g]

I have four of these in my 600 square foot shop that has a ten foot ceiling. I put them up ten years ago maybe more. LED lighting was a new thing then and quite expensive. The bulbs are 60 watt equivalent LED's. They do an excellent job of illuminating the shop and no failures and new bulbs are inexpensive. If I remember correctly they were around $40 for the fixture and four LED bulbs. I got tired of the florescent tubes and ballasts constantly failing.

 

[Susquatch]

T15? Do you mean T8 or T12?

Brain Fart. I'm thinking T8. It will take some more thinking. I had LEDs in mind because they are more cost effective and because fluorescents are being phased out. But if my garage remote won't work, I'm back to T8. This sucks.

 

[Doggggboy]

as I had already determined they were the issue w/ the overhead door remote.

How did you fix the issue?

 

[JustaDB]

How did you fix the issue?

Haven't. As I noted above, if I need to close the overhead door & head outside, I turn off the lights. Considering where the light switch is (tucked behind vertical plywood storage), it's a bit of a PITA. Is it a huge issue? No, but if I'm only going to be gone a few minutes it's a couple extra steps.

 

[DPittman]

So I tested out my leds in my garage and when they are on they definitely affect the opener significantly, however one opener remote seems to work better (I tried different batteries). And even stranger is that I had zero problems with those same led lights in my old garage.

 

[Ironman]

I have converted my fluorescent lights and the two high bay lights to LEDS, but rather than a throw away fixture I went with the tube to led replacements. Turns out they have never settled a standard for these things. Costco sells the direct replacement tube, another ebay supplier sells the power to one end only type,(other end is dummy pins) and then the third amazon type which I found out the hard way is power with black on one end and white on the other. Both the last two types require you to chop out the wires to the transistor ballast.
My bitch about leds is that the voltage reducer/power supply is a P.O.S. on all leds. I'm not sure they even last as long as regular bulbs before the switching power supply craps out. I just replaced all my shop leds as some were doing the funky chicken and two tubes had quit. They somewhat lasted 6 years, with occasional replacements of failures. So I did all 32 tubes and we will see how things go. The best leds I have are the two highbay lights which are 800 watt equivalent they claim. These have a separate power supply so when the power supply goes east, they are still good and only need a new dc voltage supply.
Kind of sad when you take out a led tube that won't light after a year, dig out the power supply from one end and hook up a dc variable voltage supply and they light up like new.

 

[Ironman]

I bought all my LED lights from PA, they cost a bit more but if they die off in a short period of time, I can take 'em back for warranty. I always wait until they're on sale & have never paid more than about $28, sometimes as low as $20, for a 4', 5000 lumen fixture.

Of course, I am sure you know that PA buys all their chinese stock at the same factories as Amazon. But much as I love the naughty Princess, they don't deliver to my door.

 

[Doggggboy]

So I tested out my leds in my garage and when they are on they definitely affect the opener significantly, however one opener remote seems to work better (I tried different batteries). And even stranger is that I had zero problems with those same led lights in my old garage.

Dumb question, I'm sure, but does changing the remote code work?

 

[DPittman]

Dumb question, I'm sure, but does changing the remote code work?

Don't know I'll have to try that.

 

[JustaDB]

Of course, I am sure you know that PA buys all their chinese stock at the same factories as Amazon. But much as I love the naughty Princess, they don't deliver to my door.

Yep, I know. PA does ship, during the Coof lockdowns I had stuff delivered to my door. Or do you just have one of those addresses they can't deliver to?

 

[Ironman]

Yep, I know. PA does ship, during the Coof lockdowns I had stuff delivered to my door. Or do you just have one of those addresses they can't deliver to?

I don't live in a city. Fedex and UPs won't deliver, but claim they do. Amazon does every time, same day service. It amazes me that they can do so easily for free, what the others charge too much for and fail at.

 

[DPittman]

I don't live in a city. Fedex and UPs won't deliver, but claim they do. Amazon does every time, same day service. It amazes me that they can do so easily for free, what the others charge too much for and fail at.

PA does deliver some stuff by mail (or at least they used to in recent past).

 

[Doggggboy]

I don't live in a city. Fedex and UPs won't deliver, but claim they do. Amazon does every time, same day service. It amazes me that they can do so easily for free, what the others charge too much for and fail at.

I live in the country as well and pickup my mail at the local post office in the nearest town. No courier deliveries out here either. Our post mistress allows us to use her street address to have courier packages delivered to her and then she just passes them over when we get the mail. I give her little something at Christmas by way of thanks and everyone is happy. Might be worth asking about.

 

[6.5 Fan]

I've had multiple failures of LED bulbs in the house, these are the standard screw in type. Not even close to the hours of use they state on the packaging. Also replaced large bulbs in the barn with LED corn cob lights, nice and bright but again a lot of failures and they are about $35 on sale. I bought an expensive pair of 4 ft LED bulbs for a kitchen fluorescent fixture, this was back when they first arrived, those still work fine.