How do lights in digital radios / alarm clocks / keyboards / etc, stay on for years and years without ever burning out?
In: Technology
They use LEDs at relatively low power. There is nothing that really cause them to burn out like other light sources do. Most other light sources like incadecent bulbs or fluorecent lights have parts that require very high temperature to give off light. This can cause them to degrade over time and eventually fail. A lot of these are also engineered to fail after a few years requireing you to buy new ones. Even LED light bulbs have issues with heat as they are passing a lot of current to get the bright light to illuminate the room. Industrial LED lighting usually comes with big heat sinks to get rid of the heat.
They’re normally not driven very hard. The LED in a modern flashlight, or indeed car headlamp will have quite a short life in the grand scheme of things. Longer than an incandescent bulb, but LEDs do dim over time, and wear out if they get hot a lot, which a powerful one will.
The LED that tells you whether your Num Lock is switched on is relatively speaking, very dim, and low power, and will run for decades without a problem.
Well for one, the light output on small electronics is relatively low so it doesn’t wear out as quickly, but the second one bigger reason is because lightbulbs, like most other things these days, are made to break so you have to buy more. I don’t remember where exactly, but in a fire department of a small town there is a lightbulb that the firefighters noticed they hadn’t changed in a long time, and when they checked the dates they found that this one bulb had been going for decades and it still going strong today. It’s yet another example of corporate greed
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