how do the standby lights on electronics last so long?

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I was looking at my TV and PlayStation 3 And realized that the red standby light has been on a majority of the time for the past so many years. How is this possible? Why wouldn’t the light burn out?

In: Technology

4 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

LEDs dont burn out.
Also light bulbs burn out by design…. i’m sure that in the future we will have LEDs that also burn out.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Heat is the common enemy to all types of lights. Be it incandescent (cliche light bulb), arc lamps (neon signs, fluorescent), or LED. Heat causes contraction and expansion of materials, which physically stresses and wears things out. Heat causes evaporation and loss of various materials. Heat causes impurities and other defects to form in materials.

Incandescent lamps are by far the hottest, and by no surprise the shortest lived. They operate on the basis of getting really, really hot so that they glow. So there’s not much to be done, you need to heat for them to work. So you have to take the short lived life with them. Even perfect manufacturing will die pretty quickly.

Arc lamps (ie lightning in a bottle) fall in the middle. They are reasonably efficient, but do still make a lot of heat. And some parts of then are required to get really hot to work, though not as hot as incandescent. Fluorescent lamps have pretty decent lifespans, much better than incandescent.

LEDs are the most efficient, are just a large solid chunk of material, and do not need to be hot to operate. They are much colder, which alone gives them better life spans. They however still do make heat, and the heat will kill them if not taken away. They take metal heat sinks to try and remove the heat. You’ll note the residential LED bulbs are cool to the touch, but if you touch the metal part around where they screw in, it’s quite hot. LEDs, and the circuits driving them, will still eventually fail. However, we’re talking 10 to 100 timesonger than an incandescent lamps. Tens to hundreds of thousands of hours. They fail must faster if they are say overloaded, exposed to a hot environment, or lack proper air circulation.

Now, the simple red lights on electronics are LED. But not just that, they are extremely low power LEDs that need to give off almost no light. They will basically last forever. There is almost no heat to be seen. They are also in a stress free environment. No vibration or shock. No water, moisture, or condensation. No extreme temperature environments or temperature swings. No sun UV exposure. No harsh chemicals. Things like street lights or car head lights have to put up with more than a console indicating light.

Anonymous 0 Comments

most burnout by lights is designed obsolescence.

Also, extremely simple LEDs like those in question are bulletproof. Meaning the engineering and fundamental properties are so refined (over decades) and cheap. It’s almost hard to screw up manufacturing. In addition, the heat fluctuations are such to degrade the material overtime. It’s when companies use cheap materials in their products burnout occurs more frequently.

Anonymous 0 Comments

LEDs last a very long time and usually burn out from power spikes that would mess up the rest of the system