Cree seems to be doing fine.

I guess continuous research and investment in higher margin and specialized LEDs can help maintain your market share and profits.

Making 5mm, 3528 or 5050 is like being Walmart.

Making new substrates that are a few percent more efficient or high reliability can let you charge a lot more when the buyer will have them on 24/7, harsh environments or expensive-to-replace installs.

Cree sold their lighting business unit in March. https://www.ledsmagazine.com/articles/2019/03/led-business-n...

Isn't Cree primarily benefiting from GaN upswing?

Probably. Hopefully they can continue after it gets commoditized too.

I don't have a solid view of where all the LEDs go. That is, for example, what percent might go to automobiles, or interior lighting, etc.

Curious why demand is down. Is it, for example, because the initial switch from florescent and incandescent is mostly done, and LEDs last a long time?

I just wish the automobile LED retrofit market was more advanced.

Most newer non-LED cars will report bulb faults because LED resistance is too low. The workaround of a resistor seems to defeat the purpose. Reprogramming ECUs is a pain.

You’d think someone would sell a competitive kit for common cars that do it all, but they seem non-existent.

Reducing electrical loads by a few hundred watts should pay for itself over a few years if you drive enough.

I wish we could regulate the CRI and color temp of LEDs sold for headlights. I've had a few dangerous situations at night because of some idiot with poorly aimed, blue-white LEDs. I thought it was well known that lower color temps reflect less off moisture and perform better as headlights? I worry we may be causing eye issues by blasting people with intense blue light when their eyes are adjusted for darkness.

ah man! so much of this problem in my country too. these clowns fit the blue-white headlight bulbs purely for style / fashion !

Not related with car headlights, but related to temperature:

3 days ago I learned prefer blue light in some of the rooms in house. Apparently yellow is sheepish, blue is good for reading. My theory was: southerners prefer blue, people with little sun exposure - yellow.

Have you noticed anything similar before?

I go with Warm lights for relaxing spaces e.g. bedroom, bathroom, living room, and Cool lights for workspaces e.g. the shed, kitchen, laundry...

It feels "right" to me having a lighting distinction between the types of spaces.

I dunno... I think I used to prefer 2700k at home and now I'm settling on 3300k, although sometimes even that seems frustratingly yellow now. I'm getting older and presbyopia is really setting in now. I'm from CA(formerly southern, now the bay area).

I find LED stop lights very annoying because they flicker.

That’s also something that could be fixed with a better implementation. (Higher PWM frequency and/or a capacitor to smooth out the PWM signal.)

Except it wont be fixed because many don't see it as flickers, most don't find it annoying, and the people making the purchasing decision only cares about cost and not quality.

Why is PWM necessary at all? Are the power savings of PWM worth the assault on the senses?

It's cheaper and easier to implement than "real" voltage regulation.

it isn't, it's just easier to generate/control from whatever dumb microcontroller than a current source.

It's a big problem for the movie industry ;)

Likely talking about load resistors that are installed in parallel with the LEDs, converting energy to heat solely for the purpose of making the "incandescent bulb is bad" sensor happy.

If as GP said the bulb fault is sensed as resistance is too low, putting a resistor in parallel with the LED will reduce the resistance even further.

I think it's the I^2R loss in a (series) resistor that makes using a resistor problematic from the POV of energy savings.

The sensor is looking at current draw. If it's too low, it assumes a burned out incandescent. Basically, the LEDs are too efficient and look like a burned bulb. The resistor in parallel draws enough current to make it happy.

Then resistance is not too low, but too high.

The reason you need the resistor is that the LEDs pull too little current, not that the voltage drop across them is too low.

Most likely it. Just like with solar, while the future orders volume is not threatened any much, a lot of suppliers had no plan what to do after the initial adoption rush ends. A lot of manufacturers jumped on LED market just for that early inrush

I’m pretty sure at least 10% end up at Burning Man.

It’d be nice if China ever paid attention to demand and stopped overproducing every good they can, leading to stockpiles that will likely just end up in landfills.

eBay is full of Soviet new-old stock Nixie tubes. In the future it could be obsolete Chinese LEDs that everyone’s buying up to make “retro” digital clocks from.

Every time I design a circuit it seems I have to find new indicator LEDs. I can’t standardize on a single part as they are consistently out of stock.

Like, plain 5mm LEDs, or something more specific ?

Surface mount.

What’s wrong with through hole?

costs more to get them assembled. any through-hole parts blow up cost of getting your board assembled

Buy by the reel, it's the only way to go to ensure you have stock available.

Does this imply that now is a good time to get a bulk order of LEDs?

Possibly. Though I doubt price will go up since it’s such a commodity good.