Tried converting a story from TIFU to greentext because I’m bored at work.
I saved a Gimp Template while working on it: https://files.catbox.moe/ipnjzk.xcf
Me plugging my monitor into my mobo instead of my graphics card for three years. I thought I had just gotten reeeeally unlucky in the silicon lottery.
Or getting a high refresh rate monitor and not changing the refresh rate in your os.
Afaik fullscreen should bypass that one.
I’m pretty sure the fan was not the only thing set to “dim”.
I was gonna say “CFLs just plug into a normal socket, those don’t generally just ‘go bad’”
The text is about a halogen bulb, though, not a CFL. Those generally use flanged prongs.
It still wouldn’t be dim, it would either work or not. If it’s dim, it’s either a bad bulb or a setting on the light housing causing less voltage (I think?) to make it to the bulb.
or a setting on the light housing causing less voltage (I think?) to make it to the bulb
Aren’t you just describing dimmers, the topic of the post?
Exactly!
I’m saying the likelihood of the socket/housing causing a dim light is vanishingly small, so OP should have caught this 6 years ago if they had even a passing understanding of how lights work.
My immediate asumption without looking it up was either it’s not getting the right voltage or enough amperage since electricity is generally passed through to lights, so it would either work or not. So, either the bulb is bad (old lights get dim) or there’s a setting somewhere on the fan or switch messing with the voltage or current. My first guess is the bulb, and if two fail, I’d check the fan.
After a quick search, apparently dimmers are fancier than that, and they actually modify the signal instead of adjusting voltage or amperage. But my initial intuition wasn’t far off. The power is indeed on or off, and something else was interfering (the dimmer). If the fan didn’t have the capability to adjust brightness, there would be no reason to interfere with the signal.
Simple logical deduction based on a passing understanding of electricity and lights would’ve led to the problem.
it’s less that dimmers are fancier than you thought and more like adjusting voltage or amperage without ridiculous losses is hard and or significantly more expensive than you thought.
Dimmers are incredibly simple with just triac and a variable resistor. However LEDs and CFLs do not work well with triac dimmers since they normally are expecting full voltage. Thats why you need “dimmable bulbs” becsuse they have circuitry to account for different voltages.
Makes sense.
My point is that a little bit of deduction should lead someone to the conclusion that the dim light was an intentional feature going “wrong” or a bad bulb.
The integrated circuits in a lot of lighting fixtures (and you know OP’s light is run by integrated circuit because it can be controlled by remote) are basically a black box of complexity where things can go wrong in a non-intuitive way. Some kind of failure to deliver sufficient power to a particular bulb or LED or other element isn’t necessarily an indication of anything in particular.
I doubt they’re all that complex. It’s probably something like a relay for the light, plus an analogue chip to control the dimming, which is likely completely separate from the digital logic (remote, motor control, etc).
I wouldn’t expect OP to know anything about circuits though, but I do expect the bare minimum educated guess that a dim light isn’t likely a bad fan and is either a bad bulb or a setting somewhere, because a light going dim because on an electrical problem is incredibly unlikely.
I totally misread that.
I’m pretty sure he meant a CFL.
For exactly that reason.
Depends on the CFL. I had to replace one in a fixture in my new house a few months after I bought it, and it was some goofy round one with a rectangular attachment point and some clips. Thankfully it was pretty easy to replace and was easily gettable from Dom Depot, but I was definitely surprised by the socket when I went to replace it.
That sounds like one of those fixtures where the ballast is in the fixture and the bulb is just a bulb, similar to a regular fluorescent light fixture. As opposed to the screw-in CFLs that most people are familiar with where the bulb also contains the ballast.
Those are kind of unusual in homes - I’ve mostly seen them in commercial applications like hotels and stuff like that.
Worst case scenario just replace the light kit and check your wiring but yeah obviously that wasn’t OP’s issue
Of course doing that with the fan still together/hanging is much more of a pain than just getting a new one, usually, especially if the fan is old. Most other electricians I know don’t bother doing ceiling fan repairs, they’ll swap em but any more than that’s not worth their time. I’ll do whatever but I’ll be up front about it.
Especially since you’re usually doing it for retired folks who can only afford so much…
Okay, I’m sorry, but this is totally true and heterosexual. I have seen two people do this in real life.
this is a vegan greentext no animals were harmed in the creation
Anon has never heard of lamps, either.
My grandmother gifted me their old TV back in the 2000s because it was only showing black and white.
They had a mechanic look at it, who said it was broken
There was a button to change the saturation and get the TV back to show colours
Edit: There and their
I know someone who bought a new laptop and complained that the display broke after only a couple weeks
It only showed a super dim display and the viewing angle sucked
I pressed the fancy new “privacy screen” button and it “worked flawlessly” again
Ha. I had a coworker gift me a high end amp because the volume was all crackly. Opened it up sprayed electronic cleaner on the volume rheostat thingy and gave it a few back and forth turns. Perfect sound. I offered it back but he’d already purchased a new one. :/
I had something similar, except it was a blown fuse.
Granted, the fuse was soldered in place and you had to take it apart to get to it. But once it was replaced it worked perfectly. No idea why the fuse blew either, unless it was just defective.
His life was set to ‚dim’ for six years
Cause in the dark no one could see his tearsThis feels…wrong.
Human Moment™. One of my former professors in Uni, the one I respected the most because she was one of the wisest and most perceptive people I’d met at that point, confided in us that it took her however many years since their introduction to realise that the small light on some wall-mounted light switches was meant as a guidance light if it’s pitch black.
I always thought those were just there to incentivize turning it off at the breaker /s
Ooooooh! Boy, do I feel dumb!
anon gets owned by a fan
You know, you only need to be around 5% smarter than the tool you are using to be successful with it. Humanity is right fuckered isn’t it?
I have one of those fans. It only has a remote, no pull chains. I fucking hate that thing as much as I have ever hated anything in my life. It’s so shitty. You would think having buttons would make it easier to use than a pull chain but they somehow made it even worse. Both the light and fan use the same Up and Down arrows to change the setting but there’s a delay of a second or two between hitting the button and the fan actually changing (if it changes at all). There’s also no indicator of which setting you’re on currently (which is the only annoying part about pull chains). Also couldn’t get it to switch directions for winter even after spending probably an hour on their site and Youtube looking at documentation and trying shit.
When you don’t read the “friendly” manual.
Oh, 4chan is back Your post is how I got to know it.
