Lightning causing led bulb power effect

[Uranium-235]

This happened as my sister described it. Their new house has an open walkway to the garage, and one, what she is sure is an led bulb. She said when there was lighting near it would momentarily light up, and make a popping sound.


I explained, off the top of my head that the driver circut probably has a transformer that is effected by the lightning creating a temporary flow to the led. This is an assumption and would like your opinons

Their house is I think 100% led lights but just the bulb outside in the open area does it.

Could find nothing on google as most results were relating to other things

Am I anywhere near right on this?

Fyi the bulb is on a simple switch, no digital controls

[stj]

Re: Lightning causing led bulb power effect

the cable-run to it is probably acting as the antenna.
i'm not sure i'd trust it if it made a "pop" though - maybe the electrolytic burst!!

[Topcat]

Re: Lightning causing led bulb power effect

Did she have a little too much wine when observing this? I've never heard of such a scenario (the popping)..... Mainly, I don't see the driver being able to take such surges and survive....but stranger things have happened. At some point, you need to autopsy the bulb and see what's in it.

[CapLeaker]

Re: Lightning causing led bulb power effect

Sounds almost like a grounding problem. Get her to make a picture of the bulb. Some cheap Chinese leds that have capacitive droppers are easy light up.

[redwire]

Re: Lightning causing led bulb power effect

I have seen a ghost flashing LED fixture when power was off.
It turned out to be the on/off switch was switching neutral, not hot.
So the LED bulb's power supply always had hot (but not neutral) at the AC input and any stray capacitance to ground (on the floating neutral return) or antenna action is enough to charge up the LED bulb's cap and blink once in a while.
In Nomex cable, there is capacitance to the GND conductor.
Some LED bulbs use no SMPS, just a CC source inside and they light up with microamps. The SMPS bulbs will blink every minute or so.

So any mains spike would make the LED bulb blink due to capacitive coupling, if this is the wiring issue.
I would be worried about the 'pop' sound- that could only be an arc from a mains spike? There must be a problem with failed insulation?

[stj]

Re: Lightning causing led bulb power effect

well leds are current-drive so it's possible that several hundred or even thousand volts lit the led and blew the small output cap.

for ghost leds ElectroBoom had a video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bgUy6zA0ts

[CapLeaker]

Re: Lightning causing led bulb power effect

well leds are current-drive so it's possible that several hundred or even thousand volts lit the led and blew the small output cap.

for ghost leds ElectroBoom had a video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bgUy6zA0ts

Right on stj. That's the vid I was thinking about.

[sam_sam_sam]

Re: Lightning causing led bulb power effect

ElectroBoom had a video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bgUy6zA0ts

for ghost leds ElectroBoom had a video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bgUy6zA0ts

This guy is real funny and crazy he does real stupid sh*t

But he does explain it very well