Programmable LEDs are not very reliable from any manufacturer. GEs also have a high fail rate. Many places see it this way..if they are going to spend the money, just replace the old programmable head with the newer Intelights.
I've seen them changing out a lot of LED greens here lately. On some roads with greens that have lots of dead diodes, they've replaced one of the two greens. i guess that's so if the remaining old LED module goes out completely, they have the new green for back-up. It would make sense to replace them both though IMO...
Yeah a lot of green LEDs died here a few years ago and they had to spot replace them. They mass changed out all the signal LEDs between 2012 and 2013 so I haven't seen any more dead LEDs.
Some of the signals on busier roads have been LED for as long as I can remember. The ones that weren't always LED (always LED meaning i've always seen them LED) gt changed out in the mid-2000s. I like LED signals better than incandescent but incandescent has that nice feeling to it, especially the flashing beacons that fade out. I just wish that LED modules could be equipped to dim at night. The extra brightness is really good in daylight but at night it's blinding!
Tell me about it, the green LED in my Econolite 12-8-8 is so bright in a dark room, I might rig up some kind of dimmer for it or convert it back to incandescent.
Yeah we had a lot of dead LED's. They replaced almost all the modules in my city in January and its sad how many have completely burned out as early as February
2000 is when the LED's really started to take over here. You also have to consider our cold winter. During the winter there are far more dead LED's here then any other time of the year lol
LED's dying in cold weather? now that's odd I wonder what causes that.
I don't mind these Older LED Modules where the individual LED Diodes are visable....then again the typical failure mode of patches of diodes flickering,or just not lighting at all makes them look ugly.
It seems like the older ones with the visible LEDs aren't as extremely bright either. Plus when these are off, there's no color since it's a clear window. The incandescent look-alike modules have the same issue as the traditional incandescent lamps; when the rising or setting sun is shining on the signal, it lights up the lenses a little, making it harder to determine which color is on. They make look-alike modules with clear lenses but here they use the colored ones. Also the newer ones seem to be more focused and act almost like programmed visibility signals with the fact that the light "fades out" as you move away from center-view of the module.
The ones that I now install are Dialite, they have a more incandescent lens look than the pixelated or "Lite-Brite" style like this one.
@ Nick, when the 3M heads are removed during a street widening or other reasons and are not needed for limited viewing, standard heads are installed, including Eagle MkIV and your fav (LOL) McCain.
i know I've seen Older LED Modules where the front cover was Colored. true that the one's with a clear front reduce the "Sun Phantom" issue...and on the newer Incanny look modules with clear lenses the effect is neat.
I think they use dialights here. They look like incandescents (dispite truer color and mught brighter) and even have the colored lenses, though that has the phantom issue.
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I don't mind these Older LED Modules where the individual LED Diodes are visable....then again the typical failure mode of patches of diodes flickering,or just not lighting at all makes them look ugly.
@ Nick, when the 3M heads are removed during a street widening or other reasons and are not needed for limited viewing, standard heads are installed, including Eagle MkIV and your fav (LOL) McCain.