Flickering LED fixtures

[mopowr steve]

Anyone have some experience with namely led lighting from Menards, which is mainly Patriot Lighting.
Customer supplied fixtures and after I installing the very first of them I noticed a slight flicker. I continued installing with some other models to see if it was just a one-off problem, nope. Then I install some Hunter paddle fans with led bulbs supplied, same issue.
Now, I had already had some temporary pigtail sockets with Led bulbs that I installed previously that did not flicker. These are not on dimmers, but the flicker seems to have some kind of pattern to it. Something akin to signal transmission as all the fixtures I have installed appear to be in unison with flicker.
Has anyone heard of smart meters possibly causing this?
Or just plain junk, with little filtering compared to my led bulbs.
New home at end of power transmission with a fairly long secondary ~400’

 

[ptonsparky]

Stock an incandescent lamp in there someplace and see if that helps the flickering.

 

[mopowr steve]

These are Integrated led fixtures. And on different circuits.
There are some architectural incandescent installed in some fixtures already which do not appear to flicker.
I’ve already shut off some fans and a dehumidifier to see if they were culprits, no luck. Next time I’m there I’ll turn off individual breakers to see if there is some load within the house causing it.

 

[mopowr steve]

Update:
Have tuned off all breakers except for individual circuit feeding some led lights .......still flickers

Had POCO out, changed smart meter......still flicker, Removed meter and engaged bypass lever.....still flickers

Installed a surge capacitor unit.......still flickers

Installed surge protective device.......still flickers

Connected a O-scope ......voltage waveform nearly perfect....although when first connected I saw an erroneous waveform but soon found out the test lead was bad, and must have been witnessing capacitive coupling from a broken lead.

Some fixtures that utilized bulbs changed to different brand of led’s .....definite improvement.....but if pay real close attention could still make out some faint flicker.

Was there someone here that had experience like this that found ferrite chokes placed around the branch circuits that helped?

 

[synchro]

You mentioned that the lights are not on dimmers. Are the switches regular mechanical ones or could they be "smart" switches?
Have you put an incandescent light on the same circuit as the flickering LEDs like ptonsparky mentioned to see if it might help? That's less likely to help if the switches are not electronic ones, but it's still worth trying.

Ferrite chokes might help if there was RF interference being conducted from somewhere. That sounds less likely if you've shut off all the breakers on the other circuits. Is there any AM broadcast station nearby? Does the house have a PV system?

 

[mopowr steve]

You mentioned that the lights are not on dimmers. Are the switches regular mechanical ones or could they be "smart" switches?
Have you put an incandescent light on the same circuit as the flickering LEDs like ptonsparky mentioned to see if it might help? That's less likely to help if the switches are not electronic ones, but it's still worth trying.

Ferrite chokes might help if there was RF interference being conducted from somewhere. That sounds less likely if you've shut off all the breakers on the other circuits. Is there any AM broadcast station nearby? Does the house have a PV system?

No smart-switches just regular mechanical

A couple of the troubled circuits do also contain incandescent bulbs already

Not aware of AM station nearby but I will check that out

No PV system

I’m going there this weekend, I think I’ll try and determine if one of the LED trims installed has a leak from neutral to EGC .
That’s thrown stuff into a tizzy before on one of my jobs, because they are also having afci troubles also, but I’m well aware of the common problems this is next level sh.t

 

[ptonsparky]

I’ve had good luck with items from RK Electronics although the problems I had were with the switching of inductive loads, not continuous flickering. We could easily replicate the problem.

 

[James L]

...I’m going there this weekend, I think I’ll try and determine if one of the LED trims installed has a leak from neutral to EGC.....

Are all of the flickering lights recessed trims?

I bought a boatload of Patriot recessed trims from Menards a few months ago because they had a sale + extra rebates which made them $3.00-ish each

I'm not real enthused about my money-saving venture. I haven't had any flickering, but they're just cheap.

I had issues once with some can trims (not Patriot) where the load wires from the driver were pinched between the driver and the trim backing. It was a quality control issue, and had flicker, shorting, shocking, literally 1 out of 3 had problems.

When you go this weekend, maybe try taking a half-dozen or so of a different brand? Could be you just got ahold of a junk lot.

 

[mopowr steve]

Are all of the flickering lights recessed trims?

I bought a boatload of Patriot recessed trims from Menards a few months ago because they had a sale + extra rebates which made them $3.00-ish each

I'm not real enthused about my money-saving venture. I haven't had any flickering, but they're just cheap.

I had issues once with some can trims (not Patriot) where the load wires from the driver were pinched between the driver and the trim backing. It was a quality control issue, and had flicker, shorting, shocking, literally 1 out of 3 had problems.

When you go this weekend, maybe try taking a half-dozen or so of a different brand? Could be you just got ahold of a junk lot.

Most of the fixtures that were having a problem with are integrated surface fixtures.
And I too found a trim once years ago with the load wires pinched just as you described, that’s what I’m wondering might be throwing some signal back on line as I do have plenty recess fixtures also. At that time Siemens had not yet removed the gfi component of their AFCI breakers and it tripped the AFCI because of it. This job has all the latest revision with gfi component removed.

 

[Fred B]

I just came across one this week having the slim line led canless with seperate jbox-driver, when disconnected 1, led had slight flicker, removed 2, a lot of flicker, could you have an led driver left unconnected and light never got cut into ceiling after sheetrock was done and connected? Can't tell you how many times I've come in after the sheet rock guys only to find they forget to cut out a box or fixture or just pinch a fixture wire during the hanging of sheet rock.

 

[ptonsparky]

I just came across one this week having the slim line led canless with seperate jbox-driver, when disconnected 1, led had slight flicker, removed 2, a lot of flicker, could you have an led driver left unconnected and light never got cut into ceiling after sheetrock was done and connected? Can't tell you how many times I've come in after the sheet rock guys only to find they forget to cut out a box or fixture or just pinch a fixture wire during the hanging of sheet rock.

That’s a deal. Any one with a clue as to why this would happen?

 

[hbiss]

but the flicker seems to have some kind of pattern to it. Something akin to signal transmission as all the fixtures I have installed appear to be in unison with flicker.

That's a common occurrence with failing or defective LED lighting. Someplace there is a video of half a parking lot all flashing in unison.

Don't ask me why.

-Hal

 

[synchro]

I just came across one this week having the slim line led canless with seperate jbox-driver, when disconnected 1, led had slight flicker, removed 2, a lot of flicker, could you have an led driver left unconnected and light never got cut into ceiling after sheetrock was done and connected?

That’s a deal. Any one with a clue as to why this would happen?

Just a guess, but maybe the switching supply in the driver has an instability without a proper load and because of this it's creating conducted interference and/or current spikes on its line input.
Also because drivers of the same brand/model are switching at substantially the same frequency, they may be very prone to interference that is close to that frequency. This phenomena is known as injection locking and/or pulling.

 

[mopowr steve]

That's a common occurrence with failing or defective LED lighting. Someplace there is a video of half a parking lot all flashing in unison.

Don't ask me why.

-Hal

I have seen what your talkin* about but these are not flashing but rather have a flicker and this is a brand new home.

 

[mopowr steve]

Latest update;
A couple weeks ago during a quick experiment to see if flicker would go away if just one circuit was tuned on I had a very interesting thing happen. I had a circuit that contained 12 recess lights with Fiet retro trims ( no issues with these lights ) and I happened to also click on a second circuit at the same time that I have a P&S alarm GFCI for a freezer, well the GFCI alarms sounds off yet it is not tripped. I took note that it would randomly sound if I had the dimmer to these lights at 1/4 level or higher.
So as I went there to gather more useless knowledge yesterday I thought why not start with this anomaly and see if it has any influence as to why the lighting I originally posted about was flickering. This time I connected my Siemens Intelliarc diagnostic meter to this circuit. ( I took it with me because the owner said as he adjusted some fan speed controls he had and a couple afci’s trip. But I’ve been aware of this problem ever since afci’s came on the scene).
With the dimmer again above 1/4 level it indicated a moderate indication of arc fault level and as before that alarm GFCI started sounding off. So after reading posts a while back about GFCI tripping due to RF I’m thinking hey maybe these led trims are causing it. Long story short- - - I happened to have a RF filter that I installed and by god it knocked out whatever caused the GFCI to sound but did not do anything to reduce the arc fault level. But what I did find was that if I disconnected the led lights one by one, once I got down to less than 6 of them my arc fault level dropped off. All in all none of this has any correlation to the flickering lights elsewhere.
Next trial I want to perform is install ferrite cores on all the branch circuit wires just before they terminate onto breakers to see if those will have any effect on removing what appears to be RF noise and/or arc fault level.

 

[mopowr steve]

Well, I tried clipping some ferrite cores to the leads of some Fiet brand led retro trims in the masterbed. It showed no less signal of Arc signature with the Intelliarc tool with them installed.
As of now I have temporarily installed some incandescent flood bulbs in the recess lights, it’s been 3-4 weeks now and home-owner says that afci breaker for that room has not tripped since. But one time had kitchen recess lights on (which still have Fiet brand trims and are on there own circuit) and it tripped the kitchen lights afci breaker when they turned on the bedroom lights. These are independent circuits from each other other than many of these home runs do run in Arlington cable trough system. Not sure how much inductance of interference occurs with this product though. I am aware of arc fault breakers sensing anomalies on the same phase their connected to if interference is even coming from another circuit.
This leads me to believe that knowing that the Fiet brand seems to emanate so much RF it doesn’t take much of a spike or whatever to put those breakers over the threshold to trip.

 

[macmikeman]

There is a house around the corner from mine that has an outdoor wp light fixture and two led lamps. One of them pulses all night long and yes it is kinda sort of irritating to drive past it on the way home at night , because I'm the kind of guy who would have changed that lamp out if it was my house...........

 

[Little Bill]

Well, I tried clipping some ferrite cores to the leads of some Fiet brand led retro trims in the masterbed. It showed no less signal of Arc signature with the Intelliarc tool with them installed.
As of now I have temporarily installed some incandescent flood bulbs in the recess lights, it’s been 3-4 weeks now and home-owner says that afci breaker for that room has not tripped since. But one time had kitchen recess lights on (which still have Fiet brand trims and are on there own circuit) and it tripped the kitchen lights afci breaker when they turned on the bedroom lights. These are independent circuits from each other other than many of these home runs do run in Arlington cable trough system. Not sure how much inductance of interference occurs with this product though. I am aware of arc fault breakers sensing anomalies on the same phase their connected to if interference is even coming from another circuit.
This leads me to believe that knowing that the Fiet brand seems to emanate so much RF it doesn’t take much of a spike or whatever to put those breakers over the threshold to trip.

That's nice, but what about the flickering LEDs?

 

[LarryFine]

There is a house around the corner from mine that has an outdoor wp light fixture and two led lamps. One of them pulses all night long and yes it is kinda sort of irritating to drive past it on the way home at night , because I'm the kind of guy who would have changed that lamp out if it was my house...........

I wonder if an improperly-aimed photocell is the problem?

 

[mopowr steve]

That's nice, but what about the flickering LEDs?

There has been No discovery of anything yet that is the root cause to what this post was originally about those Patriot Lighting and Led bulbs supplied with a Hunter fans issues. Home-owner has pretty much changed those fixtures and bulbs as a remedy. But the saga continues with still more questions than answers.
I just don’t have the equipment or know how anymore to diagnose whatever weird s..t is going on here.