Technology Incompetence

Our outdoor light, back patio, motion-activated, quit. I tore it apart, poorly constructed, looked like water had entered. So I got hold of a nifty LED light bulb, 100 watts equivalent light output, uses only 9 watts! Wonderful innovation. Been turning it on late in the day, off when I get to it, sometimes 4 hours after first light! Lazy getter-upper.

WARNING! This thread depicts current tech ability as supplied to the consumer, vs. early tech ability using state of the art knowledge. Regarding the latter, I remain speechless: IT CAN'T WORK!

Well, we get these various catalogs in the mail, "Carol Wright" (we call it Carol Wrong!), "Dr. Something or Another", and one had a photocell operated lightbulb socket reasonably priced, 2 for $7.99. Got 'em.

Installed with the LED lightbulb. Turned on switch, in daylight, VOILA, it's off! Came back after dark, it's ON! No VOILA, though, it's flickering on and off, very quickly.

Never "assume"; that makes an "ass of u and me". This thing turns on at some predetermined low-light level, that's good, but as soon as it turns on, the damned photocell thinks it's morning, and turns it off! Then very quickly, realizing it's dark outsider, it turns back on. Repeat process all night long, morning, it turns off, awaiting another reckless night.

Tried explaining this design quirk to my wife, to no avail. She feels I wasted the money. I expected the sellers of such a product to have at least tested it. I expect too much of the Chinese then, eh?

I can design a "latch" circuit which keeps the lamp ON after it once illuminates, but cannot incorporate it into the molded socket, so what have we then? Wires hanging out all over? No good. So, let the damned bulb flicker forever at night, which may or may not shorten it's life, or more likely, the life of the photocell circuitry. Maybe the flickering will discourage some potential interloper, who may think it's pulsed radar! Yeah, right.

Maybe back to the tried and true human-induced input: switch on the wall. Now how do you folks not inclined to investigate and understand quirks, imponderables, and intangibles deal with these mysterious little everyday set-backs? Have you had some? Plug the thing in, nothing. wait. Maybe it's "warming up"; old-timers remember well when that household monument, the family radio, was turned ON: it was done well in advance of show time, as the "tubes" had to warm up. No lie. Vacuum tubes operate with hot filaments, driving electrons out of non-hot cathodes, then propelling them towards the Plate, which collected those little negatively-charged rascals by the trillions, sending them back to the cathode. Repeat process.

But, the APEX of it all, for me, was learning about Television. Had to, to get my AAS degree in Electronics. The PICTURE TUBE drove those electrons out of it's cathode in numbers unimaginable, towards the screen up front. Hitting the screen, they made it glow. Big white screen. No picture.

Squeeze the stream of electrons down to a small diameter, say 1/8 inch, get a 1/8 inch spot of white light on the screen. Now take that spot and sweep it across the screen, starting at the upper left corner, ending at the lower right. It produced 525 lines of 1/8 inch wide light, from top to bottom. Now, turn that spot of light on and of fast enough to produce an image, ranging from most white to no light at all (black). Black & White Television!

The TV camera in the studio swept the scene it looked at producing a screen of 525 lines. EVERY sweep of EVERY line was miraculously duplicated in your TV set! Each "picture" was a scene locking in 1/60th second of the view. Swept 60 times every second, a new "screen" was presented every 1/60th second, so that any movement within the "set" looked perfectly natural.

The TV screen had to "glow" long enough to look believable. Picture tubes glowed a short time after electrons hit, but not long enough. Thus was introduced "interlaced scanning". The individual "screens", 1/60 second apart, had 525 lines scanned horizontally each, but line 1 was followed by line 3, then 5, then after 525, line 2, line 4, etc. Thus, the view seemed evenly lit, though the upper left of the screen was slightly brighter than the lower left.

Might this madness work? I learned this all as a young man studying Electronics Engineering at DeVry Technical Institute. I said to myself, they are nuts. It can't possibly work, yet it did. I did nt go into T-V repair as a career. Perhaps I should have.
Frank