Here's a not-silly topic, LED corn bulbs!
There's lots of them, there's even an entire section of them on just one website.
But here's a question: When was the first "modern" LED corn bulb created? Was it some kind of eBay invention, or did a big manufacturer do it?

I'm wondering that too. I suppose the big manufacturers did them in the first few years of 120v powered LED bulbs before they figured out how to use high power LED chips. I want a few of those early LED bulbs for historical value. Usage value is low obvioulsy. Crappy CRI and stupidly dim as 5mm LEDs usually are.

They still make them in large retrofit sizes. See this! Corn bulb is like one tenth of the HID.

These came up in the early to mid 2000s as an early attempt to replace GLS lamps. The idea was to take 5mm LEDs (Or SMD equals) and spread them out to provide a diffuse light and to make heatsinking easier (very minimal heatsinking requirements). As LED, Power Supply, Heat Sinking, and optics technology was improved these went to the cheap eBay product market and to larger higher power LEDs (HID replacement). Some of the cheap ones also have moved to COB (chip on board) LEDs where the LED, board, and phosphor are one single unit. Unless you need to replace a HID lamp, I do not recommend corn LEDs and even then only if you have a minimal budget (if you want to upgrade HID to LED I recommend replacing the luminaire unless you have a reason to keep the luminaire).

I've seen some corn LEDs thrown into wallpacks that have had the ballasts removed, in my case HPS. I liked the whiter color and could deal with the optics, but then the lamps heat up enough and the diodes fail shorted one by one, creating a runaway effect that'll eventually kill all diodes or the driver circuit.

I've seen some corn LEDs thrown into wallpacks that have had the ballasts removed, in my case HPS. I liked the whiter color and could deal with the optics, but then the lamps heat up enough and the diodes fail shorted one by one, creating a runaway effect that'll eventually kill all diodes or the driver circuit.

Do the "good" ones protect themselves from that runaway effect?

Forget the corncob bulbs and just stay with HID!!!The corncob light is NOT going to equal a HID!!Life of these as some say are shorter lived-and end up being more expensive than a HID lamp.I see advertising that states a lower wattage corncob bulb will replace the higher wattage HID one-but look at the lumen rating of the corn lamp and you will find the HID is greater-even Mercury!

I find it strange that the manufacturers of the corn lamps, printing the real lumens of these lamps, so that they looks really dimmer than the HID lamps they intended to replace also on the package and not also in reality. I thought companies lies also with the lumens figure, based on the lot of times that I've received >100lm/w figure on generic, shekel crappy LED products, based on their rated lumens divided by rated wattage.

You also have to watch out for fraudulent watt ratings.

With "directional" LED stuff the fraudulent equivalence claims are based on the directionality and some worst case assumptions regarding the original source (e.g. assume the liminaire's original reflector does not work, that original lamps are the least efficient of the type and so on). I have no clue what the corn equivalence claims are based on

In reality, the equivalence may even be weighted in the opposite direction, as the HID put out better light and less glare than the LED.. If we keep it to fair and square Lm/W then the best of LED will end up in the middle between high end MH and low end MH/Merc

The fraudulent W ratings (on Ebay or equivalent stuff, not on anything decent) are usually fake in the direction of written W = 2x real W. So they dont win in Lm/W with the fake figures, unles the Lm rating is even more fake. For most decent stuff the W rating can be assumed to be correct

I think it would be interesting to have a ballast-less bucket light with a big corn bulb installed.

That would probably be one of the better places to use a corn bulb. The open refractor would allow for better cooling than an enclosed fixture, and it would look nicer than most of the LED "bucket" lights.

The hard part with doing that is making the bucket light ballast-less.

Why ?

Why ?

First, somehow remove the ballast from the frame because it's welded on.
Then undo the weird plastic wire crimp/connector/wire-nut things.