I have seen LED beacons before (I think there's one installation in York somewhere), but I've never seen ones where the LEDs are on the OUTSIDE!
The lighting is on a dimmer circuit, which means the LEDs always have a bit of a flicker. Dimming the dimmer switch doesn't do anything to the LEDs anyway, because the LED spotlights only need dimmed levels of power to operate at full power, so they stay at full power until the dimmer switch is almost at minimum, and extinguish at the same point as the halogens completely extinguish from dim.Now that suprises me. The packaging for any LED lamp says "not to be used on dimmer circuits", so I always presumed it's damage the interior electrics. Having never looked at the electrics inside an LED package, I don't know if there's a driver in there or just some resistors and/or a bridge rectifier to stabilise the output from the LEDs... but I always presumed that dimming would cause damage - like it would do on CFLs.
Well this is the advantage of LEDs, you don't really need a bowl/globe any more since once they are encapsulated they don't need further weather proofing. Bit like the Stella which doesn't have a bowl in the conventional sense.
Well that's what I would have thought... but if you look at packaging for GU10 LED lamps, it always says "do not use if the cover glass is broken". Now I never knew why halogens seem to need a cover glass because I'm unaware of any exploding in a way akin to Metal Halide lamps; so I'd have thought the production of the LED GU10's could be further reduced by removing the glass entirely... however this may add difficulties to 'horn' type GU10 fittings where you have to use a rubber suction cap to fit/remove the lamps.
A dimmer switch works on what is called pulse width modulation - basically it feeds the load with square waves and "dims" it by making these narrower. Wide square waves more power, narrower less power. For a halogen lamp - purely resistive load, power is directly proportional to width of the square wave.
When the dimmer is almost off, the square wave becomes in effect a series of spikes. However LEDs only need a few milliamps of power to operate. The GU10 ones have what is called a capacitive mains dropper power supply, basically the reactance of a capacitor is used to dissipate power and it is a very high impedance load. The spikes are sufficient to feed the capacitive mains dropper enough power to light the LEDs as the power supply is of high impedance.
It is all to do with matched loads, think of the dimmer output when almost off as an analogue radio signal, there is enough power into a high impedance load (radio receiver input) to feed the LED power supply (radio to pick up a signal) but not to light a halogen directly (drive a speaker without an amplifier from an aerial).Ah yes that makes sense. Also I've seen capacitors used elsewhere to reduce the mains power down to a workable level... In fact I use something like it for a relay switch on a PCB. At the last house in the first shed I built I had a Newec LED exit light that was permanently maintained or permanently non-maintained (non-switchable) - this relay PCB was used to switch between the pins on the driver circuit of the Newlec light. The relay terminals switching the lower voltage on the Newlec PCB and the input to the relay PCB was mains voltage Live and Neutral... on the PCB is a small round black thing (haha - real technical!) with the + side marked, which to me strikes of a miniture ac to dc converter by means of diodes - and then there is a capacitor alongside.
In my previous house I had built some uplighters into the floor (suspended wooden floor- old house)which were made from a glass brick, a lightbox underneath and lit by CFLs. I also had blue LEDs in them fed from a capacitive mains dropper PSU. Even when the switch was off, there was enough leakage current across the switch and from coupled power from adjacent cables to very dimly light the LEDs.
In this house, one of the hall GU10 LEDs does the same, you can only see it in the dark but it glows dimly even when switched off.Is the LED GU10 in your present house fed by a normal switch then, or some sort of controller?
Also, uplighters built into a wooden floor - how did you access them for lamp changes? The house I'm in now is 1960's build and has part suspended floor downstairs (and that includes the 2000's extension at the back!)... I doubt we'll get floor uplighters here though! I may be able to put some in the cabin though if I don't put down any lino/carpet/laminate...