Bench lighting

Are you up for making something? To address the controlled emissions I'd drop back to old fashioned filament bulbs - which are sometimes hard to come by in some countries now but not impossible. I'd suggest a simple angle poise lamp from Ikea et al with a suitable bulb from a Halogen range eg Sylvania Energy Saving Halogen GLS Lamp 70W BC (B22d) 1190lm (toolstation.com)

You could also use a GU10 holder and again some Halogen units?

Either way you get a nice 'instant' light, good colour temperature and no flicker or electromagnetic interference.

I don't really want to make something.  It's very hard, nigh on impossible, to buy a non-LED light these days (cue landfill in 5 - 10 years.)  I guess a second hand Anglepoise-style lamp would work as they'd at least take a proper bulb!  Bit on the warm side mind!! 

Hi Andrew,

Your noise is likely coming from the dimmer provision. Why not remove the dimmer function and just go to full brightness. this should cut the noise.

John

A (funny) option would be to run some low-voltage LEDs from a bench supply for that added dimmable goodness (assuming you have a fairly quiet bench supply just lying about).

- Gough

That’s a thought.  It’s built into the lamp head through a 3-stage button press: on, dim, off.  The noise does go when I turn it off.  Head unit is sealed unfortunately - it’s one of those ‘throw it away when the led goes’ devices.

Novel but a bit drastic I fear Gough!

I was going to suggest the same: one of those lamps from Ikea, and a halogen bulb (it's very good quality light, with high CRI). Anything that isn't working straight from mains, will generate more noise.

Personally, I just took note of the things in my lab that generate noise and whenever I'm measuring something weird, I turn those things on and off to see which one is the culprit. It's difficult to get a noise-free lab, unless it's minimalist and remote, so I found it easier to just learn to work around it.

Yes, I've been turning it off and I've totally removed my USB hub in favour of a bus powered one.  I think I'm likely to stick with that approach as it's actually a good quality light that is easily positionable and spreads wide.  Having a hot bulb at forehead level doesn't appeal

I've been through that myself. One of the issues I observed with USB was that poor quality/unshielded USB cables are radiating the noise generated by my PC's PSU. Took me a while to figure that one out.

It was definitely the hub's power supply as it generated noise even with nothing actually connected.  At least the lamp is only very slightly noisy when it's actually turned on, I don't have to unplug it or anything: for most purposes it's not an issue.  As John says below, and I hadn't realised until he did, it's probably the dimmer but there's nothing I can do about that unfortunately.