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White LEDs for a Brighter World
deepfry writes "CBC radio today featured an interview with Dr. Dave Irvine-Halliday, an engineering professor at the University of Calgary, who's developed a home lighting system for the developing world using a combination of white LEDs, pedal generators and rechargable batteries. This type of "pico-power" can make a huge difference in the lives of villagers in rural areas where being connected to a power grid is not an option and probably never will be. Read about the Light Up the World project and make a donation."
More cleverly hidden racist comments from Slashdot.
Can the editors of slashdot please disclose how many of your staff are minority? I emailed my resume and never got a response. I am also a black female... Coincidence? I think not.
so, is this a way for all those afganistan boys to power their c64's they surf the web with?
"I don't need a compass to tell me which way the wind shines." - Mr. Furious, Mystery Men
I think people will see this as a real promising advance...
:(
...Until patent laws get in the way.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
Forget white LEDs, give me bright blue ones. The power on light for UV Networks web appliance is a bright blue LED. I think I will buy one just for the cool blue LED. I need these blue LEDs on all of my puters!
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
This rugged home lighting system will allow people in some of the poorest and least developed rural communities to light up their homes and raise their quality of living
Remind me how exactly having to ride an exercise bike to generate electricity would raise my quality of living? I'm not in a place without power, but I seriously don't think I'd be buying this (probably expensive) device when a few lanterns would do just fine. (Although I MIGHT be tempted to get the whole hookup just so I could use my computer.)
I wonder if the areas that don't have electricity have broadband??? DOH!
I suppose if you can't get connected to a power grid, you probably are going to have a hard time getting wireless Internet serverce, making this a non-issue. But still, let's not be short-sighted!
--
Repeal me, NOW!!!
Thank you.
"Read about the Light Up the World project and make a donation."
It ain't no joke, I'd like to buy the world a toke...
Some faith in humanity restored. Yes, not of vital importance, but what a cool project.
Some people might be better off without lights or connection to a power grid. People should think twice before trying to invade rural areas with technology.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
Ha! After slashdotting their web server, we probably REALLY owe them some donations.. their ISP bill is going to be sky-high this month...
uh, ok. $1 a piece for a .1 watt bulb. sounds great. Exactly how many would I have to gang to be able to read my newspaper?
Please! Can we have more articles about improved light bulbs today. Light bulbs are rad!
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
Why limit something like this to the developing world? If the developed world used low-power, high-efficiency lighting, we'd dramatically reduce the consumption of energy and non-renewable resources. If these lights are cheap enough for the poorest on the planet to consider using them, there's no doubt that they'd save the industrialized nations amazing amounts of money, as well.
Frankly, I suspect we'd do more for the developing world by adopting this sort of thing for ourselves--which is not to say, of course, that we shouldn't encourage them to skip our wasteful ways in favor of the right way to do things.
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
One way to bring down the cost would be to sell them in the developed world. A finished product, that could screw into a standard light socket, but use 1/100th the power to provide the same light would sell well in the U.S.
Especially with all the noise about power shortages and rolling blackouts.
Selling them in the U.S. and the rest of the developed world would go a long way towards creating enough demand for serious mass production.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Yeah, too bad the article doesn't mention that it takes more power to make a white LED than you would save with fifty 100-watt lightbulbs.
About a year ago, I got a kitsch keychain from a vendor who was trying to sell software to my company. We didn't purchase the software, but I have held onto that keychain.
Let me describe it. It's oval in shape, about 3cm long by about 2cm across and 1 cm thick. Inside the body of the keychain, which is clear vinyl, you can see the mechanism that makes it so neat, which is a small watch-type battery, a very small resistor, and one of the newer white LED's. The clear plastic vinyl is red, so when you squeze the thing, it's light is very slightly pink.
Now, here's the thing that makes me keep this around. This little piece of what I would othewise call 'crap' is brighter than my 'keychain-size' Mag Light! I can easily read by or do computer maintenance with this toy. If I had five or six of them, I could reasonably light a room for however long the batteries lasted.
White LED's are the wave of the future, IMHO. They're cheap in terms of production and electricity cost. I also understand that they're significantly easier on the environment than incandescent bulbs or flourescent tubes. Unless you overload it with current, which I understand is very difficult since many come with tiny regulators in the form of attached IC's, they don't burn out, making replacement costs plummet.
Make my next lightbulb a white LED
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Light to starve by
I'd do something interesting, but my server can't handle a slashdotting.
i don't know about developing countries, but think about how much good it would do to get the overweight sedentary people here in the US off their asses and on a bike. Aside from energy savings, think of the savings from improving health
Jesus, have you seen the nighttime pictures from space?
This planet is already a freakin christmas tree of lights. the only dark spot on the east coast is in the pine barrens of Jersey.
I applaud the intent behind this, trying to bring the third world closer to a western standard of living, but please.
Let's put OUT some lights.
"You worthless post!"
-Shakespeare, 2 Gentlemen of Verona, 1. 1. 147
I thought the page was never going to finish loading..
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
These little lights of mine, I'm gonna let 'em shine, let 'em shine, let 'em ...D'oh!
Yes they are bright, but they make horrible area lighting. the most efficient lighting to date is still the compact flouresent and Cold Cathode flouresent lighting. It has the greates lumens per watt output compared to anything. White led's look bright, but are a concentrated beam, that same beam spread out to a 180Deg will be worthless. There used to be "tests" in home-power magazine that claimed white led's were superior.. but forgot to take into effect that the other lamps also lit up the room instead of a white spot on the bench aimed at the sensor.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Her post did not have a single misspelling.
Not to mention, I need a nice Gandalf wallpaper (well, okay, maybe not "need"...). I want a close-up where he looks pretty stoned, like in most of the movie. I would prefer his pipe to be featured, if at all possible, and no writing (titles, copyright notices, etc). 1024 or larger, please. I know someone reading this has the perfect image for me!
I'm of the opinion that the light bulb filament has been as like a Chain unto Humanity, even as fluorescent bulbery has been a Poison'd Gas which Chokes at Our Throats.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Geesh it reminds me of the thousand points of light
Welcome to the official web site of Light Up The World Foundation.
The goal of LUTW is to be instrumental in providing White Light Emitting Diode home lighting, by both humanitarian and local entrepreneurial means, to one million people in the developing world by 2005 - thus enabling children to study in the evenings.
This web site is intended to introduce you to a groundbreaking initiative instigated by Dr. Dave Irvine-Halliday, professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Calgary, Canada.The primary purpose of this project is to introduce to the developing world a safe, simple, healthy, reliable and affordable form of home lighting, using white light emitting diodes (WLED). This rugged home lighting system will allow people in some of the poorest and least developed rural communities to light up their homes and raise their quality of living. Please explore our web pages to find out more information about the WLED home lighting project and how we are making a difference by assisting Nepali villager's achieve a higher quality of living by their own efforts.
Aug 24, 2002. Join us for the Light Up The World - Rocky Mountain Relay (2 person) at Canmore, Alberta. All race proceeds support LUTW. Click here for entry forms and info.
LUTW Countries: 2000, 2001 and Projected for 2002.
Light Up The World Project Photos: Everest, Nepal, India, Sri Lanka.
Thank you to our generous supportors: Donations List.
Donation Information.
Seconded.
i dont want more light, there's already too much light. it's not really possible to look at the stars without looking through some artificial light anymore :-//
Oops, /. took out my <stops pedaling> that appeared before the ellipses.
I didn't take any courses from this prof, but some of my friends in school did.
What he is doing is kindof neat... He wants to equip poor villages (in places like Nepal) with electric lighting that better utilizes the minimal generating capacity they have.
I know you can get white LEDs as replacements for flashlights that will increase the battery life approximately 20x. For those Petzl headlamps a standard Duracell battery will give you about 6H of light with a standard bulb, but is rated at 100H with a superbright LED. And as far as I know the superbright gives you equivalent illumination - just at higher efficiency.
When I was in Nepal a few years ago, most rural villages would have power (all from hydroelectric) but it was unpredictable and unreliable. Also the generators were small and there were limits on how many bulbs each place could have. Replacing regular bulbs with white leds would save power - and make battery backups realistic.
Thats one way out of the dark.
m
Here's a quote from the Web Site:
I should point out that a single WLED provides sufficient light to easily read a book or to study with. My wife, who wholeheartedly assisted me in Nepal in 1999, has amassed ample field evidence to support this last statement. It is very significant to the developing world that these wee marvels of technology can effectively light an entire kitchen table area using less than one watt of electrical power and there are none of the attendant dreadful pollution and fire dangers associated with the use of kerosene lamps.
Please read more of the web site before commenting. /Don
A long time ago, I read a book about basic electronics, which described how LEDs worked. It said that the frequency of the light(and thus the color) was determined by the distance of one element from the other, but that pulling them too far apart caused it to stop working, limiting LEDs to colors with frequencies lower than green.
IIRC, white light is several frequencies, including blue, which should not be possible. What changed?
Well with these little buggars
maybe we'll be able to save
money at Christmas time when we
all festively decorate our houses
in all their glorious splendor!
Worth some looking into anyway...
"Just Smile and Nod." --Huck
I can see it now: Some third world family of 12. Dad says to the 3rd kid "Okay, your the dumb one so the rest of us can learn. You get to spend the rest of your likfe riding the exercise bike while the rest of us learn to read."
Don't feel bad for the "dumb kid" though, he will go on to win international biking compititions, while the rest of the family trys to compete in the rat race with millions of other people.
Many developing countries are in very sunny locations. Solar panels are really getting cheaper. For example, plastic solar cells that can be "painted" onto clothing are strong enough to power portable radios. I bet they'd be powerful enough to charge up that battery that runs the LEDs.
A very interesting read about solar is From Space to Earth, which discusses the use of and need for solar power in developing countries.
One thing that is clear is that power in rural areas is greatly needed for things like well pumps; powering reading lights is great, but it would be better used for true necessities. (though light becomes necessary when you need to fix that broken well pump...)
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
A friend of mine works at an LED distributor, and they sell a grip of these things...They have to, their spread is a very small angle!
While they're seemingly bright head-on, people pay a premium for getting them up to the same OVERALL output as incandescent, or florescent lights - while it might look cool, and seem futuristic, the price is prohibitively high.
Q: What do you think about American Culture?
A: I think it's a good idea.
(adapted from Gandhi)
That's be a good trade - lower electric bills, probably longer lasting bulbs, and exercise on top of it.
Not only would it help solve energy-problemed areas, it would also improve the health.
Does anybody know if NetBSD has been ported to this yet?
Who's seen Soylent Green? :P
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!
At least they will have cardiovascular fitness.
How many of you have ever seen a white LED light, much less read by one? I saw one in one of those Sharper Image type stores a while back. It was a flashlight that had a light that reminded me of a cross between flourescent and those annoying blue headlights.
I realize they are efficient, but they are just not very pleasant. They might be useful as porchlights, but I wouldn't want to sit in a room with one and read for any length of time. Also, LEDs are probably not made in those countries. Simply giving them things is not going to encourage development (assuming that you think development is a good thing). I think we are better off educating the 3rd world then just giving them things. Educate them in math and language, and then they can solve their own problems, and in a way that will be suited to their culture, without contributing to the growing disatisfaction with the "imperialist" West. If you have to give them lights to educate them, give 'em good old incandescent/battery lamps. Kids won't be encouraged to learn under those annoying white lights.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Think of all the good it could do in the US, land of the fatasses.
Currently, LED lights are fairly directed (ie, they are not as good for filling a room).
So they won't necessarily replace the light bulb yet.
However, they are excellent replacements for flashlights, traffic lights, car lamps -- ie, any kind of directed light.
They are brighter, more efficient, and last longer than regular incandescent or fluorescent bulbs.
They do cost more though, but that might change with economies of scale.
Some links:
EETimes Article: White LEDs to overtake the light bulb, keynoter says
TechWEB Article: LED: The End Of the Light Bulb As We Know It?
"You have the option of insanity. I do not. And that makes me crazy!" - Brian to Angela, My So-Called Life
Home pedal power via bicycle generators was written of in Harry Harrison's Make Room, Make Room (aka Soylent Green). Edward G. Robinson pedaled away throughout the movie" to generate the home power.
They have been using these LED's for traffic lights for some time now. I expect most people have seen them: they are brighter and easier to read from farther away. Not only that, but one of my civil engineering friends told me that the cost to keep them running (which is most of their overall cost) is cut by about 90% by using LED's instead of traditional lights. Not only that, but as has been mentioned before, they don't break unless you apply too much current. That's right... infinite lifetime expectancy. Never break. Ever.
Having lived in a developing country for several years, I can appreciate this groups efforts and the technological advances made here but...
Where I lived (a rural part of Thailand) very few if anyone would have used the generator. Why? Because they can rent car batteries from a business down the road for all their electrical needs (which are very few - a few flourescent lightbulbs and occasionally TV).
In my case, the business was hooked up to the power grid for recharging batteries but I also saw even more remote places where they had a generator (gas? Diesel? Never checked) for the same purpose.
Having participated in harvesting rice, I really doubt any farmer would want to hop on their pedal-powered generator at the end of a day of back-breaking field work to charge up their batteries for a night of bad soap operas.
A friend of mine has a flashlight with 4 o those white LED's and it can compete with my 3*D battery maglight! Since his purchae a couple years ago he hasn't had to change batteries yet. I dunno where he got it but it was very cool.
--tzan
My monitor's dimming again.
I've bought and used these LED's before. You can find them cheap here.
I've built a few things with these and they are impressive. A solar cell, two AA rechargable batteries and one of these lights can be put to use just about anywhere.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
In Kenya, there are several private companies that are selling solar panels to do the same sort of thing, except without all that nasty stationary bike stuff. Just pop the solar cell on the roof of your hut and you're in business. Turns out its not that terribly expensive, even by African standards. Currently you have some options if you're in a rural area in Kenya, and by some, I mean two, that being, taking your car battery to a charging station, or making payments on a solar panel. Its not a tough choice.
I work in the lighting industry with conventional means of producing light (florescent, incandescent, etc) and have done some testing on LEDs. The most important thing to realize is that the light being produced is not a pure "white" light.
Typically the manufacturer will use a blue LED and coat the outside of the lens with a yellow broadband phosphor, which when the blue light is filtered through it, appears white. True white is extremely difficult (and expensive) to produce; it's still years away and it has to do with the ability of the diodes to produce certain wavelengths of light.
As far as efficiency, yes, LEDs are quite effecient at producing light at a given (low) wattage but they are still not as bright as conventional light sources. The rating of an LEDs efficiency is measured in lumens per watt; a bulb with a higher lumen per watt rating is more efficient than that of a lower one. At this point, red LEDs are the most efficient, which is why many applications that use LEDs (exit signs, car turn signals, etc) are red.
Manufacurers claim a 100,000 hour life span of LEDs. What most of them fail to mention is that to acheive this, the power supply that the LEDs are attached to has to be set at a low current. Low current means decreased brightness. If the current is increased past the manufacurers recommended setting, you will get higher brightess but the lifespan will be cut short severely. Not to mention the fact that many LED applications where companies are touting 100,000 hour lifetimes (approximately 10 years) haven't been around that long to confirm or deny it.
LEDs are not going away, however. It's not a question of if they go mainstream, it's when. And I have no problem with that, it's just that from what I have observed, the manufacurers are dispensing half-truths and outright lies about this stuff. People take it for gospel because big companies are developing the technology (GE and HP-funded Agilent come to mind) so they figure it must be true.
Whatever. It's reall not going to make that much difference in the long run. Just want people to know there's more behind it.
The neutrality of this sig is disputed.
they've had LED lighting systems for homes and swimming pools for years now. The pedal generators and rechargable batteries are a new idea. But LED lighting systems have been around. However they are quite expensive.
You get a bed of white LEDs in your basement, and you use fiber optics to bring the ligh to different places in your home. Works really well for swimming pools, and is most often used there, because it doesn't bring electricity near the water.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
My cat's breath smells like cat food.
News flash: cats eat cat food.
Please go away, I do not want this thread to get a bad reputation as a place where trolls hang out.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
a) Apparently you don't have access to common sense either. Criminals prefer dark alleys to well-lit streets. The "data" that you fail to cite is probably inconclusive, since there are a billion variables involved with comparing the crime trends in location A to the crime trends in location B.
b) Where are you getting this stuff? If we didn't have well-lit urban culture, we'd still think that the Earth is a flat disc a few miles in diameter, with a large mechanical sphere surrounding it. That's not exactly what I'd consider an appreciation for the vastness of the Universe.
c) People watching television probably learn more about the vastness of the Universe than you will staring at the night sky.
Stop puking up luddite FUD, please. You're making a mess.
i ride bicycle, generate electricity, charge battery and use it to view TV. i am allowed to watch TV as long as i can generate enough electricity to power it. thereby my watching tv, eating potato chips, drinking beer and excersizing balance out.
but red, yellow and green LEDs have been installed on almost every single stoplight here in sunny san diego. makes sense to me. much less maintenance, brighter, clearer, etc. the only problem is that i wear red sunglasses and they block all green LED light as if there were none at all. so a lot of lights look burnt out to me! :D
R.I.P.
You make the world a whiter, brighter place.
Found this on google, of course
;)
http://www.ccrane.com/120_volt_white_led_bulb.asp
An led array that screws into regular fixtures. A little pricey at US$59.95, but it it never burns out, the your total cost would be 59.95/infinity, or is my math wrong?
Th
My question about LED's is this: Can I use a dimmer? It seems like an LED would have to be either On or Off. Is that the case?
If so, perhaps someone will invent a lightbulb where when only a small amount of current is applied that one or two LEDs come on. As more current is supplied more come on. Possible?
Kind thoughts do not change the world
Great, we're shipping lead/acid batteries to countries that have no infrastructure to handle the cells when they die. Time to rethink the lifecycle impact of the product.
I would use these for my room, does anybody know where we can get them, hook it up!
--JonnyBlog
It occurs to me that this extreme level of efficiency just begs to be hooked up to an array of solar cells, not an exercise cycle.
Solar cells have been underutilised as a source of energy due to the low yield.
This seems like a nice and symbiotic combination of different technologies... "Hey, the solar cells don't give me much electricity, but the white LEDs illuminating the office building don't need all that much anyhow. W00t!"
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
And for all the geeks who like lights.. or something : http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/gadgets/lights.shtm l
Cruise TT
Go buy some now: theLEDLight.com
My biggest problem with these bulbs is finding ones that have a nice, soft light. I don't want my bed room looking like an office. I spend enough time there as it is. Does anyone have experience with how 'pretty' the light from these is?
A speech...
using a combination of white LEDs, pedal generators and rechargable batteries.
Nothing innovative about this, the Professor was using pedal generators to power ALL KINDS OF THINGS while shipwrecked on Gilligan's Island back in the late 60s / early 70s.
I Heart Sorting Networks
I saw this guy present this project a few months ago (as a presentation for Engineers Without Borders) and it is really important work.
One of the biggest problems in third world countries is that taking care of food and water is an all day task. There is no time for learning to read and write during the daylight hours. These lights allow people the opportunity to learn to read and write after the sun has set.
This is a very important task if we hope to help the people in remote areas. The target areas tend to be areas with no electricity, no running water, and very few fascilities at all.
And I have seen the LEDs that he uses light light up a mid-to-large size lecture theatre to the point that I could read a paper in fornt of me, 5 rows away from the source!
-----
The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them. -Einstein
...And would keep many Americans in (better) shape, which means fewer pounds commuting daily, which means less gas burned by American SUVs, which means less pollution! You're right, the benefits just keep on piling up.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
Frankly, I suspect we'd do more for the developing world by adopting this sort of thing for ourselves
A quick Google search turns up The LED Light, and they have a collection of "bulbs" that fit into 120 Volt AC sockets (That would be them things in yer house, at least in the US)
Very expensive though - "36 LED bulb...comparable to a 30 watt incandescent bulb" costs $190.
Another site I've run into in the past is LEDTronics which looks more in line with the geek need for way too much information, and component-level purchasing. I can just see the mod case now...
I know that for many European countries check cashing/currency conversion fees can easily be more than the actual value of a check, and while I'm sure it's much simpler (and cheaper) between the US and Canada I'm also sure that there will be some charges.
So, what's a practical level?
fencepost
just a little off
I for one would be interested in seeing a benchmark between this and the white LED's we're talking about here.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
to reach places like high up in my vaulted ceilings. Also one in my shower since I always cut my fingers on the inside mount. $20 ea would be fine with me for not having to change these bulbs ever again.
Gizmos Gagets For Ninjas
Oh yes, let's be carefull of their culture. Lets see, living in shit, starving, dieing young.
... (Of course, that seems to be European culture today) ... can't change that.
I'm sure they will be oh so happy to learn math and science in the dark instead of having light to read by.
Remember, it was the German culture to kill all the Jews
I have to assume development is a good thing. Starving is the alternative.
Ever notice the people ranting about how the simple (read imporvished) life is so wonderfull never seem to live it?
About 14 years ago I used a galena radio (diode, capacitor and inductance, no batteries) to light up a standar red LED... and it worked!! Although the ligth was very dimm it worked. I added a second galena radio in parallel (as a current source) and it improved the hole result.
I haven't tried it on white LED, which requires more energy, but it might work... and this guy could get rid of the generator and the lead battery, and have free light without any human power source, as long as there are radio stations (or even pulsars! although you need to tune for high frequency) you can get it working!!!
Free enery for all, Thanks TESLA!!!
http://ledmuseum.home.att.net/ledleft.htm Seriously cool site.
Dirt doesn't need luck.
A professor, 'Dr' no less, is required to hook up the world's oldest idea (crank powered radios, magnetos, etc..) to a LED????
This is why Universities are so overrated. I really don't see what a professor at University is doing wasting his time with this penny ante nonsense. Where're the room temperature superconductors? Fusion? Will it take 25 years 'education' before you are qualified to work on something a bit more complex than a LED and a capacitor?
Besides, like so many people point out, white LEDs are far from ideal, this just looks like a publicity stunt.
You want light? Try a portable PC's backlight. Very efficient, bright white light from a thin panel.
A perfect example is Afganistan. As much as some people may not like them, they need the help of the west. Right now, many of them are growing marijuana. If they could get jobs in manufactoring and selling white LEDs, then maybe they would stop growing marijuana.
Okay, I'm being a bit hopeful, but still you can see where I going with the idea.
testing out my trending skills
Im glad to see that the LED market is growing more and more out of the "blinking light on the front panel" industry. With brighter and brighter LEDs being developed, the use for them is growing. I was working with an associate of mine on some industrial lighting application using ultrabright white LED's configured in an array which were going to be used as a walkway light. These things were pretty bright an had pretty low power consumption, at least compared to other lights. The heating issue came up on the power supply designed for them, but off hand I dont remember how high we were running them. There was another projects were still working on using LED arrays that are pretty cool, but I wont get into those. Youd actually be suprised how bright these things can get, we had a LED array based flashlight we made for grins that blinded us, and it was about 3 times as bright as a Mag-Light. I think its fascinating where this stuff is going...
on slashdot a year ago orso,
I remember there was a big light, that consisted of multiple leds (thought about 100-300) that you could program with your pc. It could change color to all the colors you wanted. I believe the casing was black and it costed about $600.
I was searching for this item last week, because I wanted it for my new house, but I couldn't really find it, perhaps someone bookmarked it, or knows a simular light?
Thanks in advance.
White LED's have come a LONG way. They now actually sell several different WLED's that have varying tempreture ratings to them. From soft white to the very blueish light you mention.
... so what. Eventually someone WILL build a plant there when they realize the tremendous demand that has been created. Then as people aren't running around collecting fire wood, or sitting around in the dark they can actually then BE educated by reading etc.
As for the WLED's not being produced in that country
"Kids won't be encourged to learn under those annoying white light" Um how do you know. Maybe it is only annoying to "us" because we are used to using innefficient incandescent bulbs. And you would rather us give them those rather than LED's? So instead of giving them one of our imperialist invenetions that is usable with their meager power production capacity you would rather us give them one that sucks every available bit of juice they have. Riiiiight that is good thinking.
If you can't be good, be good at it!
This was tried back in the 70's. Didn't work too well, but it made a great Christmas gift!
thelikesofwhich.com
You're right on.
.1 watt bulb of some new technology giving the same light output as a 100 watt incandescent tungsten filament bulb.
With as long as we've had "100 watt" and "60 watt" lightbulbs, people have gotten it into their heads that the wattage rating is a measure of the light output.
I would have to work out the physics to see if it's possible, but I don't immediately see any barrier to a
If you had read the article, you would know that the main thrust of this initiative is to allow people in developing to study for more hours in the day -- precisely what is needed for the education you suggest.
For spot lighting, a white LED is 100 times as efficient as an incandescent light. Have you ever used a mechanically-powered torch? Quite a bit of effort is required to produce a useful beam (which is even then hard to keep constant).
I would suggest that LEDs are not "annoying" to children who may never have seen a lightbulb in their life, or not spent significant time under one.
Children in developing countries are quite enthusiastic about the learning thing, unlike many Western societies where school is something dreaded, and they wouldn't dare touch an encyclopaedia (or even a book!) at home.
Yup the 1000 watt grow leds are coming soon. A factory in Afghanistan make a lot of sense. Then the Afghanis's can produce even more of the finest hash in the world ... YAY !!!
Smoke
Wouldn't it be really neat to have computer room floor tiles each with a tight grid of white LEDs under a clear plastic covering? Imagine a computer room with these floor tiles and a single IBM server standing in the middle...
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
I'm not knocking the benefits to humanity from an invention like this, but the inventor of High-Intensity LEDs said back in December that the Blue LED with an inexpensive phosphorent coating (thereby changing the blue light to white in the naked eye) is vastly superior to the White LEDs in efficiency and cost.
Inventor of the high-intensity white, blue and green LEDs, Shuji Nakamura of UC Santa Barbara, in a keynote address last Dec 11th at the International Electron Devices Meeting, put forth the idea that blue LEDs are vastly superior in efficiency and cost to the common white LED. Blue and green high-intensity LEDs are based on indium gallium nitride, [providing] a higher output per watt than the common high-intensity white LED. Nakamura claims that it is a industry wide freeze on high-intensity blue LEDs that prevents the world from realizing their inherit benefits to mankind. Blue LEDs, he claims, are more efficient than incandescent lights by a factor of ten, and last more than a hundred times longer. Compare that to the white LEDs which in addition to costing more to produce, are less efficient than the blue lights by 20%, and last a mere 86% as long.
Anyone owning a modded Nokia cellphone could have told you that white high-intensity LEDs are old news. They should have used the blue LEDs with the white phosphor coating. There's really no difference.
- SystemFork
Slogan-free since April! We pass the savings on to you!
Have you ever taken a look up at the stars on a night with no clouds and just wondered? Odds are no if you live in any major city. Street lamps and house lights are scattered back and only a few stars are visible. If you want confirmation that there are actually more stars, take a trip to Yosemite or some other less-lit area and hike about 25 miles into it.
;>)
It is really nice.
I know this is a smiggin of topic but I propose a national lights out day (now if only we wern't all greedy thieves
I think there's satelight photos ( here's a small one) somewhere on nasa of light visible from space, there's a lot of it, especially on the coast cities.
Oh yeah, and Yosemite is nice, but LOT of airplanes fly right over it, kind of annoying/distracting.
There are such things as near-UV LEDs though! A recent Scientific American article wrote about how white LEDs are really near-UV LEDs with a phosphorous coating that flouresces white, so a UV LED should actually be cheaper...
25 Small Permanent Magnet DC motors to be used as generators - at around 1000 rpm the generator should be capable of supplying 7.5 Volts and 1Amp to at least two batteries being charged in parallel: $50 each - total $1250
Who can pedal at 1000 RPM?
Submitted a story with links etc a couple weeks ago about the Kinetic flashlight that you shake back and forth for thirty seconds and it gives you 1/2 hour of bright white LED light....
But NOOOOOO, it didn't benifit humanity, Put pedals on it and it becomes the saviour of the night impaired masses....
NO LINK FOR YOU!
RB
If you want to read up on the LEDs, good tech specs can be found on Nichia Corporation's English homepage. They have a lot of good tech specs on their LEDs and flourescent paints and objects.
It's a very good site.
They have at least a couple of offices in the United States.
fifth sigma, inc.
I don't post often but when I read the headline of this topic, I wanted to add my two cents. After reading the article and everyone's posts (most posts being irreverent or poop-joke related) I have finished another chapter on my book of human ignorance.
As U.S. citizens, we live in a wasteful society of throw-away everything and unlimited (we think) natural resources. When you go home tonight, make a note of how many lights you have on in your house. If you live alone, this will be a good test to see how much energy you use, if you have family members, roommates, etc you can also monitor the total energy consumption in your house. OK, so you got five lights on and you are the only one home. Now add the energy used to power your fridge, microwave, water heater, stereo, dishwasher, TV, computer(s), aquarium, Nintendo, space heater, furnace, the list goes on. Are all these items 100% necessary? of course, this America and we demand convenience 24/7.
I am no better than you, I waste energy and it bugs me to go outside and watch the power meter spinning like a twirling dervish when I got the guys over for band practice. But I am aware of what I use and I do my best to conserve energy. I live in the NW US and we have lots of hydro-electric power plants on the Columbia, I am not a save-the-salmon radical but I don't want to see all the changes we make on the environment in the name of power generation to go waste on every single light in my house. If there is a new technology to limit energy use, I am all for it. In fact I have a few solar panels and few devices (lights & a TV) that I can use with my "free" power. In our lifetime, home-based power plants (natural gas-hydrogen based fuel cells, PV, wind power, etc) will become popular and necessary in many highly populated areas. Third world countries need this technology now since its price is low and their living conditions are so medieval compared to ours that any change for them is better than nothing. Our turn is coming soon.
My fifteen minutes are up. Here are some other links on energy-related websites/products.
Home Power Magazine
Jade Mountain Alternative Energy Devices
My PC has plenty of red and green LEDs, so why both with this phosphorus addition to try to make it white? Doesn't blue+red+green = white?
Just stick 50 of each together in interleaved and let them blend to white..
What I dont really get either is why these lights for sale at theledlight.com cost so much? Is the cost for brightness or what? It seems that standard LEDs used in PC cases and other blinky status lights on almost anything electronical cost a lot less.
Morphing Software
Seems like the biggest problem is that a bulb that provides light equivalent to a 30 watt incandescent is $190!! Thats a little steep when you can get compact flourescents for around $8.
After reading the information at the groups website, they state that it costs about $173 per household to have one of these damn LED lights. What kind of idiot came up with this? Isn't $173 like 3 years salary for a family in Nepal? My god! Don't they have candles over there? Much cheaper and they work just as well or better. And why just Nepal? For the $17000 they are raising, they should buy candles and ship them all over the world.
Thinkgeek is great, but why not buy directly from the family that makes these things: http://www.photonlight.com
I've owned two Photon Lights for 2 years now... carry it with me every day. Probably use it once evevery two weeks, and man does it come in handy. Nice small profile, about as bulky as a typical housekey.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
I'm glad Redmond, Washington has village elders. Perhaps a ritual sacrifice may drive away the Sherman Act demons: start with Gates and Ballmer!
I can't be the only one who has one, since everybody else I meet on the trail raves about them:
e ?id=LAMP&r ub=sport
The Petzl Tikka -- $40 'white' LED headlamp; the best innovation in outdoors equipment in decades:
http://www.petzl.com/petzl/publicFamill
After hunting around for a reasonably-priced reading spotlight to mount in the minivan for my kids to read after dark, I couldn't find anything that was (1) bright and clear at low wattage (2) priced under $100US (3) small enough to hide in the trimwork. Then putzing around Radio Shack one day, I saw the rack of white LEDs, and decided to give them a whirl.
I bought 6 WLEDs for about $30, a couple 100-ohm resistors and 1K trimmer pots for current limiting and dimming, and went home. Half an hour and a few solder joints later, I had mounted the 6 LEDs shining thru holes in my overhead panel, pointed at my steering wheel area (hey, first I helped MYSELF, not the kids). I found that I could run three LEDs, with a voltage drop of about 3.5V each, in series with the fixed 100 ohm resistor and a trimmer pot. So two sets in parallel worked well. I couldn't wait until nighttime.
After dark, out to the van I went. Switch on - WOW.
First impression - the color was all wrong. Until I realized that I'm so used to yellow light that pure white was almost distracting. But the light was BRIGHT and very crisp. From about 18 inches from LEDs to reading material, with only 6 LEDs, I had more light than with the original dome light 20 inches away, and the color was perfect - I could enjoy reading material with photos, without straining to see the colors. The pool of light was about 15 inches across. The LEDs I used are rated at 30deg beam spread (to the point of half brightness) so that seemed about right for six lights pointed a bit apart from each other. Best of all, unlike a dome lamp, there was NO spillover light to the rest of the interior - with the light on I could still easily see out the front to drive. Don't try that for long with a glaring dome lamp.
One other thing was worth noting - there were faint yellow/blue bands in the pool of light, noticable only when looking at a large mostly blank page. This is probably due to the blue LED/yellow phosphor combination used to make white light.
The biggest problem was cost. At Radio Shack prices of $4.99 each, I couldn't affort enough LEDs to do the other five seating locations. But it was still far cheaper than a quality aircraft-style reading lamp, and just as bright. If I wanted more brightness, I can easily add more LEDs.
Check out this link - http://www.theledlight.com - for some really cool ideas, parts, kits, assembled lamps, all based on LED technology. Really cool, and a LOT cheaper for the bare LEDs than Radio Shack. About $2.50 or less each.
Soon I'm going to order some bulk WLEDs from them - and light up the rest of the vehicle interior.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
You can do that, but:
1. Somebody's already done that before. R+G+B LEDs are an older technology. They are more complicated to produce than the traditional blue+phosphorous white LEDs and thus cost more.
2. White LEDs produce a nice wide spectrum. R+G+B LEDs produce narrow peaks of output. This makes them inferior for illuminating objects and having said objects look right. If the object reflects a narrow band of bluish green light, a light source containing blue and green will result in a dark-looking object. Also, if you've ever worn glasses the prism effect of R+G+B is noticeable (and annoying).
A variable resistor is all you'd need to make a dimmer switch.
When a resistor drops the voltage, it does so by using turning current into heat. The entire purpose of using LEDs in this project is to make high-efficiency lighting to run off of batteries charged by people-powered generators. Using series resistance to reduce brightness is no better than putting a smoked lens in front of the LED array.
Pika power. Sounds like something out of Pokemon...
Hello my name is Junis and I am posting this on my Commodore 64 powered by a little bicyle outside. My father is pedalling so I can post to slashdot... He says I will have to pedal when he gets on to search for por... hmmm... world news.
deepfry, the "developing world" doesn't need LEDs; they need food, a place to live without a war every ten minutes, and to have the West stop robbing them whenever they get a chance. Shit if it was LEDs they needed... we could have stopped all of the poverty, hunger and premature death ages ago.
It seems like a low energy light like this would be a natural for use as a PDA backlight (Anyone know if they are doing this already?)
This proved to be one of the more painful web searches I've done in a while!
Here they are:
Color Kinetics
It looks like they've further developed their spotlight products since that original Slashdot article.
In Tuesday's (May 7, 2002) Wall Street Journal, page B1 there is a photograph of GE Global Research Senior VP Scott Donnelly holding a prototype for the high-intensity LED being developed at GE's research labs. It appears to be fairly bright, and about an inch square. He's also holding a replica of the original Edison light bulb, for comparison. neither one appears to be plugged into any sort of power, and naturally, the edison bulb is not lit. Not so for the LED, which appears in the photograph to be white hot. IMHO a bunch of these would provide a decent light. This is the first time I have seen a LED compared to the light bulb as a light source. No technical details, yet.
Rapidweather's Linux Screenshots.
And it would only cost $4200 to buy those 100 LED bulbs - meaning that it would take over 5 years to pay for them, going by your numbers. And who the hell uses 25w bulbs anyways, never mind 100 of them?
Check out http://www.arcflashlight.com
The Arc AAA is a great little light that is very rugged, waterproof, runs off a single AAA battery with good longevity (using a step-up voltage regulator) and *very* bright. I have a couple of these - been carrying one on my keyring for about 6 months and its never failed me. White LEDs are great..
What stars???
usa at night
There are already groups for keeping the night dark.
Ha!! Up yours, vi! Eat me, emacs! I've got PICO-POWER!
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
The energy saved moving around fewer actual fat pounds is only a secondary effect. The main effect is this: If you don't have an enormous fat ass, you're less likely to feel that you need a 5774 pound vehicle to accomodate your girth.
Granted, I don't know a whole lot about the amount of electricity generated by the average consumer-grade solar panel, but it would seem that if our energy requirements were significantly lowered by using WLEDs for lighting, alternative energy sources like solar and wind would be far more practical.
I do not work in either field:
"The most important thing to realize is that the light being produced is not a pure "white" light"
While very true of all but the most expensive of the first and in some cases second generation LEDs. You can now buy white LEDs of varing degrees of whiteness (temperature). Ranging from yellowish (similiar to incandescent) to the traditional blueish. With the colder (blue) colours tending to be brighter.
"As far as efficiency, yes, LEDs are quite effecient at producing light at a given (low) wattage but they are still not as bright as conventional light sources. The rating of an LEDs efficiency is measured in lumens per watt; a bulb with a higher lumen per watt rating is more efficient than that of a lower one. At this point, red LEDs are the most efficient, which is why many applications that use LEDs (exit signs, car turn signals, etc) are red."
lumens always favours non-directional light sources. Strangely I have never seen a LED measured in lumens per watt. Rather they use candelas (spelling?), which is typically the measurement used to compare dissimiliar lighting methods. I have no data to suggest that one is better then the other so I will not comment. I was under the impression the lumens also counted more infra-red then candelas, but I don't remember.
While it is true the red LEDs tend to be rated at higher candelas then say blue LEDs but the human eye is not very sensitive to red light, it is however more sensitive to green light. This is why a green LED will appear brighter then higher rated red LED. It is also why blueish white appears brighter the yellowish white. While we are on this point, the uses of the red LEDs that you mentioned all use red LEDs because they want a red colour not because they are the brightest. I've never seen red car turn indicators, unless you mean the dashboard lights, in which case all the ones that I've seen are green, red indicators danger, not the best thing for notification lights)
"Manufacurers claim a 100,000 hour life span of LEDs. What most of them fail to mention is that to acheive this, the power supply that the LEDs are attached to has to be set at a low current. Low current means decreased brightness. If the current is increased past the manufacurers recommended setting, you will get higher brightess but the lifespan will be cut short severely. Not to mention the fact that many LED applications where companies are touting 100,000 hour lifetimes (approximately 10 years) haven't been around that long to confirm or deny it."
Where do you start with this, um , how about, I bet none of your companies products have tested their BTBF rates this way either. I'll just point out that companies do not test products at normal conditions over the quoted MTBF rates. Rather the test the products above capacity or using accelerated ageing technics then calculate the estimated life time. And don't try and use the "but light bulbs have been around for years, but LEDs haven't" excuse. This is crap, each light bulb design is different, they have to test the MTBF for each new design. They use accelerated testing procedures and previous design knowledge to estimate the MTBF. Same with LEDs except they use experience with similiar semiconductor substances, that have certainly been around for 10+ years. You should be glad that they don't claim greater, as the lifetime of LEDs tend to be more dependant on the rate of the clear plastic decaying.
"LEDs are not going away, however. It's not a question of if they go mainstream, it's when. And I have no problem with that, it's just that from what I have observed, the manufacurers are dispensing half-truths and outright lies about this stuff"
At worst I would say they were exaggerating current products, and even then slightly. And possibly even talking about future uses or possibilities. Pretty much every company does that.
"People take it for gospel because big companies are developing the technology (GE and HP-funded Agilent come to mind) so they figure it must be true."
I thought most people shrugged off the claims of big companies. They get excited when they buy a LED based flashlight, etc then discover that it looks really bright for its size, it lasts longer on the same batteries. Takes more punishment, and doesn't get progressively dimmer as the batteries run down to the same extent as incandescents. Then they realise the possibilities, _then_ they get excited.
Whatever. Just wanted people to know about misinformation spread by companies trying to protect their bottom line, rather then adapt.
Wouldn't a LED/Flywheel combo work better? That combo would seem to be longer lasting and better for the environment. It might cost more up front, but it would seem to allow this org. to not have re-supply burnt out rechargeable batteries to these homes in a few years...
:)
Of course, I'm not sure if they even have small, portable, semi-low cost flywheel devices available yet...but other than that, it's a good idea!
Here's a link to a review of "the brighest LED on earth." http://www.bit-tech.net/review/82/ I built a flashlight with a red/orange model, a 1 watt resistor, and 4 D-Cells. It is extremely painful to look at directly. (If you decide do something with one of these and don't have an EE, note: you need a resistor in line with it or you will fry the $15 LED. If you can't figure out a correct resistor value, find someone who knows how to do it.)
I've built many lights with white LEDs (lots of light for a small form factor) but the thing that bugs me is that they cost an absolute fortune in comparison with red/green/yellow lights. Anyone any idea why?
Insert
For those of you keeping score of the apples and the oranges at home:
Power = Voltage * Current
40W at 120v = 333mA.
So if a 40W bulb puts roughly the same light as a 20mA LED (at 120v-AC - ddzzzzt! power limiting resistors are for wimps!), the LED is 16.6 times more efficent, or put another way, 40W worth of LEDs gives you the equivalent of a 666W bulb. Light up your friggin neighborhood, and still be able to touch the bulb for a few seconds without a bad burn!
Unfortunately, the LED array would be evil and revert back to a red hue.
Personally, I doubt a single LED puts out the same
[neglecting root mean squares and other stuff, but it's pretty good!]
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
They claim the light lasts for 100,000 hours. And an ordinary bulb lasts, what, 600 hours? Do you think the price is so high because they are supposed to be comparable in price to a regular bulb?
If you put an alternator on a normal bicycle (I don't know too much about generators, but this should work the same on anything that rotates) You could charge a portable battery that could power your lights, or anything else. Transportation plus (almost) free power. I don't believe the extra effort to move the magnets would be significant. If it is, anyone know how much?
The look on the kids' faces as they're being told that they can now look forward to working the swing shift every other week, now that there is enough light for 24x7 operations.
On the positive side these lights burn 5-10 times longer on the same amount of batteries and the bulbs last forever. On the negative side, these systems are three times more expensive than their incandescent batteries, but pay for themselves in battery savings in couple weeks of constant use. Also in the minus column is the beam quality of the light- not as focused as incandescent. I'd be hesitant to use it as a night bike light source or in a snowstorm for that reason.
Conclusion: an execellent backup source (you should have three light systems for climbing), but not quite ready to replace incandescent fully.
The light pollution in the US is horrid. Why would we want to ship that plague elsewhere?
light means that people can do things when it's dark out. Light makes simple tasks possible which might not be in the dark. Light makes reading possible -- an LED lamp won't teach people to read, but without light to read by, literacy doesn't mean as much.
:)
But you're a troll anyhow, so eh, why go on?
The D1 series (at least the latest ones) have white LED backlights. I wish the CP990s did too, because I can sure tell the difference in battery life with monitor on vs. off ;)
;))
I figure in 3 years, it will be the industry norm, which is great. (Especially since then 18MP or more could be the norm, too!
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I did a little digging triggered by a reply about the efficiency of various lights in lumens-per-watt. Not believing what I read, I dug a little on the web and found a decent exploration of the problem at Don Klipstein's website titled Why LEDs can be 10 times as efficient as incandescents in some applications but not in general home lighting! I got there after reading an article on custom boat cabin lighting with LEDs at Noemi Ybarra's site which includes an outline of the physics behind the units (i.e. 1 lumen is (4pi steradiansx1candella) only if the light source is uniformly spherical, which LED's are not, so the big "mcd" ratings don't correlate well to really big "lumen" ratings.)
--- Jason Olshefsky
Karma: Poser (mostly affected by adding this line long after everyone else did)
In the USA red and amber are acceptable colors for turn signals. Red is the more popular color (even though I think amber is better suited since red is used for the break lights).
The link here says single firefly is 1/40 of a candle. A few hundred of these could help you for the evening.
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/insect s/ beetles/Fireflyprintout.shtml
Coward, I'm not trolling. I just don't like the fact that people pan-off all of these ideas for helping the "developing world" with what amounts to trinkets. Sure a windup radio would help people listen to the radio where there is no access to electricity. Sure, fine, it works. LEDs, great. But this isn't going to solve the problems that not only have put these people into this situations but also keeps them there, like war, like poverty, like the West sucking them dry.
Who the hell cares about LEDs when you don't know where your next meal is going to come from or in constant fear that the local warlord, backed by covertly funded arms, is going to drag your husband out and kill him for standing up to an oil company.
It is too easy to say, "oh ya LEDs are great and are going to help these poor souls". What will help these poor souls is much harder and more involved. If you think otherwise I will have to resign you to being perverted. You could then troll the "Poor people with trinket" sites.