Slashdot Mirror
Apartment Lit Solely by LEDs
(eternal_software) writes "A company called Vos Solutions created what they call 'a blueprint for future living' named The Vos Pad. The Vos Pad is the world's first apartment solely lit by LEDs. There are some images of the place up on their website."
I looked at this and said cool... My wife looked at it and said YUCK!!!
Just goes to show, Not for everybody.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
I'm sure there are tons of slashdotters whose apartments are already soley lit by LEDs.
Cthulhu Saves.
A link to a page full of images on slashdot... This website will die.
Please use this:
Google cache for the pictures
And this:
Google cache for the website
So, its funny but iTunes spun up Nightclubbing by Iggy Pop as soon as I clicked on the link to the sight, because that is exactly what this looks like to me. If I were single and 18-23 again perhaps I might think this was cool, but come on now. I was really hoping that by clicking on the link I was going to see real LED lights (perhaps spectrally tuned to the wavelength of sunlight) that could really light a house. I don't think we are that far away from other applications like automobile headlights and real replacement sources for household lighting, but this is not quite there. This to me is more like mood lighting or decorative lighting rather than household lighting.
Also, it appears that the apartment is not lit entirely by LEDs as ACDC lighting systems are providing cold cathode lighting as well.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Already have one, sorry.
looks like one big flouresecent headache to me
If I turn off my monitors, my apartment is also lit solely by LEDs.
...ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
There are some images of the place up on their website.
I think that should be "there were some images..."
Anyone got a mirror setup?
Their server isn't lit by all LEDs, cause this site is slashdotted!
Must have used up all the power on the LEDs, now their webserver is down.
OH GAWD make it stop..... I would turn insane after living in a place like that, with hardly any direct light, and everything purple or green. Did they do that on purpose? I know even the white LEDs are a little thin in their output spectrum, but damn, they aren't purple!
Hint to lighting designers: the human body has evolved over millions of years to expect sunlight. Lighting should either look like direct or diffused sunlight.
Perhaps it's just that my interior decorating tastes aren't up to date :-)
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
After 7 posts?
Any ideas on why led lights for the home are not more widely available? The technology is not new.
The site reports that that led lights are up to 10,000% longer lasting and can produce up to 10 times more light than incandescent bulbs.
The site also states that led's use less power and are less expensive.
I'm laughing at clouds.
What does it cost to have this done? What are the monthly saving each month?
I can't imagine placing a LCD TV above the stove is a good idea. Not only would heat from the stove damage it, but what about oil splatter from cooking?
-B
This "electric light" thing will never catch on.
/lights a candle.
...compared to incandescant or fluorescant bulbs. i like to use full wavelength bulbs in my house. i wonder if it is possible to get that sort of thing. or if you notice the led flicker...
Company just released their second product: First NOC lit by flaming server. Footage at 11...
Will you guyz refrain just for ONCE slashdotting a server ? ANY MIRRORS PLEASE???
Roses are red, violets are blue, most poems rhyme, but this one doesn't...
Compact Flouresent is much higher in efficiency per watt of electricity used.
plus it's a bitch to find a LED area lamp.
LED's are ok for small point task lighting, they completely suck at area lighting that is typically used in a home in both electricity used and lumens of light output.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The photos make it look like an FPS game. Do you need a geforce 4 to live there??
here's a cookie.
News for the artistic, stuff that doesn't matter to geeks.
Personally, I'd much rather be hearing more info about Mars and the like. *sigh* Oh well.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
...is the traffic light on their router. Slashdot strikes again!
Did anybody else notive the horrible spot for that LCD tv in the kitchen? Or am I the only one who gets the dirt on the wall that high when I cook?
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
we can give 'em another led too light there place up... teh activity light on there routr
kekekekeke
There, I did the shitty "we Slashdotted their site" joke already, so don't post another! Again!
God, I hate those posts.
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
How many LED's does it take to produce the same output as a 100W lamp?
/.'ers does it take to change an LED?
Is it really a saving?
tis very cool tho...
How many
This sig is in Spanish when you're not looking....
It all seems pretty dark to me on the pictures - are LEDs powerful enough to provide more than a romantic-candle-light-dinner light?
When this was posted on Fark yesterday, several people sent me the link... and I couldn't figure out why. I kept reading the page, thinking I was skipping over something that stated something newsworthy or truly interesting about the "Vospad" ... like how this is the inside of George W's Texas ranch or how some new, amazing type of LED is at work here... but nothing was to be found. A house lit by LEDs... looks cheap and tacky to me. So, I asked the people who sent me the link why they sent it to me.... same answer "cuz it's cool." No, sorry, it's really not.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
The site is /.'ed so I can't be sure it's the same but there was an article throughout the newsrags (NYTimes, LA Times, etc) this past week on a guy who lit his entire apartment soley by LEDs. The hardware cost him $50K. Too much really. To spend that kind of dough, there's gotta be some additional win. But you'll get a lot farther with a woman, for example, by spending that same amount on a nice car you pick her up in and a few nice dinners than on unfamiliar lighting she finds intimidating.
Off topic, but I gave a bunch of these really cool LED flashlights for Christmas: http://www.techass.com The Elite is really nice and very bright.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
I think LED's are great, but when you have tons of them bunched together, it hurts my eyes. And these pictures definitely hurt my eyes. Anyone else feel this way?
It's a good concept, but LED's don't output enough light to live comfortably. Maybe it'd be cool to flip a switch and have your apartment be purple...but that as the only option? Doesn't work for me. The main benefit I see is that LEDs use a ton less power than conventional lighting. Unfortunately, they don't offer the brightness or color of good ole' conventional light bulbs.
...the lights on their router are surely blinking like mad! Hopefully it won't catch fire, which is certainly a more dangerous (albeit more aesthetically pleasing) method of lighting. :-)
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
Is that your first gratuitous karma suicide, as well? :)
I think that having that many lights strobing would have a great effect, when I invite the door to door Mormons in and convince them I gave them LSD.
Otherwise - I'd like to see a little more white light; I'm not Prince, so I don't need that much purple.
Reminds me of the Seinfeld where Jerry has trouble sleeping because of the red glow of the neon sign from the Kenny Roger's Chicken across the street.
Your colour vision would go all out of whack as you move from room to room with the different colour schemes never mind what will happen when you go outside for some sunlight (that rat fur hat might even look good).
Rapidly approaching the Zener knee...
Is it that VOS PAD bought a 10-user license or is it the case that IIS sucks. Or both.
a slashdotting joke!
too funny!
Why are all the pictures taken during the day? What does it look like at night?
You sir are an asshole. We all have better things to do then look at your cheesey scatalogical foolishness.
"Would you, could you, with a goat?" Dr Seuss
NYTimes had an article about this company on thursday here is the
Google link.
Unless you enjoy goatse and beyond, don't bother clicking on the above link. If I were using IE I would be annoyed, but Firebird puts an end to it rather fast.
...look like a 70's porno movie?
Apartment Lit Solely by Burning Webserver
So the question is when will prices really come down? Isn't the big problem making blue LEDs [cheaply]? When will the masses wake up and upgrade?
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
"Lit by LEDs, inhabited by virgins."
The coolest voice ever.
I don't know about anybody else, but that looks pretty nice to me. I mean, if it were any color but purple...
Anyhow, with this you could create even lighting throughout a room without using track lights, or lamps studding every surface. Though many use lamps for decoration purposes, I dont really have enough space for my equipment as it is. Computers, Fish tanks, Cameras and supplies, Guitar/amp, books, stereo+record/cds... Its all in a fairly small area, cramping my style, as it were.
In addition, you could probably get a light that is colored to better suit your decor than might be availiable with lightbulbs, not to mention to possible power saving bonus and decrease in heat output over Standard Lightbulbs. I won't even discuss the evils of flourescent lights.
All in all it seems like an interesting use of LED lighting which might actually be viable. [trekkie]and I can pretend I'm on the Starship Enterprise![/trekkie]
...and it all goes dark.
Hey! Plug that thing the other way! Yes, the other way! That are frigging DIODES!
At the moment they happen to be the LEDs on there router!
...and that nice looking plasma screen TV, that aparment would be cool to live in. At least, it would be for the first few days, and then the wierd lighting colors and geometries would send you into a seizure...
I was expecting something showcasing technology like the 5 watt Luxeon Star LEDs, instead, it just looks like Lucky the Leprechaun shat all over the place.
Despite the bad example (and color scheme, ugh.) this site shows, LEDs really are coming into their own for uses in lighting and will be a very interesting technology to watch in the coming years. The LED Museum has a great listing and reviews of LED based lighting products, from flashlights to Xmas lights.
I do believe LEDs can be effectively used for lighting. I was given a 1 watt Luxeon Star-based flashlight this Christmas and after using it in instead of an incandescent flashlight, I have to say I am very impressed. The Luxeon puts out a pure white light (very similar to HID headlights) which makes objects being illuminated appear more clearly and it projects an even beam with no dark shadowy spots. If for nothing else, this article should be a reason to check out what's available in LED lighting - you might be pleasantly surprised.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Wow, I never thought I'd be taken in by a goatse troll, but you got me.
This is truly one of the finest trolls I've ever seen.
*tear*
*naarrrf*
> The Vos Pad is the world's first apartment solely lit by LEDs
No natural lighting at all? Sounds grim. Wanting to get away from Windows is one thing, but this is a bit extreme.
I wonder if my box will survive, but anyway, here's what I captured.
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
read metafilter.com, see /. news the day before!
Critics be damned, I like it. I used to light my apartment with thousands of white christmas lights on the ceiling. Made for some relaxing "soft" lighting, but this really takes the cake.
:-(
Plays hell on CRT monitor screens though
I used to have to tip my monitors downward to keep the little reflections off.
do() || do_not();
Some blinking LEDs are all that are left of their web server.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
the natural high
The SSL/TLS-aware Apache webserver was
successfully installed on this website."
The apartment is now also lit by the flames pouring out of the server case...
Wah!
mirror
mirror here
it'll be up until it's abused my cable connection long enough.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
Their modem's LEDs are probably lighting up the whole server room now!
I think living in that apartment would give me eye strain. There really isn't enough light in the right places and one of the effects of low light is that you can't see colors. Check the lack of color on the flowers and the couch. There isn't enough light to read. If you put people in this apartment I suspect they would look grey and zombie-like. "It ain't pretty, it just looks that way."
All the YOU FAIL IT are belong to you.
Google is slow now.....
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
The article noted that the apartment's lighting system cost an estimated $50,000. That probably accounts for the lack of popularity of LEDs for home lighting.
An alternative to LEDs are Organic LEDs, a much cheaper, plastic-based technology. Unfortunately, they are not yet ready for prime time.
Now heres what I think would be cool. Line all of the walls and ceilings with millions of RGB tricolor LED's Then hook it up to various computer(s) / TV(s). That would kick ass.
Screw Ambient Lighting, I want a 50ft monitor on all the walls. he he he.
I can imagine playing some music with the winamp visualization running on all of the walls. That would be "psychadelic" (sp?)
all LED lighting....must bee inexpensive to power those I bet.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Looks like there's no books in the home of the future.
That's unfortunate.
--saint
Are the apartment walls painted in frightening pastels, or are the leds coloured? This demo room shows that you cant beat natural lighting for comfortable and relaxing atmospheres.
Do you need a website upgrade?
if you have a link to a halogen lcd backlight, please post...
(meaning: there arent any)
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
As disgusting as it gets.. even with cool tech behind it.
http://freecache.org/http://www.thevospad.com/
All they needed were one or two 5 watt white leds per room. 1 watts only cost a few bucks now a days, 5 watts are more but still reasonable.
And, btw, a completly LED lit apartment *isn't* new.
Lumileds makes 1W and 5W's.
My apartment is lit solely by Electro-Luminescent panels...
I mean, Palm pilot.
Yes, it looks kewl from a distance, but I'd think it'd be a nightmare to actually live in. All colours will look wrong, and if you pay attention it's all actually fairly dim.
Old brute force halogen lights are really pretty hard to beat if you want natural lighting. Insanely hot tungsten, almost like the surface of the sun, oooh baby.
While the article may say that this is just a simple LED apartment, this is actually the new version of "The House of Tomorrow" at Disneyworld.
Well I suppose the room took on a more warm cheery glow as the webserver melted into molten slag from a good slashdotting.
Just goes to show, Not for everybody.
I got one of those little Cateye night riding lights with three high intensity LEDs. It will run 15 hours (they claim) on 3 AAA cells. That's pretty impressive. I expect at some time we will light indoors with LED's and save a lot of cash doing so. The only problem I've seen with LED's off house current is the 60Hz flicker (LED Christmas lights)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
My question is, why isn't there any overhead lighting?
And who places their bed right smack dead center in their bedroom?
Once again, designers make a laughing stock out of themselves by refusing to use common sense. As a result, their "prototype" has obviously never been lived in for even a few hours. Three glaring points:
- LCD TV. Above the stove. So it can catch the oil crackling in the pan, the smell when something gets burned, as has occasionally been known to happen and the condensation when cooking something in boiling water. Yeah, right! No way anyone's going to hang an expensive LCD there.
- The bed. In the middle of an open square, so it takes maximum space. This is a bit so-so as they might have thought of a couple. The whole room gives off a rich-bachelor feeling to me, though. Most bachelors I know have the bed pushed up against one wall to conserve space.
- The sinks in the bathroom. They're round bowls with no shelf space in sight. Where do you put toothbrush, toothpaste, hair gel, combs, shaver, soap? Well, I'm sure the tooth fairy will be ready to hold them for a while.
As you can see, I don't think that what is shown in the pictures has anything to do with an apartment, which is made up of connected rooms where and this is important! people need to live, and need to want to live.Divide et impera!
... they develop more colors for LED.
Seriously, LEDs are the future of lighting. Their lifespan is already much better than conventional incandescent. They are also approaching the efficiency of florescent lights. I think we will see wide-scale adoption in the next few years. I bet a popular solution will be LED "bulbs" that screw into regular light bulb sockets. That way the general public won't have to do a complete fork-lift upgrade of all their lamps, etc.
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
Check the phone number for their PR contact - it's central London number (England, not anywhere else)
"There are some images of the place up on their website"
:P
Shouldn't that be "There were some images of the place up on their website"?
I would wager that someone on slashdot would have enough lcds, computer with blikenlights, etc al to have lit their apartment before this.
From the site:
That was fast!
The guy that placed that there never changed the air filter out of a kitchen extractor (? the thing that sucks in air on top of the stove).
That gets covered with a disgusting, icky oily paste. so i am guessing the lcd tv there is going to be both
a)airtight and waterproof (vapour)
b)cleanable with detergent/window cleaner.
"Because of the absolutely phenomenal number of requests for this site (due to its being listed on Slashdot), we have had to take the unusual step of temporarily disabling the content of the site until things calm down :-) We apologise for any inconvenience
that this may cause."
Mirrors that were grabbed from the slashdot thread: Consider using these mirrors.
mirror 1 :D
mirror 2
Karma whoring at its finest
- no sig.
That said however, I've ordered a bunch of of Luxeon LEDs in various colors - mostly the "warm whites" - to play around with. I think if you did this in a decent house or apartment with colors that didn't induce vomiting you could end up with something pretty special.
This page has been slashdotted to pieces. 12-1-04
I couldn't think of a sig.
Why can't these designers recreate existing rooms with LED lighting? I would like to see new uses for LED lighting that don't look garish.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Why is there so much talk about things being done with LEDs on slashdot? What makes LEDs so special?
Kopin Corp
Color Kinetics
Luminus Devices
The biggest issue was the overhead of the LED for the residential aspects, whereas larger corporations may be better equipped financially to handle the current cost.
To quote this article directly
"The problem is cost. Like early computer chips, today's LEDs are still too expensive to spark mass adoption. "You could replace a 100-watt light bulb with a 60-watt LED, and get the same brightness," says John Fan, chairman and founder of Kopin Corp., a Taunton company that makes LEDs. "You'd save 40 percent on power, but it would cost about $100. We need to bring that price down.""
Personally that is far outside of my price range. At that rate I'd be replacing one household bulb each year... hmmm.. I should have my entire house finsihed when I'm about 87 years old. And by that time I'll be blind and won't need lights anyway.
Never try to beat a professional at his own game!
One thing I noticed was the LCD display over the range. At first I thought it was stupid because why would you want a tv there. Then I though well maybe you could use it as a internet appliance recipe book. But then I realized that having electronics hanging above steaming pots really is a bad idea after all. It should be moved to counter space where you would be doing cutting and mixing. You also need better task lighting in a kitchen unless you want to slice your finger off.
Having the sconces with their beams of super bright light reflecting off the wall and providing indirect lighting is very cool and is like a fusion of 21st century modern with 19th century retro since it is similar to gas lamps or candleholders. I couldn't help but be reminded of all those dungeons my 24th level Magic-user had traipsed through. However, it appears the sconces are below eye level. It doesn't take an 18 intelligence to know that is a bad idea.
The LEDs in the floor of the kitchen look like the emergency lighting in the aisles in a passenger jet. It might be useful if your apartment ever crash lands and you need to crawl to the exit through thick smoke. And I won't even go into the colors because so many people have already commented about it that it would just be redundant.
http://ledmuseum.home.att.net/ledleft.htm
/. effect in full force tonight: :-) We apologise for any inconvenience
that this may cause."
"Because of the absolutely phenomenal number of requests for this site (due to its being listed on Slashdot), we have had to take the unusual step of temporarily disabling the content of the site until things calm down
house.
I've read a lot of comments complaining about the colour scheme, check out the pictures of the kitchen. In one the light is purple, in another it is a light green colour.
All lights in that place are colour controllable. I'd guess there is one LED for each colour component. It also says on the site the colours can change and the video's probably show this but I haven't been able to check.
Lets see how this does...
Your credit card information wants to be free.
Am I looking at the pictures wrong, or is their light coming from outside? That'd surely affect the amount of light the LEDs make, wouldn't it?
Look out!
I've never seen a thread so full of redundant comments. Let's me a few things clear, once and for all: ./ed. Ha ha ha. No more lame LED jokes about it.
1) Yes, the site was
2) Yes, the LCD above the stove is stupid. Yes, it would probably be damaged. How many times do we need to point it out?
3) Yes, the lighting is ugly and no one would want to live in it. Point taken.
I've seen each of these posted about a dozen times. So, let's all not post them over and over anymore. This thread needs to die.
An LED is less efficient than an incandescent bulb.
--
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It's been /.'d so here's a copy for everyone:
:-) We apologise for any inconvenience
Because of the absolutely phenomenal number of requests for this
site (due to its being listed on Slashdot), we have had to take
the unusual step of temporarily disabling the content of the
site until things calm down
that this may cause.
My home is already heated solely by the electrics active within. Its Winter in Mi, and I have yet to turn on the heat. 72 degree at moment by PowerPC, Athlon, Sparc, Intel power.
Gator/Claria is Spyware.
'cause it'll save him all kinds of money on his cooling bill!
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
So it looks like it would be OK to walk around it, but it's missing some basic things, such as directional lighting for reading. LED's provide narrow directional light, which is fine for washes of light (when diffused with lenses or diffusers) or small pin-spots, but the designers don't appear to have tried to create light at the scale needed for common things like sitting on the couch and reading or cooking.
x /2 5mm_med_index.htm
Btw, I've had my apartment stairway lit with white LED replacement bulbs from LEDTronics for 5 years (continuously! Never turned off because it's too dark to find the switches, which is why I installed the bulbs in the first place.). It's worked great, except that they've now faded to the point they no longer provide enough light to walk up the stairs with, but it's taught me that the technology isn't ready to replace all the bulbs in the house. Here's their full line of replacement bulbs:
http://www.led.net/datasheets/25mm_medbase_inde
"Dad left us a bunch of light bulbs in his will??"
Need Mercedes parts ?
While I don't think lighting up my entire house with LEDs seems very desirable, the ForeverBright LED Christmas Lights look interesting (from the NY Times article concerning the Vos Pad).
The new part is using LEDs only.
I use an (I think) HPWT-ML00 amber LED for gentle unobtrusive lighting of my keyboard for at least 3 years already. I used high-power green and amber LEDs as flashlights back when it wasn't mainstream yet, maybe as long as 15 years ago. Gave less light than incandescent flashlights, but it was enough to see what I needed to see (eg, where to step) and it didn't have tendency to blind me with light, leaving my peripheral night vision intact.
It's very useful thing. If they have sufficient light output, may be good for room lighting as well. Especially because the LEDs have very long life, so they don't tend to die all the time. (And they are easy to rewire for usage of only part of the LED bank with a backup power supply, thus offering a ready way to run emergency lights on very low power in case of a blackout.)
Because of the absolutely phenomenal number of requests for this :-) We apologise for any inconvenience
site (due to its being listed on Slashdot), we have had to take
the unusual step of temporarily disabling the content of the
site until things calm down
that this may cause.
The slashdot effect strikes again!! MUAHAHA!
Even a stopped clock gives the right time twice a day.
LCD panels are backlit by CCFLs (Cold Cathode Florocent Lamp) Either 1 or 2 you can tell by looking at the sides of the display and seeing which sides are brighter. CCFLs are those thin ones that are used in scanners. The brightness is kept consistant with a gradual difuser on which the light(s) are mounted.
;)
Yes I know my spelling needs work, but florocesnt is a big word
The most evil, contrived, perverse idea of interior designers and architects from hell: lighting from the floor! It actually decreases visibility, and it's so annoying it would make a serial killer out of the Dalai Lama.
Sigged!
I
Know someone who has an LED basement.
She has an extreme case of porphyria and she can only tolerate light in the 585+ NM wavelengths.
BTW, 585 is exactly the wavelength of those ugly yellow street lamps you occasionally see. I think those lamps are some type of sodium vapor lamp and they are ultra efficient also.
Since incandescants, etc. were literally cooking her from the inside out I built her an LED lamp.
Her lamp has 50 LEDS connnected in 10 parallel circuits. I also slapped on ten switches with one master on/off switch.
Thus, she could turn on as little as 5 or as many as 50 bulbs simultaneously.
It works great for her. She's still very sick, but at least she has some light she can tolerate.
LED's emit a very narrow wavelength of light. You can get them in small bulk packages at the following address:
www.TheLEDLight.com
That store also has a whole bunch of Super Cool LED flashlights etc.
Also, my friend's porphyria is a really rare and strange disease which means she is akin to a vampire. She has the EP variety. Only approximately 300 more like her in the US.
She has been stuck in her mom's basement now for two years, at the age of 34. Such a tragedy!
Caution: Contents under pressure
Anyone else think of the original, coloured-lighting intensive, Unreal when they saw this? Not that it's a bad thing or anything, I'm just wondering if this is a case of life imitating art (read: computer games).
The demo for the color-changing in the kitchen show two different pianos reflected in the fridge - one is white and one is black. Either they have changed the decor as part of the demo or they have changed the decor to highlight the differences. It doesn't appear to be photo editted since the carpets don't seem to change color...
Beyond that the place is unlivable. No counter space in the bathroom, an LCD over the stove (I'd hate to clean the grease splatters off that) and although I know its all for demo of the lighting the bed is centered in the bedroom (I'm sure they didn't want one wall to look dark when the bed covered the lighting).
Interesting as a demo of the ability of these LEDs to light a living area, the practical demonstration is less than perfect. The only room that appears in reasonable color is the bedroom, and only because there is a fair amount of light coming from the blinds. I think the novelty of the various colors would wear off quickly and you'd be left with lighting that would be tacky and unpleasant. The better goal: match a real spectrum of lighting in an LED, or a cluster of LEDs: Aim for more accurate color representation and then the idea will be much more readily accepted - people already dislike the color spectrum of flourescents and this appears worse in the demo photos, even if the color adjustability is slightly cool.
"Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati" -- Red Green
here
Funny, I thought this looked EXACTLY like the apartments of all the egocentric rich phuckwads I've ever known. Form before function, price before practicality. It makes the very strong statement of "I'm a self-involved trust fund baby with no common sense." It's called the VosPAD. I in addition to being slang for apartment, "pad" is an old term for highway robbery.
It's PERFECT.
http://www.thevospad.com/ :-) We apologise for any inconvenience
Because of the absolutely phenomenal number of requests for this
site (due to its being listed on Slashdot), we have had to take
the unusual step of temporarily disabling the content of the
site until things calm down
that this may cause.
Now, THATS funny!
errera hunamum ets
Okay, so it took four hours, and not just two.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
In my experience, the compact flouresents bulbs never match their advertised life span. They ususally die within 6 months. At the premium price, I really wonder how much of a value they are.
Howdy - I belong to a non-profit group that has been doing this for years. We take solar panels, batteries to charge them, and LED lights (especially good cause they last soooo long) and we put them into remote villages in underdeveloped countries. Practical, cheap, and really really effective. We're off to Tanzania this fall! Costs for the last trip to Pakistan Per light-$4.50 Can. 7, 75-watt panels complete with frames and regulators--$6,000 Can. 7.5 amp hour battery (each)---$15 Can. 80 amp hour batteries (each)--$50 Can. Wire- negligible! Total costs---$12,000 Can. Total cost per household with 2 lights----$50 Can. Life Expectancy! Lights----30 years. Batteries-----5 years. Solar Panels---15 years. The trekkers pay for this ourselves - about a grand canadian each... You can check it out at http://www.luxtreks.com/
Now, just to find a way to integrate this into my apartment without the landlord having a seizure (literally!)... hmm. There isn't much heat in our bedroom, but with a decently overclocked Barton and a stock Palomino in custom cases, we don't get cold toes ;)
I wonder if the boss will let me convert from fluorescent at work...
One of the 187.
We all know full well that the /. effect can kill all but the most well supported sites. Perhaps something radically different is in order. Perhaps an akamai like p2p fallback system.
/. and get obliterated into ether the maintainer could allow the site to be mirrored and then sent out to some temporary storage sites for.. oh say a few days, and then when the referrer is /. then the content can be served up by one of the ac hoc distributed mirrors?
before a small site gets listed on
Is there flicker with LED bulbs? If there is none, switching is very tempting.
Those lights are really dim, so you'd still need a lot of them to light a room.
To give you an idea, the average 60w light bulb gives off 860 lumens. Those LEDs you linked to only give off 80! You'd need 10 of them just to get close to a 60w bulb! If each of those LEDs are $30 as you say (there are no prices on the website), that's $300 per 60w bulb!!!
Those 15w mini-twister flourescent bulbs give off 900 lumens. They also last for 6000 hours. Seems to be the reasonable way to go for now...
- Murphy's Corollary: - It is impossible to make things foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
As least the glasses have lights in them! Everything's so shiny, who needs books!
Plus, would you really want to read in that dim purple light anyway?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
total 1970s retro chic...
01100111 01100101 01110100 00100000 01101111 01110101 01110100 00100000 01101101 01101111 01110010 01100101 00101110
First off, I never said I didn't see it, I said I didn't see what was so cool, neat, and special about it. I saw it yesterday, like I said... prior to it being slashdotted.
Being a nerd/geek has never been about being attracted to what is cheap or more cost effective. In fact, I would say quite the opposite. The rate at which the prices of X are dropping has never been a reason why X is cool to geeks.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
As my "regular" light burn out, I've slowly replaced all of my incandescents with compact floresent lamps. Not for the enviromental reasons though LOL, I just hate changing light bulbs! They've come down in price that make them more afordable. The energy savings is a sideline benefit though :)
And it will probably fall on deaf ears like it has every other time I've posted a comment like this.
This story, the resulting Slashdotting of their site, followed closely by the need to take the site down, is yet another indication that the powers that be at Slashdot need to learn the simple courtesy of *ASKING* the people behind websites like that if they want a story about them on Slashdot. Or at least allow them time to prepare for the devestation their servers are about to undergo.
When stories about spammers and such ilk are posted, we show our feelings by Slashdotting their site, thereby either costing them tons in bandwidth charges or crashing their server.
When stories about things we like are posted on Slashdot, we show our approval by doing the same damned thing.
Quite frankly, I'm surprised that in this day and age of litigation-while-you-wait no one has sued Slashdot for getting their server hammered.
I'll stop now so that the moderators among you can show your ignorance by moderating this post as "off topic" or "flame bait".
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
...but as usual the site is slashdotted. Has anyone discussed the possiblity of slashdot mirroring all offsite links as alts? Or maybe use other OSDN sites in round-robbin, for mirroring? Aside from sites that require registration (usually high-bandwidth sites) it's a process you could pretty easily automate upon approval of an article submission.
LED lights will eventually replace fluorescents, incandescents and other traditional forms of interior illumination. There's all kinds of reasons :
The colors are bright and pure when you want them to be, and significant progress has been made towards (simulated) full-spectrum light. The lights are cool and run on low voltage, are much more efficient than fluorescents and have very long lifetimes.
Cost is coming down (slowly) and eventually LEDs will be reasonable replacements for ordinary lightbulbs, with similar light characteristics except for added features such as optional color control and the like.
The Vos Pad is silly because like so many posters have pointed out, it's as uninhabitable as the star trek apartment that other guy built. Plus, it looks incredibly gay with those colors. Just an immensely complex concept piece demonstrating how not to use LED light fixtures. The Vos Pad appears dark and spooky, a movie set rather than a home. And the light beams coming from the floor will be incredibly annoying. But all this don't mean the technology itself is invalid.
LED lit homes can conveivably be every bit as practical as ordinary types. LEDs can be fitted into whole new kinds of fixtures that wouldn't be possible to make with conventional technologies. The LEDs are so versatile they can be built into anything and arranged in any pattern or configuration imaginable. Thin panels or stripes of light could be fitted under shelves or hidden in the ceiling so as to provide advanced discrete lighting without the hassle of bulb replacement.
As a test project a little while I ago I drew up a fancy model for a dream bathroom in a 3D program, accurately picturing discreet LED illumination with color accents and proper work surface brightness and no nasty point lightsources burning out retinas.
The render engine used was precise enough using photon maps, global illumination and caustics, that you could get a reasonable estimate of the number of LEDs on any given spec you need to light a room properly. You can pretty much go in with a virtual light meter and measure how much light hits any given simulated surface point and add more lights until you have the desired brightness. (As a photographer I have a nice digital spot lightmeter, and was able to calibrate the model using a handful of Nichia superbright white LEDs for reference.)
Turns out you need hundreds of LEDs to get an equivalent brightness to just a few 25 watt halogens. But if I had the cash to splash I'd definitely consider it for my new apartment!
When in Tokyo, visit Roppongi Hills and witness the glorious displays of LED illumination in and around the plaza at the base of the skyscraper complex. There's even LED illumination in the stairways and sometimes in the trees around the plaza too.
Replacing the LEDs every year is wastefull when the regular bulb will last many years. On top of that, I'm pretty sure enough LEDs to produce an equivilant 100w incandescant lightsource would take many more resources to produce than a traditional bulb.
So whiloe you may save money in 3 years...it isn't really ecologically wise.
Blar.
A while ago I stumbled across LEDtronics...they have a wide variety of LED products, but what makes them really interesting is that they have retrofits for just about every kind of incandescent bulb out there, with ordinary threaded bases that operate on anything from 12VDC to 240VAC, and bulbs for automotive applications. They also have a cross reference that converts incandescent bulb number, bulb type, or bulb base to an LED product.
lol that was the funne
i wonder if she needs like blood transfusions all the time or something
We would all love to see how your rendered dream bathroom turned out. Do you have it hosted somewhere?
>Because of the absolutely phenomenal number of requests for this :-) We apologise for any inconvenience that this may cause.
/. effect
>site (due to its being listed on Slashdot), we have had to take
>the unusual step of temporarily disabling the content of the
>site until things calm down
Weeee.... gotta love that
I have 2 types of CFBs in the apartment here... one style is a nice yellow while the other is a harsher/brighter white.
So there is some variation in compact fluroescents.
Geek Eye for the Normal Guy
But really, it's kind of cool. But I think I'd shoot myself if I had to live there.
Not there example. The lights shown would only be appropriate as 'mood' lights or at a night club. Bright/direct light is the one important thing I didn't see an example of (although I was viewing a mirror..so..). Dont get me wrong, some of them look beautiful and remind me of Mathmos' lights as seen on thinkgeek.com and I'm glad some designers are taking a new approach to good old lighting.
Revolution? Paaah!
Quack, quack.
"I live in my parents basement, you insensitive clod!"
Cheers
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
Thought you said slashdotters were lit up by halucinogens.
Movealongnothingtoseehere.
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
Could you email me some pix of this apartment?
This post made with the Dvorak layout.
"Friends don't let friends use QWERTY"
Even the mirrors are slashdotted. I want pictures!
$50 for a fucking light bulb? You gotta be shitting me. Thats over a 50 year supply of incandesent lighting. The masses will wake up when light bulbs don't cost $50.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
real LED lights (perhaps spectrally tuned to the wavelength of sunlight)
The problem is that LEDs generaly emit particular colors. "White" LEDs involve a combination of select emitters which combine to make something which seems white (like a white pixel), but is really nothing like sunlight (which really does contain all visible wavelengths).
The fact that LEDs are colored does work out well for brakelights and stoplights, where it's more efficient to generate red or green light in the first place than to use an incandescent bulb to make white light and then put a colored filter over it. (Tangent: yellow lights aren't generally replaced when the red and green lights are, which IIRC is because they are on for such short periods of time that any increased efficiency or lifespan doesn't balance the cost of replacing them).
Contrary to popular understanding, LED's aren't particularly efficient when compaired to incandecent lights.
A high-efficiency white LED puts out something like 15-20 lumens/watt. A good halogen bulb puts out ~15 lumens/watt.
LED's seem impressively bright because they throw all their light in a fairly narrow beam.
I believe that florescent lights are more efficient that LEDs, though that will likely change. Appearantly their will be white LEDs in production with effiencies reaching 60 lumens/watt by 2005.
This shows how popular slashdot is :-)
The company obviously wasn't bright enough to handle /.
I am unique, just like you, and you, and you...
Well according to one of the previous posts, you don't need to wear anything at all?
I am unique, just like you, and you, and you...
Because of the absolutely phenomenal number of requests for this :-) We apologise for any inconvenience
site (due to its being listed on Slashdot), we have had to take
the unusual step of temporarily disabling the content of the
site until things calm down
that this may cause.
Whew! I thought I didnt have my network cable seated properly for a second.
They might LOOK efficient, because LEDs output most of their energy in a narrow beam. But overall efficiency is not any better than an incandescent bulb. In fact LEDs are about 4 times LESS efficient than fluorescent lighting in lumens/watt.
The current efficiency champion is high pressure sodium lighting, roughly twice as efficient as fluorescent.
It will be a long, long, long time before LEDs replace fluorescent lighting in terms of efficiency.
...Mr. Marbles...?
Yeah, not only are they not common now, I don't predict a technology shift any time soon.
Halogen needs to burn quite hot. The tubes in LCDs now are fluorescent or some other gas that operate without too much inefficient heat release.
My brain image of a halogen-lit LCD the size of a CRT made me giggle and I felt really geeky.
Speaking as someone who suffers from minor Seasonal Affective Disorder, I have to wonder what the value would be, outside of saving power, in lighting an entire room or home with LEDs.
The material I've read on SAD, and my own direct experience, have shown me that both broad-spectrum (approximating daylight) and high intensity (again, approximating daylight) are important in combating the condition. We live far enough north (Puget Sound region) where the short days and extended periods of cloud cover during the winter do indeed have a noticeable affect on my moods.
Considering that I grew up in California, which averages 328 sunny days per year, this came as no great surprise.
What I ended up doing for our home was installing full-spectrum flourescent tubes in the flourescent fixtures, and bright halogens in my work area. Both have done wonders for my mood in the winter months.
Unless someone has come up with a full-spectrum LED, I don't think this kind of lighting is going to see wide adoption outside of perpetually sun-drenched areas, and then only as a "Gee Whiz" item because of the high cost.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
Text.. slashdotted.. help..
Or any number of other tv shows featuring unrealistic and impractical lighting in pastel colors that real people would almost never want in their home/workplace. Bleah.
For a rather long time, one of the crossings by the Microsoft Campus had the warning sign "Geek Xing".
Was gone when I looked a year ago, though.
Because there wasn't any juice left for their server ;-)
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
I don't think we are that far away from other applications like automobile headlights and real replacement sources for household lighting...
The Hyundai HCD-8, a concept car recently unveiled at the North American International Auto Show, features LED headlights. More information about the HCD-8 can be found in a Hyundai press release.
This is sickly modern
This company is not the first to do this, infact, a friend of mine works for a company that have done this before in London. mgx.co.uk
Personally, I'd keep my curtains closed lest some airplane mistake those cheese ball floor lights for a runway. Or, were those intended to light the path to the exit in case of fire?
Looks like they didn't like the slashdotting?
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
Very nice lighting effects, but I have to wonder what that would be like in a real home. I step on enough Legos and other painful objects on the way to the bathroom at 3:00am as it is.
I don't know what the College of Education computer lab at my Uni installed exactly but they're new flourescent bulbs. The place went from feeling like a warehouse to feeling like a hospital. No flicker and half the bulbs were required to light up the place. They actually put in all the bulbs to start but it was way too bright.
Normal flourescent bulbs suck as you describe but quite obviously not sucky versions exist. Flourescent also has the advantage of being more evenly distributed than regular bulbs.
As for this guy's LED lighting, it'd be great for a club for mood lighting. But for a house it's way over done.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
I asked my other half, she wouldn't use the bathroom for all the rice in China. Point-blank no way. "How could I work out my makeup in that light?" was her first question.
I am thinking about the kitchen. How do I get a meal looking right in those ghastly hues? How can I enjoy a steak when it will look like a Quake gib under that light?
So while this is a noteworthy effort, it may have set the cause of LED lighting back by years... (kidding, okay? I'm pretty sure other architects and designers will see the advantages and adopt them pretty quickly...)
Which is sad because the idea of using LEDs to light a living space (or indeed a workspace) is sorely needed in view of the air pollution that our thirst for light and convenience creates.
I read somewhere that a 100W consumed for a year produces a cupful and a half of pollutants in that year. (I.e. collect all the pollutants and scrunch 'em together, bingo, 1 1/2 cups of waste...)
That means that for every 100W lightbulb in your place, which stays on for an average of a quarter of a day or so, over a quarter of a cup of crap per year... The average home has seven lightbulbs, that's over two cups of pollution per house per year.
If you could reduce the amount of power required to produce the same amount of light to around a fifth or less, you'd reduce that contribution to pollution due to light from two cups to a quarter cup.
That has to be worth going for...
-- ted russ http://www.arach.net.au/~ted/mydynes/ http://www.arach.net.au/~ted/myblogs/
The VOS pad was kitted out using the Aurora and Genius fittings from ACDC Lighting.
Apparently Aussies can download it.
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
Slashdot linking is like packeting on port 80.
Man, I wouldn't like to be the one to replace the broken leds ;)
80 CC D8 AF AE D3 AB 54 B7 2E CE 67 C7
Sorry, I had to.
All it needs is a brass pole, and I'll buy it!
Did YOU?
Wanted : A Signature.
If you can't handle being Slashdot'ed keep your pussy web server off the Internet.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Do you have to be Australian? I didn't see anything on that page indicating that the request had to originate from an actual Australian or from a person situated currently in Australia. In fact, the copyright law he quotes to justify making putting out of print books available sounds similar to the Fair Use exception in the U.S. law that exists for libraries and archives here.
In any case: excellent link. Thanks.
I used to have this problem with Legos too, then I started picking them up when I'm done playing with them. I find the kids have quit running off with them now too.
The book in question is indeed available. Though you cannot get diamonds for free, you certainly can get this book. (Free as in beer!)
e =030211
h omested.html
The Australian's seem to have an intelligent way of dealing with out of print, and unavailable books that people are interested in. Give them away.
Just follow this URL:
http://www.soilandhealth.org/copyform.asp?bookcod
Fill out the Name and email address for a direct link to the book. (The book itself is in html) I respect their thoughtful approach to copyrights, and so, will not post the direct link myself (as they ask not to). I only ask that others do the same.
Incidentally, if you are curious, their list of books available in such a way can be found here: http://www.soilandhealth.org/03sov/0302hsted/0302
Instant information. Instant enlightenment. This is the internet, the way it was meant to be.
the_alabaster_zoroaster
LEDs are already much more efficient than other lights, but couldn't we make them even more efficient by taking advantage of the human visual system? Pulse the lights at 1000 hertz with a 50% duty cycle, and I doubt any human eye could ever tell the difference. And, you'd save half the power.
Some people are able to perceive 60 hertz flicker, but 1000 hertz? Could this work?
One interesting thing I dont think anyone has mentioned yet. In Boca Raton, FL, and surrounding areas they have begun replacing stop lights with LEDs instead of normal lights. That way they dont burn out so often (cuz you just know its gotta be a bitch to replace a light in the middle of a buisy intersection, and it slows trafic and all that stuff).
All I can say is: "What! No Windows?" [Boom! Boom!]
You should both write the book in the manner of a Socratic dialog. Anonymous Coward provides the questions, and kfg answers. After reading your exchanges in this thread, even I would buy the book for pure entertainment purposes, and I am the staunchest of urbanites (you know, of the kind that thinks the country is that place where chickens run around raw).
http://barrapunto.com/ - News for nerds, en español
Wow... that place is amazing. It's like a cross between everything anyone could ever want in an apartment... ST:TNG's Ten-Forward meets the perfect disco dance party pad with a dash of techno funk. Although it's a bit too much purple, I would prefer more of a, you know, light urple.
Uhm, late, but what the heck. http://www.topdeq.com/merchants/usa/eng/look_handl er.jsp?id=C31,C53,P30186
Lamp name is 'SUI' and only $499!!
I have light bulbs that are on minimum 8 hours a day and have been in use for at least 2 years. That's way more than 1000. Where did you get that number?
Blar.