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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."
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.
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
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.
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.
It seems like a cool concept to me. Problem is they used not so cool colors. One of the best things would be the options in colored lighting, which is not great with conventional lighting. Shouldn't be terribly expensive either.
Trust Your Technolust
I agree. Even in the pictures the rooms look too dark to live in. pricing is also a problem... you can go here and buy a 30watt equal for... $180.50! Has 36 LEDs.
I think LEDs will more than likely gain share in accent lighting to provide the "cool" effects like those in the pictures because there great for that and direct lighting (under cabnets?)
Looks like there's no books in the home of the future.
That's unfortunate.
--saint
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.
>With 4 diodes (at a few cents each) you can build a full wave rectifier that will let you connect an LED to AC power without flicker.
It'll still flicker at 120 Hz without a filter capacitor!
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
'cause it'll save him all kinds of money on his cooling bill!
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Wihtout a rectifier it is off 50% of the time.
:).
With a full wave recrifier, it will be off for tiny amount of time between pulses; almost certainly faster than the LED can turn off, and it will be on fully twice as much. Also, the human eye can't detect a 120Hz flicker, the limit is around 48Hz.
If it bothers you, spend the 10 cents to add a filter cap
Jason
ProfQuotes
>With a full wave recrifier, it will be off for tiny amount of time between pulses; almost certainly faster than the LED can turn off
:-)
Considering LEDs are used in TOSLINK circuits (and heck, gigabit fibre circuit), I really hope that isn't true!
An LED should shut off nearly instantly. I mean, how can one expect it to stay on but the rectifier diodes to turn off?
>Also, the human eye can't detect a 120Hz flicker, the limit is around 48Hz
Directly, yes. Indirectly, the debate is still out there.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Looks like a nasty place to live - if I spilled bong water on the couch, THEY'D KILL ME!
And all those sleek surfaces made of plastic? Looks like a lot of dusting to me...
But I do like the LED light idea - now if they could get 'em in softwhite with about as many lumens as a 100 wat bulb, that screw into a standard fixture, I'd buy 'em by the dozen.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Bleh. The designer *really* likes up-lighting. I agree it's a nice contrast from standard down-lighting, but a little goes a long way, and almost every room has lots of it...
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
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.
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.
Loved the LCD Tv over the stove.. Does anyone there cook? Grease and heat, Yuk.
if youre in it for the long haul or you install it on large enough of a scale, with the energy you save over incandescent, it will pay for itself.
Also, the human eye can't detect a 120Hz flicker, the limit is around 48Hz.
I beg to differ. A 60hz flicker is highly irritating to my eyes. If someone's CRT monitor is set to 60hz, my eyes tear up and get red and sore after just a few minutes.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
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
Well, off the grid really only means just that. Not dependant on the grid. The grand infrastructure of corporate supplied services. It doesn't necessarily imply self sufficient; and there are whole off the grid communities scattered about.
:)
Of course in Mexico I lived in villages that were off the grid and yet otherwise perfectly normal villages, largely self sufficient, but only as a village. The buddy system has some real advantages. That's one of the advantages of going off grid in a camper or boat, even if you're solo. When you need a buddy you can find one and they take care of each other.
But yeah, if you're out in the middle of the Atlantic on a 20' boat you'd damned well better be able to take care of yourself, and if you can that's probably the best place to be if things go all to hell.
I can't say I recommend self dentistry as anything but an emergency measure though.
Let's say that off the grid means not dependant on services and implies the ability to be self sufficient when and where the need arises. You have a certain security that way.
Right now I'm obviously not off the grid (Ok, I could be actually. I've powered a compter by pedal generator, but I'm not). In fact I'm city dwelling.
But when all the lights went out last summer most of mine didn't. People couldn't buy food because all the stores are computerized these days. I had plenty of dried stores on hand and fresh produce in the yard. None of it went bad in the fridge because I don't rely on refrigeration. My toilet didn't flush, but that's because my toilet doesn't flush.
I passed a powerless night almost exactly as I always do. Entertaining the neighbors for a bit with my guitar, then reading a physics journal and working on my greek for a bit by the warm glow of my oil lamps. (No Slashdot though).
And if push came to shove I know how to make my own oil to fuel them. Petroleum isn't exactly the only source of hydrocarbons in the world.
So at the moment I'm quite the little urban urchin. No one should get the idea that I'm Grizzly Adams or anything. Nor am I a Luddite. My shelves aren't lined with anti tech survivalist tomes, unless you consider O'Reilly manuals, Halliday & Resnick, the CRC manual and The Theory of Rotating Stars survivalist tomes. Yes, my light is an oil lamp, but the cabinet it sits on is stuffed with electronic componants and test gear.
I just play the game by different rules and values and with a skill set appropriate to those rules and values.
On the other hand, yeah, I'm perfectly capable of wandering off into the state park and flat out disappearing in the woods and remaining there in comfort, by my own standards, for as long as I like, and can get to those woods in a day, with all my gear, without recourse to a motor vehicle. I can get by with little more than a sturdy knife and box of matches (just to make it easy the first few days) if I have to and occasionally do just that. I part it's my technical background that allows me to do it. Physics, astronomy, chemistry, engineering, biology and the history of those are all very valuable things to know out in the woods alone. The average survivalist can survive like that. I can live.
And oddly enough I'm not sure exactly how I came by those skills, per se. I mean obviously I learned them over time, and I've read a great deal, and "practiced," but I didn't take courses or anything. They don't cover roots and berries in Diffy Calc. It's just the way I've always lived, since I was a child, I like to do things on my own and I picked things up as a went along, even most of my science; and invented three quarters of it simply by paying attention and thinking about things.
It's just life.
KFG
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/