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Screw-in LED Floodlights
Anonymous Coward writes "This company claims to have the first LED flood lights that you simply screw in as a replacement for your old bulb. enluxled.com are also claiming it's cool enough to handle, more damage resistant, longer lasting (50,000 hours) and only uses 22w to produce twice the light of a 100w bulb." And hideously expensive, but you never have to change them.
Energy saving bulbs we have today?
:D
They only compare them against normal bulbs, and not energy bulbs, wonder why, not nearly as much good marketing maybe
why not use flourescent bulbs, they are a little more expensive, but more efficient than incandescent.
sure LED's are cool, but for $79.95, i wouldn't think of it as an alternative to regular bulbs.
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
Floodlights (eg the ones you put under the eaves of your house, often with motion sensors, to discourage burglars), not foglights (eg the annoying things that people turn on even when its not foggy), or off-road driving lights (eg, the annoying things that many people seem to think are safe and legal to operate on-road).
...but the important point is; are they better than flourescent? I use all flourescent light bulbs now, and they are all that LEDs seem to be according to the poster - but not too expensive.
Score:-1, Wrong
boy, this took a while to surface, given that LEDs have been so popular in automobiles, traffic lights, and railroad signals for the past few years...will have to give one a shot.
LED's are definately the way to go, but the price still needs to come down quite a bit. People ask me if I used LED's for my Christmas Lights since when you have 22,000 of 'em (as I did in 2002), that's a lotta electricity. So while there are some GREAT looking LED Christmas Lights (with all the obvious advantages - and don't forget the color stays fairly permanent unlike painted on mini's), they are still really pricey ... especially when I can buy lights after the Holidays at 75% off.
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
....does it take to screw in an LED bulb?
:-)
yay
no, it's just 5 years of continuious operation.
Assuming that you use it for 5 hours a week (i would like to put this in to replace the floodlights in my backyard which are mounted high on the house and need to be replaced every year or so) it would last for 192 years. That's pretty much forever, at least long enough so my children and their children won't need to replace the bulb.
I live in the middle of an Amish community. I know that LED has been growing amongst them as a lighting source. An LED table lamp powered by batteries is becoming quite common replacing the hot, noisy and potentially dangerous gas lights that have been used in the past.
$79!!! a bulb? At such a steal, I'll be in a big rush to spend $320 to replace the 4 spotlights around my house that are on for maybe 4 hours a day, and I can't even remember the last time we had to replace those. I don't feel like figuring out the math, but how much of a savings is this really going to be for a person who has their lights on a timer/motion activated?
This is slightly off-topic, but I thought LEDs would make great Xmas lights with their high brightness and SAFER low power. But when I froogle "LED Christmas" I just see see a few knicknacks. Are they too expensive?
No, I did the math, and it would have to be changed every 5-6 years. 50,000 hours is approximately 2083 days. 2083 days is about 5.7 years. So running one 24/7, and yes, some people seriously do that, I'd have to buy one every 6 years.
I realize how stupid this comment is, but just felt like pointing it out since the story did say, "but you never have to change them.".
50,000 hours isn't forever...
No, but it is 5.7 years ($14/year) of continuous light, or 17 years $4.7/year) of eight-hours-a-day light.
You can buy about 32 regular flood lamps for $80. They will last about 2,000 hours each. That's 64,000 hours total -- an additional $14,000 hours.
So for home use, don't bother. For commercial or industrial settings, though, there can be lots of lights, and here is a labor cost associated with changing them. Some organizations change every light at once, to avoid the higher cost of replacing bulbs individually as they burn out. For those types of applications, the longer-lasting LED lights will lower the cost of changing bulbs.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
And..
They willl promptly be shut down for violating some law they just enacted specifically against that company to raise profits of the 'traditional' manufacturers.
Skeptical?
Right-to-profit is now becoming the next big thing. No more skipping commercials. No more fast forwarding through trailers. No more choices. Corporations have a right to profit, and they will lie/cheat/steal/sue to protect that.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Be cool, trendy and enviromentally friendly like students want to be and get these leds at the price of a weeks drinking money per bulb and also the loss the main heat source in their house.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I used to work in my highschool stage as an assistant stage manager. and we've been using low power LED Fixures for the last 2 1/2 years. you think somebody would have done this sooner.
And at 22w, assuming 10 cents per kwh, this bulb would cost about $110 over its lifespan in electricity, as compared to roughly ten times the cost for a 200w bulb, or $1100 (for the same number of hours).
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
At one time I did even think of writing the minister of transportation. These HIDs are indeed obnoxious as hell, and probably dangerous too:
- They are more focused than ordinary lights. As such, when a car that is equipped with them follows you on an uneven road, the lamps annoyingly blink and even change color in your retrovisor.
- They are not full spectrum. Certain objects will have absorbtion spectra that cause them to be much darker when illuminated by HIDs than by classic halogen lamps. I hate the off-white color too.
I don't buy into their ability to provide better illumination. If they're brighter, they are more blinding. It's that simple.
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
What is obnoxious about them is that they blind oncoming drivers, especially if they are aimed too high. Of course even more annoying are the pickup trucks and SUV's with Halogens - not only are they blindingly bright - they are right up in your face.
There should be a law (at least for vehicles driven on public road, do whatever you want in the forest behind your house on your property) as to how high headlights can be above the road surface, and how bright (in lumens) they can be (and I suppose a min brightness too).
Better technology could be used to decrease power consumption and size, while producing the same amount of light, as opposed to being so bright as to melt the retinas of other drivers.
They come in 45 watt and 65 watt equivalent bulbs, not twice the output of a 100 watt bulb as stated in the article ;) At this moment a CF bulb can be more efficient than them, pulling as little as 14 watts to produce the same output they do at 22. Tubular fluorescent bulbs are even more efficient.
They do look cool though, and LED's get better and more efficient every year.
At a watt or 2 there is nothing that can touch an LED as far as efficiency, but as soon as you go to higher power levels then even a halogen bulb can be more efficient. In my 1AA flashlights nothing is better than an LED. Plugged into the wall you're better off with a CF bulb.
I would bay $70 a bulb if they made these for indoor use as a replacement for the regular light bulb. They could probably run it at 10 watts. And they would last 10-20 years depending on use. Think of the savings on your power bill!
They are only rated to -4F. We expect at least -10F every Winter in Minneapolis area.
"I thought Amish people didn't use technology, since when are LEDs not technology?"
They use technology...intelligently.
It's not the center of their worldview like it is for us.
For example the phone is communal, and outside.
THIS IS NOT TRUE!!
The specs for the light are I beleive 300 lumens. This is more like a 45-60 watt bulb.
A 100 watt bulb might generate 1500+ lumens.
It still is significantly more efficient, and with a SIGNIFICANTLY longer life span, but it is not equal to a 100 watt bulb.
When these first came out (won some awards) I checked them out for this very thing.
They also are not an all around type light a la a lightbulb, more of a spotlight (90 degree beam angle?), so better for flooding a wall or artwork with color / light.
Still super cool. Still a bit expensive.
I run a light 24/7 because the hallway is dark, and there's only one light switch in the hallway. I have multiple solutions, I just need the money. And energy is pretty cheap per kilowatt too, I think less than a cent per kilowatt hour.
1. Installing a switch at the other end, so flipping the switch toggles the light on/off. Hassle if I'm carrying something, but would save energy.
2. Find a motion detector, if they work with the energy saving light bulb I use now. The heat that's put off from regular bulbs is a bit dangerous I think. And energy saving light bulbs don't necessary like being flipped on/off, and I found this out after they tend to die quicker than normal ones.
According to the GE web site, their regular old 90W floodlight produces 1,100 lumens. Move up to a halogen 100W from Sylvania, and you're at 1,500 watts. From what I saw on the Enluxed web site, their 22w (nominal) LED floodlights produce 300 lumens.
I'm a big fan of LED lighting (having bought three LED flashlights last night as presents), but this is just absurd -- unless there is some kind of misprint or my reading comprehension is not up to par today.
It probably handles being struck by lightning as well as any other bulb. Badly. In fact like most things not specifically for lightning strikes (like lightning conductors) and a few things that get lucky by having a metal cage (like cars), lightning is just bad news. Tracker.
It's the MJ growers that will get the greatest benefits from this technology.
Strike that.
It's the electric company they are stealing from that will benefit due to the use of less electricity.
Do they flash when accessing your hard drive, or toggle on/off pressing CAPS LOCK? Otherwise, no good for us lot here...
All LED lights I have seen has had a horrible cold light worse even that flourescent lights. It makes me queasy...
;-)
These may be different, but that remains for them to prove.
The big guy so far has been Lumileds , e.g. their Luxeon Star is one beast. I think it's now included in the headlight fixtures of some cars. No harm in having more competition, but those luxeon stars really would be tough to beat. Impressive engineering.
You're comparing just the cost of the bulb itsself and the installation, ist your electricity free?
Over here, the LED bulb (assuming the 20W instead of 100W incandescant) would save 50000*(100-20) Wh = 4000kWh at more than 10c each - that's at least $400 saved over the lifespan of a single bulb.
One to hold the bulb and 3 to sping leader arround :)
Flourescent lamps work by using a mercury vapour discharge tube to produce ultraviolet light, which excites a phosphor coated on the inside of the tube to produce white light of various colours. They work pretty well; my house pretty much only uses 22W flourescent bulbs, which are roughly equivalent to 100W incandescents. The colour's not bad, but the spectrum is a bit weird, and some things look a little strange. (My parents have a glass vase that shows up purple under sunlight or incandescent light, but green under flourescent light.)
White LEDs can use the same system, with a UV LED that excites phosphor, but these are inefficient and very expensive. (Or at least were, the last time I looked.) A more common way is to use a red, green and blue LED in the same package. These can be cool because you can change the colour by simply changing the relative brightnesses, but they produce a spectrum that makes flourescent tubes look normal. Compared to incandescents, they're very blue, and some things look really strange.
Does anyone actually know what these things are?
The only problem is the kid with a slingshot will still be able to take a single light out. You will never be able to completely get rid of the problem of having to replace of just one light.
So, what does this mean for the DIY projectors that /. linked (here)to a few days ago? Those projectors were supposed to be fairly loud, due to the cooling required for the 400 watt light bulb. If this thing is 10 times the efficiency of a normal light bulb, it could probably get by without the primary cooling system, making the projector much quieter.
On the other hand, it sounds like it's a bit dimmer than the 350 to 400 watt bulbs, so maybe it's not practical yet, though it likely will be soon. The color spectrum produced by these things might not be as good as that of the incandescent bulb it would be replacing, and the secondary fan used to cool the LCD screen would probably still be needed. These are a little more expensive, but imagine many would consider the extra $50 or so to be a good bargain for a quiet projector.
So... am I on crack or will projectors soon be much quieter?
enlax...
:|
sounds like a laxative
-judging another only defines yourself
You are absolutely right, the screw-in flourescent bulbs are a much better bet for most applications. However, these will find some small market that the flourescents can't fill. For instance, it seems to me that these are much more rugged. So, they might be better in high vibration environments or where explosive gasses may be present or where their longer life provides a significant cost saving.
The race is then to see if the cost of these fixtures will decrease or their performance will increase. Right now, it is worthwhile to manufacture these for a certain price to fill a certain small market. Later it seems likely that the price will decrease and the market will therefore get bigger. Let's see if flourescents are still better in ten years.
I've got flood lights on motion sensors. The idea is to drive off the theives from stealing stuff around my house.
With these LED lights my stuff would be further protected by having the light itself worth more than anything else lying around worth stealing.
Hmmm, maybe I should get motion lights for my motion lights.
I hope they are "warmer" than fluorescent lamps. I hate the pure white light that they emit. I like a light with a yellowish hue. That is why I still prefer incandescents bulbs, despite all the advantages of fluorescent lamps.
I wonder why they do not paint fluorescent tube with a yellowish hue to make them warmer. I bet if they would do this, they would conquer a greater market.
Remember the year 2000? They promised us flying cars. They delivered the PT Cruiser...
shoot a couple kids with slingshots and that problem will go away.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
I wonder if it would be a good idea to use LED based lightbulbs for projectors, i hear those bulbs are pretty expensive and don't last very long...
retrovisor.
-snip-
What an incredibly cool word! And to think that as an American I am stuck looking at my rearview mirror.
Spock, bring up the image in the retrovisor!
There are such laws. Not everybody follows them. A lot of the halogen bulbs, though, are still under the max.
What? That is definitely not a sentence.
How many blondes does it take to Screw in LED Floodlights?
"Was it a millionaire who said 'Imagine No Posessions?'" -- Elvis Costello
Although a big incentive may exist in using existing lighting fixtures, by making a standard point-source light, they totally miss the advantage of using LEDs as a light source. If you want a point source of light, you get more light for less energy by using a fluorescent.
Now, with a point source of light, you need it much brigher than the levels you want at, for example, a wall/floor 10 feet away. Just a simple matter of applying an inverse square law.
The big potential in LED's lies in allowing people to effectively get around the distance part of the same inverse square law... They tend to produce very directional light, and they cost little per unit (unlike these Luxeon monstrosities, which cost an arm and a leg).
Imagine, rather than a desk lamp or a ceiling light, that your entire ceiling has a grid of LEDs spaced every six inches. The combined light output measures far lower than a single incandescent (or fluorescent) bulb, but provides better overall illumination of the room. As a result, you have no glare, better light, and impressive electricity savings even over a fluorescent.
As much as I hate marketing buzzwords, the switch to LED-based lighting shift will have to coincide with a paradigm (ugh) shift in the entire way we think about room lighting. Only then will we really see why LEDs can provide superior illumination for less power. Trying to force a million fireflies into a bottle just pisses off the fireflies.
Is anyone else annoyed by the trend by hotels with replacing EVERY bulb in a room with compact fluorescents? One hotel I was at recently (the Boston Westin) did this, and I've seen a trend towards this more and more. With every light in the room on, it was still a bit dim and uncomfortable to read a book on the bed. Pretty annoying. It seems like much of the savings of fluorescent and other "cost saving" bulbs are from dimming the lumens of output.
Given that these LED bulbs are dimmer than a normal one too, the savings seem questionable. It's like saying that you can double your gas mileage in a new car assuming you drive it half as much.
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
All of the compact florescent's I've run into take at least a minute or two to come up to full brightness. LED's should be 100% as soon as they're turned on.
Not sure that's work $80, but it's an improvement.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
how it is first?
such things are already there for quite a while, not very bright, though
just search for led e27 in google. here is the first hit:
http://www.superbrightleds.com/MR16_specs.htm
Conservatism: The fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is your inferior is being treated as your equal.
Going mainstream in the home for LEDs is not somwething we are accustomed to. I believe it is a great untapped resource not only because they use less power and have so many color options but they have the potential to be super bright... For example, LED flashlights [quality, SuperBright ones only have 3 LEDs and shine better than most incandessants with a smaller size]. Also, I seem to have noticed LEDs on traffic lights [maybe THAT is just me but I swear its a cluster of LEDs] and they are much more attention catching, brighter, and longer-lasting. And if one burns out, you have about 100 more that still keep working! GO LEDs!
_
Free 27" Sony WEGA TV
Also, in cases where it is very hard to replace bulbs, one trick is to use lower voltage. That will drastically increase bulbs' life. Unfortunately, I do not know exact benefit for specified voltage decrease.
Still, you should have in mind that spectrum will change; peak of the spectrum will be more close to red.
No sig today.
"This company (enlux) claims to have the first LED flood lights that you simply screw in as a replacement for your old bulb. "
This claim is false.
Commercial white LED floods and other replacements for high-voltage incandescent bulbs are available for any standard base in the world, including the funky euro and russian bases. They are available at three colour temperatures and in any other LED colour, including IR and UV.
They have been available for more than two years.
Enlux had no such products available a year ago.
Seems they define "flood" a bit broadly: According to their own data, it illumines a narrow region like a spot would.
50K hours seems a little short-lived.
And white LEDS dim quite noticeably over a very short time. They will most likely be too dim long before 50K hours. Most likely in a bit less than half that time, around 20K hours.
If they are willing to lie about being the first, and deceive about the useful life of their lights, what else will they lie or cheat on?
Wonder if enlux will do for LEDs what Lights of America did for fluoros...
As the grandparent said, this "complex system of rules" is just religion oriented rule utilitarianism in action. The point is to live a simple, happy life in service of God.
:-)
A story I once heard on the radio: some Amish people are outside doing their laundry by hand, as a group; laughing, playing, and having a grand old time.
Meanwhile a person living a modern-lifestyle goes miserably jogging by. This person was not enjoying their jog, plus stressed out by a job that is used to buy expensive labor saving machines (washer/dryer) that STILL required time to load and operate.
The Amish doing their laundry by hand were getting exercise and camaraderie, and as a bonus they got their laundry done all at the same time. They were also not involved in an time-consuming job to pay for expensive gadgets.
See how it all works? Over time, the rule utilitarianism builds up to a happy life.
Of all the things modern society has to offer, you might think that wandering a modern store the Amish would be most amused by modern electronic gadgets. This is not the case - the simple pleasures always win out. Check out any Amish people in a modern store and you will certainly find them, especially the children, trying out high sugar snacks and beverages.
Pop - one of the most pleasurable modern amenities
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
When I was shopping for energy efficient lights years ago, Target had some tucked away in the corner of the lightbulb aisle.
The manufacturer was Sunbeam. GE dominated the rest of the row with incandescent and halogen bulbs.
Today, Sunbeam is gone. GE still dominates this row but within that GE domination, compact fluorescent lights rule the area.
Companies want to make profit, sure. But to think they want that profit coming from any particular product is not understanding capitalism. Markets change and companies change with them.
Just type random stuff into eBay. Consumers are certainly not facing constricting choices.
As for skipping through commercials or forwarding through trailers, that's an entirely different issue that has no bearing on manufacturing goods.
Laws are for people with no friends.
4. [Three to run out of stamina a]nd finally one that can climb to the top and change the light bulb.
And one to teach the other three to play Dance Dance Revolution, starting with level 1 songs, so that they can get in shape.
Of course estimates like this always ignore the Time Value Of Money. If you were to invest the money at a modest rate of return that you are saving by going with incandesent things don't look as rosy. Add to that the early adopter fee you pay for jumping on the bandwagon first. Wait a few years and the cost will be significantly lower. Newer LED technologies like the Luxeon Star will boost output per Watt too.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Did you figure out why they recommend against putting these in recessed enclosures? My house is designed around indoor flood lights. The operating temperature should be lower than even compact fluorescent. What's your impression?
Laws are for people with no friends.
In Europe, more and more cars are being originally specified with HID headlamps - 'Xenons'. Maybe our regulations are different here but they provide a much better field of illumination than standard headlights and are less annoying to oncoming drivers when dipped. I have them on my car and it makes night driving so much easier (and safer). They are auto-stabilised so don't 'flash' at oncoming vehicles, even when on a bumpy road or with a heavy load in the rear.
Road markings and animals stand out much more clearly on country roads and the full-beam performance is immensely better than the old incandescent/halogen bulbs. Not to mention they will probably last the lifetime of the car.
I have a fluorescent ($9) flood light in the kitchen. It's in a recessed fixture right next to an incandescent ($3.5) flood. The package promised more light. Well that's not the case, at least in the part of the spectrum my eyes work in. The flourescent also needs to cook for a half hour before it's making full output. The incandescent is full on in a fraction of a second. I find that I don't turn the flourescents off because of this so I'm seeing no energy savings over the incandescents.
,to me.
OK, so $9 for something that lasts two years (my experience for the fluorescents) or $80 for something that lasts 10 years and puts out twice the light of the fluorescent is not objectionable
But here is the problem:
The manufacturer says, "For use only in "open air" or nearly "open air" fixtures, such as exposed track and outdoor fixtures. Cannot be used in recessed cans or fully enclosed fixtures. Open air fixtures: -4F to 105F (-20C to 40C)".
The environmetal specs make it useless. I'll need all new fixtures. In the kitchen, my ceiling temp regularly exceeds 40C so even in open air, I can't usethem in the kitchen. The lamps in the living room and dining room are on so seldom that incandescents last 5 years. Besides the LED guysare "not dimmable". If I had 'tree lighting' in the yard, they would be great. I just don't get 'tree lighting'.
Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!
I just installed a ton of recessed lights in my house, and I bought 21 Ushio PAR-20 floods for the 4" cans.
Specs on the Ushio's are:
50 watts at 120 volts
600 lumens
2900K
45 degree flood
These are pretty damn good specs for a 50par20. The Enlux Neutral White is as follows:
22 watts (says 120 volts, but could be 130. Why are they listing figures for 15 watts? Odd.)
300 lumens
3300K
80 degrees
Half the light output. So I'm getting double the light output from just over double the wattage. The color is a bit whiter, which is nice, but I prefer a warmer color. I had a 2800K bulb that I compared to the 2900, and the 2900 was about right. Enlux makes a warmer bulb around this range though, so it's no big deal.
The wide 80 degree flood may be nice in some applications, but spreading 300 lumens over that much area is going to give you very dim light. You want to overlap your lights anyway, but you would need to do much more overlap to get a decent amount of brightness down by the floor. So just popping the bulbs in might not be sufficient if you're picky, you may have to change your lighting layout for optimum coverage and intensity.
I'd like to get ahold of one to compare to some of the bulbs I purchased for testing and comparison, but it's not worth $80 to me.
Note that even if you could put them in recessed cans, the 80 degree width would likely be detrimental because much of your beam would hit the diffuser around the edge and you would lose a ton of your light.
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Standard flourescents are not pure white. Pure white includes the entire spectra from red through violet. If you break a flourescent down through a spectrograph, you'll see entire missing bands. There are some more expensive flourescents that do give off the entire spectrum. These are usually used in rooms where full-spectrum light is required, such as art museums, or for photographing a room that is normally lit by cheaper flourescents.
Allegedly real newspaper headline from 1998:
Man Struck by Lightning Faces Battery Charge
Ya they could probably save the $80 on one, seeing how thier servers are glowing bright enough.
It's not just the color, it's the actual spectrum. Use a CD as a diffraction grating (look at a reflection of the bulb in the shiny side, at an angle), and you will notice how the bulb produces several rather narrow spectral lines. The combined color seems a decent approximation of white to the human eye, but the pigments in the paint and dyes have their own spectral anomalities, so some colors change in weird ways when lit up with fluorescent light. Some fluorescents have a better, more even, spectrum, though. They might be less efficient and more expensive.
I always do the CD test before buying bulbs a non-trivial quantity. And, besides, I usually get them for $1 or $2 at Walmart, so I'm not interested in a $80 LED bulb for that reason.
Now, white LED's spectrum has a narrowish blue line from the LED itselt, and a very wide line across the yellow part of the spectrum, from coumarin-6, which is dye they coat the blue LED with to make a white LED out of it. Definitely better than cheap fluorescents, but not quite there yet.
Having rode in a car with HID lighting, I can vouch for the fact that they do provide much better illumination than standard headlights.
They are also more directional than standard lights, which means that it's mostly the road and curb that get illuminated, not the oncoming traffic.
I've also been oncoming of a car with such lights before, and yes, they are brighter. But having been in both situations, I'd say that (this part is simply my opinion) the amount of increased visibility for the driver of the car with the lights is much greater than the decreased amount of visibility for everyone else.
This is an interesting idea. Are you thinking 5mm LED packages with this? Looking at some of the stuff available at The LED Light.com, there are some interesting options on this. The quad-colored LEDs looks particularly cool.
It looks like I could outfit my computer room with LEDs for about $200 for just the diodes. Figure another $100 in hardware and the time to scavange power supply parts, wiring and assorted other fiddly stuff from the office, and this could pay for itself within a year, easily; my lighting currently consists of halogen torchiere-style lighting to keep reflections to a minimum.
We're looking at a house at the moment, so this is going to factor into my decision. Ideally, I'd like to get one where overhead lighting is pretty much nonexistant so I can in an place LEDs in every room. I imagine some sort of controller based on a BASIC stamp where I can send X10 signals or some sort of encoded data over the serial interface to change pulse width and duty cycle to affect the overall brightness (or color, with those quad-packages). Interface this with a home automation controller PC and you could have some double-plus fun!
I can't wait to get started.
There's so little difference between politics and jihad lately...
not sure if youre being sarcastic, but if youre not: these are floodlights, for outside your house. i tend not to use my heating for that area much.
If you chew them well before swallowing, there should be no significant risk
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
What is an HID?
+++ATH0
The article is really old, there have been major improvements since then, but it gives you a good idea of the basic principals of operation.
I want to try makeing one of these, just put some sulfur and argon, both easy to get, into a glass tube. Toss it into the microwave and see what happens.
Since we're talking about flood lights and the OP mentioned outdoor use, I don't think the heat is going to help you much.
I most definitely know what you are talking about. I have spend a significant amount of time in the bush, and off grid. I have used kerosene lamps (Aladin), white gas lanterns, battery operated lamps, propane lamps, and natural gas lamps.
Of the total, I find that the kerosene lamps put out the most pleasant colour spectrum. I have several LED flashlights. They are perfect for an application such as this. You want light that is bright, and will allow the battery to last. However, they have a definite blue colour, and are painful to the eyes, much more so than a regular flashlight. In a flashlight, this is not necessarily a problem (few things look natural under a flashlight anyhow). However, in the home, it would not be the most beneficial. For the best spectrum inside the house, I would suggest the salt crystal lamps with a regular lightbulb inside. They are extremely restful on the eyes, and when the lightbulb heats the salt crystal, it produces negative hydrogen ions, which are beneficial to the air inside your home, and you as they destroy free radicals.
There are new varieties of white LEDs that do not have the blue tinge. However, no-one is using them for much of anything yet. I was talking with a friend about this, and came to the idea of simply cracking a lighbulb around the base, taking out the filament, and soldering one or more of these new white LEDs (with current limiting resistor). Then the glass could be reaffixed to the base. This is a cheap and effective solution that would require much less than $70.
Wasn't there research somewhere a while back that supported the idea that working in fluorescent-only light promoted mental instability?
+++ATH0
On a serious note, since the light source doesn't depend on a fragile fillament in a large glass housing, these enlux bulbs will be alot more resillient to slingshot attacks.
In normal flood lights, the filament will break from the shock of being hit with a rock or something. These won't. Plus the aluminum fins, for radiating the heat, also provide alot more protection.
Hmmm witty sig or funny sig? Maybe elitest techy sig!
How does this compare to...Energy saving bulbs we have today?
Power usage for a given amount of light is slightly better (22 vs 26 watts for a 100 watt equivalent).
Life is a lot better. (50,000 hours vs. 6,000, or about 8 1/3 compact fluorescents to match rated lives with one LED lamp.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Working in stage, how many LED profile lights have you seen? Because I havn't seen any. Ever. Pleanty of woderful washes, but no spot lights. There's a reason. Think about it (it's to do with optics...). Until someone can come up with a way of creating an LED profile, they'll never truly enter the theatrical market.
//another opinion, and not directed at anyone personally You keep thinking that, until you kill me, because my escort is right in the path of that luminosity. I can see it now...I hit the curb, boucing off and colliding with you head on. You of course will be fine, my escort is very small. It is unfourtunate that the toddler in that car seat of yours didn't have the neck musculature to withstand the impact of a head-on though. Ohh well, at least the paramedics will have light to see by.
And hideously expensive, but you never have to change them.
Actually, the expense is to cover their bandwidth costs, now that they've promoted themselves here.
...but not the most flexible, or widest variety.
LEDtronics has had LED bulbs and retrofits for just about every kind of application, voltage, and base around. They've got floods, conventional bulbs, automotive and truck retrofits, signage, in just about every color and brightness imaginable. They've even got an incandescent cross reference guide, which lets you use the Incandescent Bulb Number, type, base, or voltage to search for LED replacements. And, they've got a much wider selection of LED floods, and replacements for just about every kind of household bulb out there.
Yes, they're more expensive, and the nature of LED light means it needs to have some fancy design and optics to make it sensible for conventional lighting use, but it uses much less power than even compact fluorescent, and is potentially even more durable and reliable.
It depends on the specific bulb. Color temperature is measured in Kelvin. A home incandescent tungsten bulb is usually around 3200K. The higher the color temperature, the "colder" it appears. Daylight is around 5000K, plus or minute 200 depending on the situation.
For some people, colder light is the best kind one can get. In photography, most films are designed to work with daylight and flashes (which are themselves designed to mimic daylight) and you end up with really ugly red-orange tones on everything if your only light sources are regular incandescent bulbs. For 35mm photography, the closer the light source is to 5000K, the better.
I'm eager to get my hands on a couple of the cold-white bulbs this place is selling. These 50000-life-hour 4800K cold-white bulbs will make a great replacement for the 3-life-hour, $5-per-bulb 4800K photofloods I currently use for close-ups and portraits. In my case, these LED floods will pay for themselves after only 48 hours of use!
Floodlights (eg the ones you put under the eaves of your house, often with motion sensors, to discourage burglars)
And those of us folly enough to take a walk at night. Good grief, I go out at night so people don't have to watch my sorry fat ass walk around in sweats and huff n' puff because I'm out of shape, and as I walk, I go from one house to the next, and lights flicker on one by one. My eyes just finish adjusting to the night, and then I get this 100 billion watt bulb come on and incinerate my cornea. Yea, a freggin light's gonna keep me from lighting your damn house on fire ya schmuck. I'v got a constructive, old fashoned solution; it's called a gun. They're relitivally inexpensive in the U.S. The other old fashoned option, is a barracade.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
LEDs make great close-range flashlights, and in some cases they make good medium-range ones (I keep looking for the blind-perps-at-80-yards handheld LED light, but so far no luck), and all kinds of specialty applications are great for them. (One of those 60-LED floodlamps would be great for night-time home video if you don't like the green-grainy stuff.) Too much of my copious spending money ends up in the hands of LED flashlight purveyors :)
... I could buy more compact flourescents than I am likely to use in the next few years for the same price. YMMV; if you have a 30-foot ceiling with bitch-to-get at recessed fixtures ... I'm sure there are edge cases.
:)
I am tempted by this light, just because, well, LEDs, shiny. Maybe as some commenters have noted, they'd be good for businesses which only change lights en masse every few years. But at this price, the tradeoff is terrible for (even somewhat typical) householders
And *after* the next few years, what will have been the opportunity cost of this ultra-cool LED bulb? You won't have the same money to spend on the next-gen version with twice the output at half the cost (if that happens), and if uniform-brightness lighting panels come into vogue, with ceiling-mountable thin-film illuminators that work for free and cause dopamine release in all who bask in their glow, won't you feel like an idiot?
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
The site seems to be crawling. The link is mirrored at MirrorDot.
~Jay
:) note - I don't even smoke weed, just saying...
I'm not fond of CF bulbs: most of the reasonably-priced ones I've installed lately have a slow warmup period, during which time they're very red in color, and rather dim.
You also can not EVER use them with a rheostat (dimmer). If the LED-based lamps can be used with dimmers, they've got a market advantage (I was trying to find out when the site got slashdotted)
CF bulbs started in the $20-30 range, and were somewhat large and bulky. The current 60-100 watt direct replacement lamp bulbs are as cheap as 3 for $10 at Ikea.
Design for Use, not Construction!
Which model are you using? I have a NEW fluorescent flood that claims to be equiv of 100W yet it's not as bright as my 60W incandescent flood! Having them side by side it's easy to see the brightness gradually increase of 30 min. Maybe because the kitchen is cold when I'm not cooking. I keep the house around 55F in the winter time. Gas is too expensive.
Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!
fluorescents are actually more efficient. they have 7w fluorescents with a 60w incandescent equivalent. even if you stretch it and call that even ... the LED bulbs last about 6x longer than the fluorescents, but they are 10x more expensive. fluorescents are a better deal. this is not to mention that very, very few people will ever spend ~$80 for a light bulb, regardless of the efficiency or life span. that being said, great potential. get it down in the $20 range.
Not specifically to addressed to you but..
Foglights are not just for fog (although the name implies). They have a very wide pattern and should be physically placed very close to the ground and as far out as possible. The purpose is to light up the area directly in front and side of the car where the low beams do not cover very well. When aimed correctly, they should not bother anyone and are a great help. Laws vary by state but typically, they can only be powered in conjuction with the cars low beams. Driving lights are more like spot lights. Narrow beam aimed level with the car and project very far. They are used to light up the direct path of the car and far ahead. They should be placed higher on the car. Again the laws very by state but when allowed, it is only to be used with the cars high beams. The problem comes from people that buy driving lights, put them on the car in the place the fog lights should go and do not aim them correctly and wire them up so they are on more then with just the high beams. That combination of lights and location serves no purpose at all to the driver and hinders other drivers. The lights themselves are not the problem, the idiots using them are.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
and only uses 22w to produce twice the light of a 100w bulb."
A 100-watt light bulb puts out around 1500-1600 lumens. These lamps are rated at 280 and 320 lumens. A more accurate statement would be "and uses one-fifth the energy to produce one-fifth the light"
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
You are probably not very critical of lighting quality then:
1) As some posters already have pointed out the emission spectrum of a fluorescent is discontinuous. So is the reflection spectrum of most paints, laquers, anything that has color. The result is that your colors will turn out very dull. Think of the emission spectrum of a CF as a bitmask with lot of zeroes. The same goes for the reflection spectrum of things you want to light. AND the two bitmasks together, and the result will have a lot of zeroes. A standard lightbulb has a continuous spectrum. Its bitmap would contain all ones, so the AND produces the correct color.
2) Most CFs are rather large. This means you won't get highlights. Objects will look dull - the difference between a sunny and a cloudy day. Next time at a jewelry store look at how tiny lights are used to make everything sparkle. For indoor lighting you need to combine a diffuse background lighting with small size accent lights.
Now combine 1) and 2) and you'll see that by only using CFs everything will have dull colors, and no highlights. Very depressing. For your wellbeing, be careful.
PS: The stated light output equivalence between CFs and incandescents is only true if you light spectrally pure white objects with a continous spectrum. Because of the bad overlap of the spectra of lighter and lightee you typically will need much higher powered CFs than advertised. CF promotors don't tell you that.
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
LEDs explode when you plug them into the wall. Part of that $70 is circuitry to convert the voltage to something usable by the LED. Also, just one LED won't provide enough light to light a room. The inside of your computer? Yes, but a room, no. They have to use an array of expensive LEDs to get enough light to be useful, so that's why it's $70.
My other car is first.
I'm looking to install LED (preferably white) lighting inside my apartment with either ceiling fixtures, or floor/table lamps, but have been unable to find any websites that sell the lamps. Can anybody point me to some websites with some info on interior residential LED lamps and lighting?
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
The quad-colored LEDs looks particularly cool.
I agree... I had actually thought mostly in terms of the so-called "white" LEDs, as they seem to produce the most light for the buck, but since you mention it, I imagine it would look really nice to not only change the brightness, but the warmth/coolness of a room's lights as well.
And it sounds like you have an ideal situation to try something like this... As I said, it would require a fairly different way of thinking about a room's illumination, which for most people would mean a hefty remodelling (or new construction that takes it into consideration). Though I suppose one could retrofit a drop ceiling without too much extra expense.
If you seriously plan to try something like I suggested, I'll share two thoughts on the matter...
First, for wiring, I would go with a row/column addressing scheme. Unless you plan to try to actually use it as an ultra low resolution display, that would suffice for smooth color/intensity changes over the span of the room, for a lot less wires than individual addressing would take.
Second, consider each LED as disposeable and self contained... So ideally, each would have its own socket and current-limiting resitor. That way, you can replace them (they may live a very long time, but not forever) without needing to break out the soldering iron.
- they absolutely are not '5 times brighter than normal bulbs'. The 100W equivalent lits about as much as the old 40W bulb that was there.
- their color sucks, depending on the model (I bought several different), they are either greenish or even more yellow than a tungsten bulb
- They take time to lit to full output.
- They cost a lot.
After a month of trying to get used to them, I threw them away. So I hope LEDs can do better, but since I already have several headlamps with while LEDs, I expect some problems. In particular the headlamps I have (Petzl and Black Diamond) are way too blue, they are blinding.So, technical issues or marketing issues ?
Non-Linux Penguins ?
I wonder why they do not paint fluorescent tube with a yellowish hue to make them warmer. I bet if they would do this, they would conquer a greater market.
f -rh-white.shtml
Compact Fluorescent bulbs come in colour temperatures from 2700-6500K. Higher colour temperatures equal "cooler" light with more blue.
Check these links for an explanation:
* http://www.tvtechnology.com/features/Tech-Corner/
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White
I started using CF bulbs a few years ago simply b/c of the geek factor. I've found that quality varies and few remain bright throughout their entire useful life. Some run hotter than others. Also found that different rooms / applications call for different colours. YMMV.
LOL. I really thought that it was actually an English word.
But no, French is not my first language. It's Dutch, and we call it an 'achteruitkijkspiegel':
'achteruit' = backwards
'kijk' = look
'spiegel' = mirror.
Like German, Dutch tends to concatenate words to make a new, very long one.
But I would appreciate it if you could introduce 'retrovisor' into common English. That would be cool indeed.
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
Move up to a halogen 100W from Sylvania, and you're at 1,500 watts.
The word "watts" should obviously have been "lumens." Sorry for any confusion that may have caused.
Actually, my post covered that. As I stated, one or more LEDs in a socket. Depends on how many lightbulbs are in a room. Many light fixtures are for two or three light bulbs, and many rooms have more than one light fixture.
The resistor is the simplest manner of current limiting an LED. However, one may create a simple constant current source with a couple BJTs, or DC/DC synchronous buck converter for the cadilac solution. None of this justifies a $79 price tag, and all are available to the electronics hobbiest.
Instead of the straight white lights they're selling, how about a mix of the red, green and blue light elements they also sell, in one "bulb"? And a remote w/ USB connector to create moods? That extra HW might bump the cost up to $100 per bulb, instead of $80, but the extra features for automated mood lighting would make them worth it.
--
make install -not war
What I want to know is how to get the girl INSIDE the LED Floodlight.
These HIDs are indeed obnoxious as hell, and probably dangerous too:
...I hate the off-white color too.
- They are more focused than ordinary lights. As such, when a car that is equipped with them follows you on an uneven road, the lamps annoyingly blink and even change color in your retrovisor.
Ooooh, BLINKING. I can TASTE the danger!! Seriously though, more focused beams are less likely to throw light into eyes of the other drivers (say, in an oncoming lane).
Actually they hit closer to white than halogen (which are yellow tint). I do agree that the real high color temperature ones (the purple and blue) are dumb, not only because of the color of the light but the fact that they produce less light.
I don't buy into their ability to provide better illumination.
It's not like this is magnet therapy, there's a measurable difference: HID lamps give more lumens at the light source, and are therefore brighter. Brighter lights help you see oncoming road contitions further ahead, giving you more time to react.
The only thing dangerous is you driving around with a dirty windsheild and blaming every light that shines on it at night.
Sure, it may be safer for you. But not for oncoming traffic. If you want more reflected light, you have to emit more light to begin with.The illumination pattern is exactly the same as modern incandescents; it is specified by technical regulations.
;-)
Auto-stabilization is new to me; a good and necessary move, but one that will drive up the already high price even more.
While they may last a lifetime, they cost a lot upfront (if optional, else it's hidden in the total package) and in case of damage. I have changed 3 halogen headlights in two cars with a total of 370000km on the odometers. Not too bad for a 10EUR lamp.
All in all I still feel it's a complicated and expensive technology, with a low benefit/cost ratio. The carmakers' goal may be to keep the price up. But if you like it, good for you. I hope our paths won't cross too often
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
Since when is 230 lumens twice the light of 1300 lumens (the 100w incandescents)? In any case, the fluorescent bulbs I got at Ikea for $5 are 1000 lumens for 20W...
You mean xenons, right? Halogens are the normal yellowish headlights, xenons are the bluish-white ones that blind you.
Half that, as this puts out the same number of lumens as a 100w bulb, not a 200w bulb.
and a compact flouresent would save even more at 13 watts for the same lumen output.
LED lights are horribly inefficent compared to Compact flouresent. and YES, I can buy them that are the semi-directional floodlight design. they simply are a lamp with an integral reflector shining the light out in the one direction.
the LED ones have only 2 things going for them. Starting in extreme cold without any lag or trouble and vibration resistance. hell you could probably shoot the LED one with a rifle and not take out the whole lamp.
otherwise it's foolish to think that LED lighting is efficent.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I'm sure the other LED fanatics out there will agree with me when I say...where's the beam shots!?! How can they expect us to believe em without a side by side comparison against a regular incandecent flood?
If you don't want someone to copy something, don't give it to anyone.
So it has been well established that it is worth the cost; but we are talking LEDs here. How can they get away with charging ~$80 a pop when it shouldn't cost much more than $20 to build one yourself (that is with some flex) considering it isn't too hard to get your hands on cheap, good LEDs.
That sounds really expensive.
Well all you have todo is use alot of LEDs in series. Depending on the LED the voltage drop accross one LED is around 1.4 volts @ the operating current(~20mA). So to run them off AC @ ~170 volts peak(120V RMS) you need around 120 LEDs. You may also want to add a rectifier so that they don't flicker and are on for more of the cycle of the AC sine way. They could also add a Capacator to smooth out the wave form to DC so they LED's would be on steady.
God, root, what is the difference?
K.
since the lights don't burn out, the company will go belly up as soon as everybody will have bought their lights... :)
as in "if there is no thief, you won't need the police"
The actual cost of changing a lamp is more than what you see on the surface. Sometimes, after receiving a required job order, someone, perhaps a skilled person, has to drive out to the job, go to the store perhaps to get the proper bulb (if it's available), setup a ladder, and so on. The job is so much trouble that sometimes bulbs go un-replaced for years - or maybe forever. Then there is the cost of problems occurring because of a light being out. An accident may happen, something may get lost, and in a commercial situation, efficiency may be lower or work may not be able to proceed at all. It's simplistic to just look at the act of screwing in a new bulb.
(||) Nehmo (||)
My friend's company has been making them for years:
Led Dynamics
They are often twice as bright as the cars low beams, and when they are on (with the low beams) there is as much or more light coming from the front of the car as with the high beams alone, and are just as blinding to oncoming traffic (or traffic you are following)
Unless you are in an offroad condition, the only white lights illuminated on the front of your vehicle should be the factory low beams, with the only exception being if it is foggy/driving snow, an amber/orange set of foglights (if they are white, they arent fog lights).
I dont care what technology the light uses. Advances should be used to reduce the size or power use of the lights *without* increasing the light output.
You need to factor in how much energy it takes to produce the ceramic cup, plus how much energy & water to wash the cup each time between uses (assuming you wash your dishes between uses).
And do you really think you'll be using the same ceramic mug for the rest of your life?
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
What's wrong with using high beams on the road? You only turn them on when there are no other cars near enough to be bothered by them, and they greatly increse the distance you can see. Great for country roads where you need to see ahead to look for deer/dogs/people.
These lights are not to be used in fully enclosed fixtures. That limits many of the outdoor uses including many poolside locations.
They are also not dimmable. This keeps them out of amature, and DJ and band applications where dimmable lighting is a requirement.
I'll wait for the prices to come down and the feature list to go up.
When they are compatable with dimmers and enclosed fixtures, let me know.
The truth shall set you free!
That sounds really expensive.
Expensive? I expect it would add perhaps $0.25 per light, so around $100 total for an average sized room, but consider the time saving in the long run compared with having to un-and-re-solder 400-600 LEDs every 5-10 years.
And, the current-limiting resistors aught to improve that lifetime somewhat (otherwise you'd tend to lose however large of an area you have on the same resistor all within a short period of the first dying, since the rest get to bear its load).
So, at least hardware-wise, I wouldn't call LED lighting cheaper than more conventional forms, at least until modular units enter the realm of commodity hardware. But in terms of TCO, I'd say it probably at least breaks even; And, what other lighting tech in even the same pricing ballpark could you literally chose over the entire RGB palette in terms of color and intensity?
I am very skeptical about these new screw in LED bulbs. I understand that the LED itself is very reliable - but what about the power supply?
These "screw-in" blubs you speak of are typically known as Edison bulbs. Reason should be fairly obvious.
/.
That aside, LED Edison blubs have been out for quite a while. They are rediculously expesive, but I remember researching this as far back as when VOS Pad was posted on
Here are some quick links I found just by going to Google.
Link 1
Link 2
Link 3
My room is already illuminated by LED's from all my computer gear!
Anyway, I'd consider it a geek badge of honor to be the first person blinded by LED flood lamps.
I had a sucky sig.
Ok, fine, when you are offroad, or where there are no other cars around. My point was is that so-called 'driving lights' should be turned off, just like you turn off your high beams, when there is oncoming traffic. They should *NOT* be on automatically with your low beams.
Damn, You must live REAL close to me 8)
Here's a paste from their site:
LEDs offer increased efficiency over incandescent bulbs. When comparing white light, LEDs offer more than two times better efficiency. For red, green, and blue lights, LEDs are more than 10 times more efficient.
Only the colored LED bulbs produce as much as a 200W incandecent bulb at 22 Watts. The white ones only produce as much as a 45W incandecent bulb. Always make sure you read the fine print.
[i]So for home use, don't bother. For commercial or industrial settings, though, there can be lots of lights, and here is a labor cost associated with changing them. Some organizations change every light at once, to avoid the higher cost of replacing bulbs individually as they burn out. For those types of applications, the longer-lasting LED lights will lower the cost of changing bulbs.[/i] A commercial setting would use high pressure sodium or fluorescent instead of incandescent bulbs. The efficiencies and costs on the LED 'bulbs' seems similar to HPS and fluorescent lighting.
I replaced nearly every light in the house with cf's. I tossed the receipts, stupidly, and have had nearly every light fail since. Most of my fixtures are the closed glass domes (rental for you) and I suspect they ran too hot in the contained space.
So I can either replace all the lights fixtures in a rental house, or live with regular bulbs for longer. Which is too bad, because I did make an attempt at reducing energy usage.
They are often twice as bright as the cars low beams, and when they are on (with the low beams) there is as much or more light coming from the front of the car as with the high beams alone, and are just as blinding to oncoming traffic (or traffic you are following)
If you are refering to fog lights you are greatly mistaken. Legal fog lights are 55 watt bulbs (model H1 infact), equivelent in power to a typical cars low beam. When they are aimed as they should be, they do not shine up at all and will not "blind" anyone. If you are blinded by a factory or aftermarket fog lights that are aimed correctly (much lower then the headlights), you should not be driving at night yourself. Stand about 20 feet in front of a car with the low beams and fog lights on, look at the light patterns on your legs as you walk toward the car. You should clearly see both light beams and where they are aimed. For a better perspective, bend down and look into the lights, you will see the different heights that they are aimed as noted by the extreme brightness change. There is no way the eyes of an oncoming car are that low to the ground.
Here is are two links that debunk your yellow theory also.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
I have some installed right now, and an annoyance I have is that they are not dimmable. Are any Fluorescents?
Also, they make a high-pitched noise... I'm probably going to go for the LED models.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I've heard of people building bridge rectifiers to solve this. You basically use four diodes, and use this to reverse the negative part of the AC wave when the LED isn't on. Click for more information. You will still get some flicker with the bridge, but you can throw in a largish capacitor and that will get rid of most of it. Otherwise, if you can get your hands on a higher voltage DC power supply (100-150V or so) you could probably drive the LEDs off of that.
The Lights of America ballasts are fine, though the color of the lamps themselves are horrid. But for setting up a cheaply blacklit room, there's nothing quite like a $6 ballast and a $6 tube. I helped a fledgling rave promoter get their equipment together on a small budget -- they allocated $50 to blacklights, and I managed to get the entire room covered for that cost (found a supplier that would take the white bulbs back for $2 credit, so got 5 blacklights for $50). I also gave them a laser show unit on "indefinite loan", which meant they paid nothing out of pocket (I already had the unit built) but I got VIP'd in every single week until the city of Pomona passed a shitload of anti-rave ordinances. After that, they just paid me $50 outright to let them keep it because they thought it was cool. I didn't mind, I'd already built improved prototypes by then, and they cost about $30 to make even without any efficiencies of scale.
The cheap fluoros are also decent if you wrap them with stage lighting gels. It's not like they get hot, so the gels can be rolled into tubes and placed directly over the bare bulbs. The gels eventually fade at the ends where the filaments are (I'd imagine from escaped UV) but even this doesn't really affect the color of the output. If you have a sudden need for bad white light, just remove the gel.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
What is important to me is
- Fast turn on/turn off times. No more than 10ms.
- High total brightness, but particularly around the wavelengths 455nm and 615nm.
- Small source size, narrow emission cone since the light must be captured and imaged.
Anyone out there know if I can do better with these or any other solutions?Is it just me, or does anyone else wonder at the fact that light with more red than blue is deemed "warmer", though such light comes from COOLER incandescent objects? I guess it's just an artifact of times when people didn't understand the physics, just as diodes are drawn the "wrong way 'round" on schematics.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
The standard for this kind of thing is that when it puts out 50% or less of the light than when it was new, it's "burned out". From what I have seen from LED traffic lights, they have serveral circuits of LEDs wired in series, and when they start to fail, parts of the light will be dimmer than others.
There are laws in the U.S. about headlamp brightness. The problem is, there really aren't good laws about where that brightness should be.
If you compare the low beams of a traditional American car and a European car, you'll find that the European car is less dazzling to oncoming traffic, but seems to put out more useful light when you drive it. That's because the American D.O.T. headlamp specification is mainly concerned with brightness, whereas the European headlamp specs also specify the light pattern the headlamp should generate.
If you've ever driven a first-generation Dodge Intrepid, you know just how truly horrid an American car's headlamps can be and still be legal for sale.
Something else to keep in mind is that high brightness LEDs do not tolerate much heat and since the light-emitting area of an LED is very small compared to, say, a filament, heat must be pumped away either passively with a heat-sink (much like your CPU) or actively with a thermo-electric cooler (much like some people's CPUs). Here comes the expensive engineering problem.
How about we just turn off the damned floodlights already.
Any light that goes sideways and up is not just wasteful, it's an assault on everybody around, and it's contributing to the screwing up of the planet, and floodlights are almost always mostly sideways. I can hardly even go outside after the sun falls. When I drive at night, not only do I have to contend with shriekingly bright headlights at the level of my head, but the street lights are those stupid cobra-head lamps, parking lights are brightly lit all night long, and idiot business owners, and even neighbors, have floodlights blinding me. Security lights, my ass!
Save energy. Let there be dark.
He said that electric heaters are virtually 100% efficient, and he'd be absolutely right.
A heater's function is to create heat. All of the energy coming into it is either spent on heating the air, or creating infrared, which will heat the objects surrounding the heater... And either way you slice it, it's heat. Heck, even the impedance in the power cable will create heat. It's 100% efficient even to the outlet.
An electric heater is the only 100% efficient device that I can think of. Who cares about the power plant, that's not the subject matter.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
The other difference I've noted with headlights is that in most new cars the headlight optics are simply better, resulting in the car being able to throw more light in front of it with the same wattage bulb. This is part of the reason the headlights on newer cars seem so bright.
the website claims twice the lumen output of a 100W bulb - where I shop that's 26W worth of compact fluorescent juice, vs the claimed 22W. As I see it, these guys have built a maintenance-free version of an energy-saver bulb - 5 times the working life, resistant to shock and weather, and just as efficient.
That's assuming that the website claims pan out...
"Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
Answer: Just two, but how did they get in there in the first place?
Let's bring a bit more factuality to the situation: The parent poster states that heat pumps are cool technology, and that radiant electrical (resistive strip) heating is inefficient.
Guess what? Parent is correct.
Radiant (resistive strip) heating is LESS efficient than a heat pump under many circumstances. "What? No, stupid - radiant strips are 100% efficient! All the power is converted directly to heat!" Yes, it is - but I'm not stupid. Heat pumps are more efficient. Typically, with an outdoor temp of 45F an an indoor temp of 72F, the heat pump moves THREE TIMES as much heat into your fine home as it requires electricity to perform the pumping. IOW, 100W of energy into the heat pump results in 300W of heat into the house. That's three times more efficient than strip heating.
This is not as pronounced at greater temp differentials, and in fact many heat pumps employ supplementary strip heating for really large temp extremes. However, the parent poster's point is well-made and accurate - radiant strip heating IS, in general, less efficient than a heat pump.
I live in Florida - north Florida. It's November 21, and my A/C is on. Every watt I save from running fluourescent or LED lighting is effectively 1.3 to 1.5 watts less electricity used and charged on my power bill. A similar argument can be made for a house using a good heat pump - the extra wattage radiated as heat by an incandescent bulb would provide even more heat if it were used to drive a heat pump instead.
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
The initial delay until the bulb turns on is really only limited to fluorescent bulbs. Compact fluorescents are pretty much the same as the regular fluorescent tube lights and require a ballast to start the light up. The reason they need a ballast is due to the initial higher current required to energy the mercury vapor inside the bulb. After the tube is energized the resistance drops considerably and hence requires less current. The ballast is used to control the current between the initial activation of the bulb until it reaches it's normal operating current.
Part of the reason compact fluorescent bulbs were not available until the last 10 years is due to advancements in making the coiled glass, and reducing the size of the ballast. Old ballasts were magnet based and had a longer delay before working and were larger in size. Then electronic ballasts were created and allowed for the ballast to be made smaller. Hence why compact fluorescents are a feasible solution to some lighting problems.
LEDs on the other hand, require DC current like Fluorescent do, but there is no need to reduce the current after the LED turns on initially. So we should be seeing the short turn on time with LED lamps.
Colour rendering should also achieve more full spectrum light, but again, we're all probably used to various incadescent bulbs which have warmer colour rendering. (more yellowish) The enLux website shows neutral white bulbs being available, and should achieve the colour rendering you're looking for.
Newer compact fluorescent bulbs should achieve the colour rendering you want, but again, they still have the initial delay and are difficult to put on a dimmer switch. According to the enLux website, the LED floodlamps they provide are also non-dimmable. This is unfortunate since dimmer controls should simply cause a corresponding number of LEDs inside the bulb to turn off, this would provide some dimming effect. (but would certainly increase the price of the bulb even further) There must be a means of converting the analog voltage level into a corresponding digital signal to turn off a proportional number of LEDs...
Did anybody think that maybe we already HAVE lightbulbs that last forever? All the lightbulb companies would go out of business if everybody bought just enough and then stopped buying them. Not that there wouldn't be a market, for new homes, etc..., but the market would decrease greatly Also, is it possible that the lightbulb manufacturers would buy this technology from the inventor, and just not release it, so that they can continue to make money?
I have this really funny quote that I like to put here. Unfortunately, there's this really annoying thing called a char
Has anybody encountered flickering in these kind of LEDs?
For example, if you look at an LED light source and move your eyes rapidly, it breaks a previously solid light into a series of lit dots.
Depending on how much flicker there is in the LED bulbs, that could lead to some serious eyestrain and migraines, with many preferring to get the cheaper, considerably higher Hz flickering flourescents.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
This is a great product, but hardly a first. For example:
m asTree/ForeverBright/LED2004.htm
http://superbrightleds.com/MR16_specs.htm
A few years back I decided I was tired of hot, pressurized gas bulbs providing the lighting in my home and decided to step into the 21st century by upgrading to LEDs. Ultimately I settled on purchasing strands of LED christmas lights which I string up around the upper edge of every wall. It provides even, consistent lighting which I can leave on all the time in most of the house.
You can buy them from here, among other places:
http://www.christmas-treasures.com/AboutUs/Christ
I recommend the white for functional lighting, and the blue for areas that you want to be more relaxing (living room, for example). The purple is nice too but they are quite dim compared to the other colors.
I'm surprised it took rather long to supposedly come out with these. Traffic lights around NZ have used LEDs for some time, and since they arrived a few years ago, I've been waiting for consumer bulbs in the supermarket. I see they're not uncommon in other countries, though, a la howstuffworks and Google (the howstuffworks link explains the benefits and another google search explains some history).
At least there's LED torches to keep me happy in the meantime while I wait for those floodlights to make their way here.
Jonathan Ah Kit - Lower Hutt, New Zealand - jonathan@metalab.unc.edu
In a cold weather areas the waste heat indeed counts against your heating bill so that energy is "free" and LEDs appear less attractive.
But in areas where air conditioning is the rule LEDs are a particularly good deal. Your energy savings will be well over twice the waste heat because it takes more than 1 watt of air conditioning power to remove 1 watt of waste heat.
I have heard the new terminal in Israel's international airport is lit by LEDs, probably for this reason.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
You can dim LED lights by operating them in pulsed mode and changing the duty cylce. You can do this up to MHz frequencies (for red LEDs - I don't know about white ones), so people (and video cameras) will not notice any flickering. Of course you need a special power supply.
I've noticed that fluorescent lights have a discrete spectrum, versus the continuous one in incandescent bulbs. It's not surprising because the light is originally UV, which is converted into visible light by fluorescent materials, and you need basically one material for one wavelength. Thus there are a few different fluorescent materials to give an overall nice spectrum.
An object whose colour lies between these wavelengths would look black. It's not exactly the case in practice, as colours can be mixtures of wavelengths, but the visible colour will be distorted anyway to some extent.
You can easily compare the spectrum of lights by reflecting it off of a CD. At least the difference between discrete and continuous becomes apparent.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Or if you've ever had one oncoming to you, regardless of what you are driving.
I am referring to whatever lights people like to put on their cars, that are *not* aimed at the ground and/or are at least as bright as highbeams, that they *think* are foglights (or 'driving lights' - there is no such thing - the only 'driving light' for on road use are more commonly referred to as 'headlights' anything else would be 'OFF ROAD driving lights'), and that they keep on all the time even on a completely clear night.
As far as yellow/white, white lights dont do much in fog other than create more glare anyway. Anyone who thinks white 'fog' lights do any good is a fool.
Regardless, on a clear (nonfoggy) night, when there is other traffic oncoming and/or aheead of you, the only bright white lights you should have illuminated are your normal low-beam headlights (And if you have an SUV or a 'huge' pickup truck, you should rip them off their typical placement and remount them at the same height as everyone elses lights - take a look at how/where semi headlights are for an example)
For those not getting the joke, "chaud" is French for hot and Quebec has always been proud of being bilingual.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
I have a Halogen fixture at home - it uses what claims to be a 35W bulb shining the equiv of a 100W incandescent, and the color is perfect in my opinion. Is this lying about it's power requirements?
Admittedly it requires a special fixture, but I was putting new ones in anyway. (Also, the common halogen "torchiere" design wastes a lot of light by throwing it at your ceiling which is an entirely seperate problem.)
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If you limit the current flowing to an LED, it will dim in much the same way an incandecent does.
Even those cheap dimmer switches you use for incandesant bulbs will work.
And there's no theoretical reason an LED "light bulb" couldn't be shaped like anything.
Maybe you're thinking of Compact Flourescents?
I bought a EverLED Flashlight Bulb and installed it in a 4 D Cell Maglite. It's far better than any of the other LED flashlight solutions I've come across. Although it's not as bright as the Xenon bulb upgrade from Maglite, it uses far less power and it's brighter than the bulb that comes with the 4 D Cell Maglite.
Another way to save money is to encourage people to buy the ballasts and bulbs seperately. The ballasts tend to wear out with lots of "oning" and "offing". If the bulb is good, then why replace it? Just replacing the ballasts could make us more efficient also. If the ballast only costs $.01 [totally hypothetical], then it would be worth turning it off to save electricity.
testing out my trending skills
Is there an ideal application where a user would want the lighting to be dull, and price isn't as significant an issue?
testing out my trending skills
testing out my trending skills
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Now if I can only figure out how to keep them from getting stolen, I'm home free. An eighty-dollar floodlight item that some kid can steal in two minutes.
I put two 100-dollar solar-powered motion lights on two different houses and they both got swiped.
It might be "nice" to have full spectrum lighting so you can see on the videotape that the bad guy is wearing khaki instead of taupe, but it's really going to be irrelevant as far as prosecution. But "even" lighting is far more important than "dynamic" lighting -- you want light all around, no dark corners, no bright wash-out spots.
Anyway, price is always a factor for commercial installations. But price doesn't just include the cost of the bulb plus the cost of the electricity. The labor cost of replacing a hard-to-get-to bulb can be many times the cost of the bulb itself. Think of the cost of renting manlifts to get to those third-floor ceiling bulbs. If you have to replace an incandescent once a year, or a CF once every seven years, the electricity savings pale in comparison to the bulb changing savings.
John
LEDs can't act as rectifiers. They ARE diodes, but if you put too much of a voltage across it the wrong way, you'll blow it up.
My other car is first.
testing out my trending skills
Electricy heaters have 100% conversion of electricity into heat. This only matters to people who think the point of internal climate control is to generate heat the most effictively.
In the real word, we want to heat our house with the cheapest, best for enviroment, longest lasting, whatever method, not 'We can turn every watt of this into heat' method.
Why not just have warm air shipped to your house? Every bit of warm air that made it would be used to heat your house, wouldn't it? If you didn't want to ship it, you could just run your car engine, and put a pipe from the inside the car to your house...every erg of heat that made it to your house would be used to heat it!
The only thing electric heaters are good for is heating areas very quickly, like a fire, but without the disadvantages of a fire, and under circumstances where a heat pump doesn't work, like when it's -40 outside.
Of course, at that point, it'd be cheaper to have a gas heater instead of electric, but almost no one has both a heat pump and a gas heater, whereas all heat pumps have electric heaters built in. Gas is what you're really paying for when you purchase electricty, and if you burn it yourself you cut out that annoying conversion to electricity, which does generate heat...for the power company.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?