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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).
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.
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.
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.
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'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...
Where are you located. In most areas of the US electricity is around 8c/KWH
slashdot username - at - email.domain.name
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.
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.
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)
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.
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
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
"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.
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 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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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.
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.
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
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!
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
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.
- 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.
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.
K.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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