Slashdot Mirror
Sunlight in a Tube
Elitist_Phoenix writes "Scientists are developing a technology to save energy by transmitting sunlight into buildings through tubes. Indoor electric lighting is the largest consumer of electricity in commercial buildings. Their new system. called hybrid solar lighting, would reduce this energy usage with fixtures that supplement or completely replace electric light with sunlight, at times when its available. The system is called hybrid solar lighting (Google)."
It's called a Flashlight... =) Light in tubes...
"I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection." -- Sigmund Freud
How the hell am I going to maintain my pasty zombie-like complexion if they allow sunlight into the building?
Trolling is a art,
So what SPF will my employer be required to provide for my balding head?
Their new system. called hybrid solar lighting, would reduce this energy usage with fixtures that supplement or completely replace electric light with sunlight, at times when its available. The system is called hybrid solar lighting (Google)."
I think it might be called hybrid solar lighting? Not sure though. Could anyone confirm?
Nice... a story without a "RTFA" possibility...
-MrLogic
all the Amish retailers here use the same sort of thing. They can light a supermarket with redirected light during daylight hours, and light up the propane system once the natural light is gone.
Never ask for directions from a two-headed tourist! -Big Bird
A nifty little invention called a "win-dow".
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
What happens on days that are overcast? What about companies that work 24/7, for example tech support or sales companies? In the end, this will probably be more efficient than electric lights, but I imagine electricity will still suppliment it.
Unplug all controller for great reset!!
...just discovered Fibre Optics.
I live in Britain you insensitive clod!
I know you editors aren't supposed to actually read the stories, but can't you at least make an attempt at cleaning up this garbage summary?
This sig is false.
...in progress!
This webpage is probably hosted on a 486 with 9600 baud modem.
No sig for now.
You can buy them off the shelf:
http://www.skylights-of-hawaii.com/page13.html
-- Programming with boost is like building a house with lego. It's a cool but I wouldn't want to live in it
entirely content-free story on Slashdot? Look at the Google Cache of the first link!
Get a free iPod Nano 4GB!
It's already slashdotted but I'm going to go for the one comment these scientists will hate..
We have light in buildings, it's called windows. We're not living in 1984, it is okay to see the outside world.
I like muppets.
It's called "Lux-In".
Floating face-down in a river of regret...and thoughts of you...
I have large, rectangular transparent panels installed in many of my exterior walls. They work very well!
Cantankerous old coot since 1957.
This has been around for ages! I saw it used on a program in the uk called Grand Designs about a year ago!
They are called sun pipes.
and soon I can have my ultraviolet bullets to take care of those pesky vampires.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
After Scientists tackled the perplexing problem of getting light through a wall, via what is now called a "window," they moved on to the even more confounding "wheel," "fire," and "walking erect" problems. More news on these stories as they develop.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I think they already came up with this you intisive clod!! it called a candle!! idiot!
Uum, they have been around for years!i &rls=en& q=solar+tube&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
http://www.google.com/search?client=safar
Home depot sells a version and most good do-it-yourself stores carry them
They already have this. They've had it. Doesn't anyone ever watch Monster House? They used these on a couple projects. I don't know if it's the same design, but it's basically a tube, all reflective polished stainless steel on the inside of the tube with bubbles on either end of the tube (Tube goes through wall),
1. Install Tube
2. Sun signs
3. Pro... LIGHT!!!
http://www.solatube.com/
one in a windowless bathroom and another in the kitchen, this is not new, mine are over 10 years old...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
These things have been around for at least a decade.
"The last thing I want to do is deal with a bunch of people who want something."
Major Major
The Department of Energy has some information on solar lighting available here.
--It's Pimptastic!--
I think that was done something like ten years ago, it never took off presumably due to cost.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
At University of Minnesota, they made their Engineering School building mostly underground. The neat thing is that they used a series of mirrors to transmit natual light to a room that is something like 5 stories below ground. If you've ever been in that room before, it is somewhat surreal to think that you are underground, but still seeing natural light. I haven't been there in about 10 years though, so someone may correct me if I'm wrong about something here.
--
suso.org website/email hosting, no disk space quotas and personalized support.
This was done in Japan in the Mid 80's.
It was on Beyond 2000 (The tv show.)
The roof of the building had the ends of fiber optics and every desk had a tube-like lamp.
They said it was to freshen up the workers.
The funny part: In the mid 90's I heard a similar building was sued by an employee for skin cancer!
Gotta love it.
I've actually been bouncing this one around my head for a few years. Glad someone is putting the idea to use, since I'll never do anything with it.
Pretty Pictures!
From TFA:
I know for a fact that they've been doing this with light bulbs for a while (they collect like 90% of the emitted light from a halogen bulb and then can light, say, a staircase with it). Why nobody's done this earlier with sunlight, I have no idea.
I wish I could write clever and witty sigs.
This stuff has been available for 15 years.
Has there been a breakthrough? A cost drop? Or is it just that Oak Ridge started playing with it?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
...Microsoft have filed a patent number 234,234,234 for "illuminating things by means of shining lights on them, whilst somebody looks at an XML file in the next office."
My other processor is big-endian.
From the article:
In the system, a rooftop collector concentrates and sends sunlight through optical fibers, tubes made of special, high-purity material that transmit light by reflecting it down their inner walls.
That's exactly the first thing that popped into my head when I read this.
What exactly are they working on? Just stick a lens at the end of an optic cable and a dome on the other and bam free lighting.
Technology, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
Great in that I can get cheap natural lighting indoors.
Not great in that it does nothing to help me with my lighting problems when it's actually dark out, which is when I need light the most. If you think about it, this is an improvement on the window, not the light bulb.
Also, I bet those tubes present opportunities for leaks.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I remeber a story about that on discovery channel's show Beyond 2000. This was back in teh early 90's.
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
Wanting to get sunlight into an office building, Org, finds out if you burn sand long enough it makes it see through.... He then applys his cave-mind engineering skills to make this new stuff called...."Windows" and puts THOSE on the outside of walls to get the sunlight into his cave. Now he moves on to bigger and better things....like wheels and "Windows" operating systems.
.
.
. well at least wheels.
I couldn't fail to disagree with you any less.
Ok just before some calls this a new idea, why don't we (extremely expensive now, not so bad later) use fiber optics to create windows between windows and route them to inner offices so someone without any wall of the building can have an apparent window?
:P
I'm just really tired of me thinking of something then seeing it proclaimed as new several years later.
Of what happens when Microsoft patents Windows(TM)
luckily they couldn't patent doors
They want their Popular Science article back.
(This is not intended to flame the parent post... it's along the vein of "This is nothin new...")
The startup phase has its usual challenges, I'm sure, especially finding markets, but the company has become very successful and very well known.
It's called TIR Systems .
(Unfortunately I can't comment on the cited article as it's already slashdotted.)
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
But can it be used at night?
My spidey sense says NO!
Environmental Building News, Volume 8, Number 10 - October 1999
Imagine a device that sits on the roof of a building and focuses sunlight into cables the size of electrical wire. These cables are run through walls and ceiling plenums into light fixtures that beam natural, full spectrum daylight deep into a building's interior."
it's called Hybrid Lighting or Daylighting. Been around for a looooooong time.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
If this ever developed into something serious, the lighting divisions of GE and Sylvania would be up a creek.
I remember seeing this in the 80's when I was a kid. It was developed in Japan using fibre optics.
Sounds like "Not Invented Here" syndrome.
Ruby on Rails Screencast
What companies can capitalize on this?
Who's making them?
Any stock symbols?
Lets pull a BFT (Big Frikkin Tube) straight through earth, or since the core is so hot and all, pull it around a bit under the surface. Top the opening of the tube with a BFM (Big Frikkin ((Parabolic)) Mirror) and you have sunlight 24/7! Of course, the sunlight YOU receive would have to be taxed by every country the tube passes through, and the BFB (Big Frikkin Bill) would be delivered by way of RFT (Real Frikkin Tired) carrier pigeon from uzbekistan.
Google Link
... but what happens when it's cloudy?
You can already buy systems like this - check out this link for an example (no connection to me, incidentally). They work on total internal reflection and they're pretty simplistic beasts. I think the 'new' system is simply extending this concept - but it's hardly new.
Dearie me, yesterday's news for nerds indeed - architects have been using these systems for at least a few years now...
[shuffles off back under his stone...]
Quite dude, you're gonna destroy all hopes of our grant money coming through.
Not quite 20 years ago, I was sharing a house in Boston with another hacker. One day, the office manager from work had to come pick up some documents, and was horrified to find how we lived. There was a room, possibly labeled "kitchen" on the architectural drawings, but we had converted into "computer room" (well, with that 240V 50A outlet in there, where else were we going to plug in the VAX?)
She took pity upon us, and she and one of her girlfriends came to give the place a good de-toxing. She explained, that the two-geeks-in-full-geek-mode funk could be eliminated by opening windows, which she explained were movable devices, and not the transparent-aluminum bricks we had hitherto assumed them to be. (She got mega geek points for the obscure transparent aluminum reference).
One of the other things I learned in that house, was this:
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
Amish supermarket???
What is that, like the General Merchantile from Little House On The Prairie, only much larger, with pony drawn shopping carts and several checkout counters (each with an abacus)?
Those amish, what'll they think of next (oh, wait, they shun technological advancements...)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
OK, describing the light channels at "tubes" seems to be a poor choice. From TFA it looks like they are using fiber to pipe the light where it is needed.
Cool, but hardly new. I read about this years ago.
As far as windows are concerned, they pose a couple of problems. It is hard to get light from a window in the middle of a building. Probably more important is the issue of heat. Using windows for light w/o letting too much heat in or out of the building can be tricky. It is a bad solution to save $0.01 on light at the cost of $0.10 in air conditioning
All of you who are immediately attacking the idea saying "haven't we done this before" are missing the point. This is not just redirected light. It is transporting the light through fiberoptic cables and transferring that energy through regular light fixtures. This would allow solar power to light internal rooms that don't have windows. It also will generate electricity for other internal applications beyond light.
This technology would allow businesses to retrofit their buildings with solar light without having to do heavy remodelling to add skylights (the old way of doing it). This can be especially difficult for multi-floored buildings with internal rooms. Please read about the technology before immediately dismissing it as "nothing new".
I believe in de-evolution. God made the world perfect, man fell, and its been going downhill ever since!
this is old stuff. used to have a big tube that did this about ten years ago.
its was called light pipe, made by our friends at 3M.
Whoever posted this thinking it was some great new idea was dead wrong. This technique has been used in a few commercial buildings built over the past 15 years. Why on earth would scientists (unless they are like most slashdotters [clueluess]) be wasting their time looking at something that is already in use and works?
Well, I'll wait to be impressed by them bringing light all the way around the PLANET, kind of like Batman did in that movie. Which movie? this movie!
This space intentionally left (almost) blank.
21st century western society finally caught up with 5,000 BC Egyptian technology!
Another proof that egyptians were ALIENS!
This one is so not new, it reeks of death and decay. I think we have another case of 'teeny bopper' Slashdot editor doesn't know history, thing going on here again. It was actually done in the early 80's as found in an article in Mother Earth News, just before the Hybrid Electric car article. (I am not kidding you either).
I am not saying that Mother Earth news is the inventor, just that the tech existed 30 years ago, was published 30 years ago. Heck I am going to scour a few more of the older Mother Earth News articles and see if I can't claim that I invented them for myself too!
This is a pre-electricity invention. The only thing that is new is that they are using fibre optics instead of glass for carrying the light. Here's a LinkTo Shipboard Prisms that was used and patented way back in 1684. A good 331 years ago.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Off topic here but I have been wondering about an alternate heating/cooling system for a while and have found no information on this concept. Since this article is about energy saving, I assume people interested in that may be reading and may be able insight as to if this method would work...
Use alternate cooling/heating for the outdoor portions of a freon based cooling/heat pump system with water from underground. Underground temperature is usually quite stable at 55F. Basically, 55F degree water or a different cooling medium like car antifreeze (or some other product more environmentally friendly) at this temperature would be much more efficient at cooling/heating the condenser then using 80+ air or 30- air in the winter or summer. You could have an underground tank with a cooling medium in it that could act as a heat dump and pump the relatively warm or cold fluid up to the the existing outdoor unit for cooling. It would also be much quieter depending on design as you would not need a fan. I assume digging a hole and placing a concrete tank under the ground with a volume required consistent with your heating/cooling needs would be much cheaper in the long run then using a standard heat pump and air cooling. Obviosuly concrete is not the best conductor of heat but a steel tank may be better. Again, I have not calculated anything out so maybe my idea is out to lunch. I know I read a story about Toronto using cold water from the bottom of lake Ontario or Erie for summer cooling so progress has been in that direction, just not for home use or as an addition to typical home heat pump use.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Who else remembers seeing this on the Discovery Channel on either Next Step or Beyond 2000 back in the mid-90s?
I miss those shows. So far ahead they beat Slashdot by 10 years.
Direct away from face when opening.
They just launched a new service today called hybridsolarlighting.google.com which provides on-demand hybrid solar lighting to any terminal with internet access. The hybrid solar lighting competition is effectively dead, as any fool with a hybrid solar light can see.
I somehow don't see there beng a huge market for this in the UK.
It's called "mold".
Infuriate left and right
"Indoor electric lighting is the largest consumer of electricity in commercial buildings."
Where is this true? I worked as a stationary engineer in commercial buildings for years. HVAC was, I thought, always the biggest consumption of power. Of course, I'm in Las Vegas where in the summer the power bills are 4 times in the summer what they are in the fall.
What about all the programmers who are zombies, vampires and other assorted undead? This was one profession where they had a chance of equal rites because they didn't stand out from the crowd.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Sailing ships used compact prisms to convey light to interior rooms without the need for large areas of fragile glass.
And 3M had a material called SOLF, a vaguely Scotchlite-like material with tiny prism that could be made into tubes with highly efficient nearly-total internal reflection, that could carry light in, say, six-inch pipes over distances of many yards with negligible loss. Not terribly expensive, either.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
for maintaining light levels in combination with 'light tubes' which have been around for a good while, it's nothing new.
I have some controllers from a demolished Kmart store that used automatic control in conjunction with skylights.
Skylights were common in manufacturing buildings constructed in the late 19th and early 20th century.
But do exist large caliber fiber optics? It wouldn't help much have a tiny dot of light coming out of your window.
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
Bugger!
Yep that's it! 'Total Internal Reflection'.
Nothing to see here move along...
blah blah.
Anything to avoid using windows.
In today's news the ??AA tries to ban the new light sharing networks. According to the ??AA 'the use of these light to light sharing networks will put hundreds of hard working lightbulb manufactures out of business'....
To Slashdot or not to Slashdot. That is the question (that will cause me to fail an interview)
Especially when I want to brush my teeth. Uggh.
Didn't the Egyptians do this? =) My question is, what other technologies from ancient civilizations are we missing?
The people working on the solar lighting system are, of course, not scientists, but rather are engineers.
Yeah,yeah, yeah. You can buy these at Home Depot.
...back in the 80s, there was a prototype of something like this. It was an extremely high quality glass "light tube" that could actually visually carry light and whatever was at the other end of the tube. The experimental set up they were talking about mentioned a basement lab with six of these around the room. They looked like round windows or portals in the wall, but they actually looked straight up to the sky. You could look in one and see clouds going by. Sounded pretty cool. I think it was featured in The Futurist magazine in 88 or 89.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Can they save a rainbow in a jar?
Wishing I was a millionaire since 1969.
..and its brand new! well, it was 13 years ago.
..and I know T.I.R. systems has been making light-pipe for at least that long.. not that its not cool, its just sort of, you know.. old.
air and light and time and space
Back home they used to call moonshine sunshine in a jug. Are you sure we're not talking about home made booze??
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
OK, I agree that the techology is old news. But, as can be seen in the image that accompanies the article, the innovation of tying employees to their desks with fiber optic tubes is a truely inspired idea. I'm sure the CEO's of many hitech companies will find this method more in keeping with company's public image than the traditional employee restraint system.
I remember seeing this years ago, as a little kid on one of those "That's Incredible" or "What will they think of next?" shows, I can't remember which one, as it was a long time ago.
It was when fiber optics were new, amazing, moon-man technology, and I distinctly remember them showing how real sunlight was being "piped" throughout some Japanese office building via this new moon-man tech.
This doesn't seem to be too different. It seemed like a great idea to me as a kid, any reason why it hasnt caught on? Fiber optics are down in the price range (ballpark-ish) of romex these days.
Then again: the big push of the story was how natural sunlight is "better" for you than flourescent light, and build morale and prevents the winter blues, etc. Then sunlight became evil and is no good for anything but causing cancer and the healthiest thing to do is live like a tibetan monk and never go outside.
Is sunlight good or evil today?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
And we had to walk 10 miles barefoot through the snow in a jungle full of hungry tigers and shuriken-wielding ninjas to get that sunlight.
The new version they've been installing here in California since the mid-90s has a shiny mirrored duct about 8 in diameter that can carry sunlight about 10 feet and through a couple of 30 degree turns. They are pretty cheap, about $500 each, and work pretty well. You can get models fortitifed with compact flourescents.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
If we could only build these tubes long enough to port light from the other side of the world at night...
...Wait, even better, we put up several small satellites to bounce the sunlight received in say, Japan to say, NYC...
...No wait. Let's build one giant satellite to reflect the light directly from the sun to NYC at night...
...Oh, wait.
The prevailing opinion here seems to be that this is a stupid story, because light pipes are old news. Two people have even been moderated up to +5 for posting links to light pipe vendors.
Light pipes are NOT the story here. Hybrid lighting is a NEW lighting system which separates the visible and IR components of sunlight, directing the visible components to room lighting and the IR components to thermo-voltaic generator, which stores electrical energy to light the room after the sun has gone down. Ordinary light pipes do not do that.
From the U.S. Department of Energy Solar FAQ:
Q:How does a hybrid solar lighting (HSL) system work?
A:Imagine being able to light your home or office most of the day, and on most days, with sunlight, but not the kind that comes through the windows. That's what hybrid solar lighting (or HSL) systems are being developed to do. Prototype HSL systems are made up of roof-mounted concentrators that collect and separate the visible and infrared portions of sunlight. The visible portion of the light is distributed through large-diameter optical fibers to hybrid luminaires. (Hybrid luminaires are lighting fixtures that contain both electric lamps and fiber optics to distribute sunlight directly.) Unlike conventional electric lamps, the solar component of HSL produces little heat.
The remaining "invisible" energy in the sunlight, mostly infrared radiation, is directed to a concentrating thermo-photovoltaic (solar) cell that very efficiently converts infrared radiation into electricity. The resulting electric power can be directed to other uses in a building. When sunlight is plentiful, the fiber optics in the luminaires can provide all or most of the light needed in a particular area. But when there is little or no sunlight, sensor-controlled electric lamps turn on to maintain the desired illumination level.
Independent cost and performance models suggest the overall affordability of solar energy could be doubled or tripled by using this new hybrid approach. The multidisciplinary R&D effort involved in developing HSL includes several industrial and university partners. Other Resources:
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
These lighting systems or gas tubes? Is there an offset cost for cooling if these lighting systems cause more heat to be generated within the spaces?
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
At least that's what my wife calls it....
This could have a positive effect on workers as well. Flourescent lighting, which is common in office buildings, is not the best type of lighting to work under. Natural sunlight could produce a boost in moral because people are generally less depressed when they receive more sunlight.
There's been one of these attached to the Ark Mori building in Tokyo since way back when. It's got a big array of hexagonal collectors (that track the sun) on the outside, and it pipes the light inside to where it shines on some rather mangy bamboo.
I heard it was the pet project of the son of someone important.
Sure gives that impression.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
I like many others have health problems related to sun exposure. Putting systems like this into commercial buildings is a public health threat. Not only are we talking about skin cancer, but lupus patients, and those made sinsitive due to medication and other deseases. And for those who don't know sunscreen is often not nearly enough protection for individuals sensitive to sunlight.
Whenever I was young and used to get in trouble, my mom used to say something about being put so far under the jail they'd have to pipe sunshine to me - and now someone has gone and made that possible!
:::The Spear in the heart of the Other is the Spear in the heart of You; You are He - Surak of Vulcan:::
I seem to be the only one who found this FAQ
Yes, it's thick fibre optics. That's not new, as many comments have pointed out.
The novel trick here is that they're splitting the solar light into visible and non-visible spectrums. The visible is routed to the "hybrid" fixture that also has a light bulb in it and a light sensor to make sure the hybrid fixture is putting out enough light. The non-visible portion of the solar light is used to GENERATE ELECTRICITY with Photovoltaic cells that are specialized to work with infrared.
This has been around for years. I remember seeing the Japanese doing this with fibre optics probably 5+ or so years ago.
Can all fish swim?
How long does it take to recoup the energy used to manufacture miles of visual light conduit?
I've been looking at lightpipes, mirrored conduits which collect light from a skylight into an internal window around corners, through storeys, etc. I wonder why we can't use a lens to a fiberbundle to another lens, for much cheaper versions.
And where's the photonic battery, an optical medium which can collect sunlight, store it optically, and emit it later in full spectrum, at maximum efficiency?
--
make install -not war
I believe that we've seen this before on an old Discovery Channel show called,"The Next Step". These were prototyped in Japan more than ten years ago.
I guess they didn't catch on as quickly as was hoped.
Lightpipes have been around for a while and you can pick up versions in Home Depot. The difference is this system sending the visible light throughout the building, and splits the IR off and sends it to a PV cell. Since the light is already concentrated, the total cell area is small and the efficiency is good.
anyone have a ring of light and darkness resistance?
Mr. Burns insists on collecting royalities on your sunlight?
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
I'm not conversant in the details, but my understanding is that the latest generations of LED technology are making rapid gains. And recently, advances in getting decent white/fuller spectrum light out of them have been made and/or hinted at.
Given that these things can be installed using current systems, and have very low current draw and heat generation, I'm wondering how well what is essentially an architectural design element, with the implications of same from implementation through to building code (including safety features such and firewalling and the like) will be able to compete against LED fixtures and similar.
I've seen concrete and bricks that let in light. You insert optical fiber perpendicular to the surface, before it hardens. You can control the amount of translucently by the amount of fiber.
have to spend more on air conditioning. Brilliant!
Make love, not reality television.
Wouldn't these optical waveguides also pipe quite a bit of heat into the room? This would be great in some areas, but I would think that the areas that would most likely have enough sunlight to benefit from this tech would be in hotter climates. would we just be trading lighting bills for cooling bills?
\/\/oobie
RTFA, these are different - they mix the sun light with regular lamps to produce a constant light source. When there's more sun, there's less electric light. Less sun, more electric light.
Solar tubes are neat, but they are not the same as solar hybrid light.
My sig left me for a younger user id.
English sailors solved this problem 300 years ago with this little gem.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
Oh wait, that *is* MS IP, so I guess they can innovate on that.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
This is old as hell! We've had two of these in our house for 5-10 years now! (I think ours is called a "sun tube") All it is, is a mylar-like tube with a glass ball collector at the top.
...Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
Florence USP, the feds super max facility in Colorado already has something like this. The prison is multiple floors underground and there's a "no humann contact" policy for most of the inmates.
The mail is projected on TV's in single man cells and the sunlight is piped through some fiber like tube and relflected off a small disk on the table.
There are at least six manufacturers of tubular skylights. They're not too useful, because, as windows, they're small. And you have to clean them, which is hard. They're used mostly by home architects who've managed to create a dark interior area and need to get out of that design mistake.
Plastic skylights are bigger and more useful.
William Wheeler invented a system to light up buildings with light pipes in 1880.
Although this technology isn't that impressive (to me at least), it's a great innovation.
The extra sun-light will also help with office morale, since you will be getting a good dose of daily vitamin D (it's given off when sunlight reaches your bones and helps with your pigment... at least that's what I remember learning).
If it helps with stress, I'm all for it.
The only thing I don't like about this system is its need for an active sun-tracking device in order to pump light into the fibers. I've been trying to fit my brain around a way of performing the same task passively, but it's difficult. Even if it's only 10% the efficiency of an active system, I'd still prefer it, even if it wound up costing a bit more, because I'd rather not have something that was complex and might break down.
it's a technique the romans used centuries ago.
Any bets on how long it takes the USPatentOffice to grant the patent and ignore the prior art?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Nice in theory. But has anybody costed out the $$$$ to make and install a solor collector of the required size? I'm estimating my office which has 20 80-watt fixtures would need about would need about TEN 1-meter diameter collectors. I can't see these going for much less than $1K installed each. That's an awful lot of $$$, especially when you still need the old lighting system for cloudy times and at night. The current lighting costs about 7 cents an hour, 56 cents a day, about $100 a year. There's no way to pay for the cost of the collectors, not even within a factor or ten.
Punching holes in the roof.
You are limited in the length of the tube and the bumber of internal reflectors.
Dust will settle on the reflectors.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
It looks like they've improved on the solar tube design?
http://www.solatubetexas.com/
It's not a new idea, but it's very cool. It's good to see that similar technologies might spread to non-residential/recreational uses.
I was playing with light pipe back in my highschool days, 16 years ago.
"Apparatus for lighting dwellings and other structures" us patent 247229
Beauty is truly in the eye of the tiger
These could be controlled by dimmer or luvres to change intensity to regulate artificial light with the natural light. Producing more of a light "blend". :)
I've often thought that refrigeration costs could be reduced in cooler climates as well.
For example, in Michigan, for probably 4 months of the year, the outside temperature is cold enough that the refrigerator in my family's garage freezes.
Why not build refrigerators that have intake/exhaust tubes from the outdoors. When it's cold enough, cold outdoor air could be circulated through the fridge!
My bicyles
I've seen articles about this and how it can be used to grow tomotoes underground back in the 90's. Exact same principle and everything. Parts renamed perhaps to give it a new glow?
Kris
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
mmmmmm....yeaaahhh...suurrree...
So the Terms of Service don't apply to these either?
As an engineer in the lighting field, sorry to tell you this, but light pipes have been around and lighting buildings for over 100 years. Fine on bright sunny days, but not so good otherwise. The main drawbacks have been cost and control. Running the pipes from the rooftop collectors is expensive, much more so than 'standard' fluorescent lighting.
In the early systems, the pipe was a glass tube filled with water. There was near total internal reflection. The pipes couldn't go to far, as the water would attenuate the light.
There are current lighting systems for hazardous areas that put the lamps outside the room and use light pipes to bring the light inside. I believe that a couple of Intel plants use this system in the Fluorine and Silane areas. A few aircraft plants do too. It's too expensive for most uses though.
The systems don't store light well, and can be tough to turn on or off. Dimming is also hard. Still, somebody re-invents it every 15 years or so. Looks like we're on the next cycle.
...and they are called windows
It's the battle of the minds, and everyone's unarmed.
Here's a visiting journalist's report:
Full report here:
Sunlight? Wow, the indoor growers will be happy if they only have to use HPS during the times when the sun's not out ;-)
That was really very well done.
a small glass pyramid with the flat base on the deck and the sides doing refrection/diffusion in the cabin...
Only existed for a few hundred years...
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
You refer to slow glass, the technology responsible for the psychological insights and human drama in the story Light of Other Days by Bob Shaw.
Rightfully a critically acclaimed story and classic SF.
Is that like hair in a can?
hmm, 'no officer, i was using this hybrid system to light my house, not grow hybrid plants! ;)
when people return there used up scenery for a recharge all of the stored up light will get dumped in those nice vistas...
sum.zero
I remember seeing a special on this like, uh, maybe 10 years or more ago.
They were wiring up buildings with these large fiber optic wires that terminated as the light sources. They then would use sunlight (when available) or switch to a central lighting system that used a really frick'in bright light as the source.
jjjjjjjjeeeeeeeeeezzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
sum.zero
This discussion is simple. Solatube www.solatube.com invented these tubular skylights back in the 1980's and they dominate the market for skylights. I have two if them in my house. To answer some of your questions, they are ENERGY STAR approved and have virtually no heat gain or loss. When people talk about "solar tubes" or tubular skylights, they are talking about Solatube skylights.
back in 1999, my friend TJ and myself did a science project in high school that sounds strikingly familiar...if anyone cares, the webpage can be seen here. hey, we both passed! behold, science
Why dont they just use Mirrors...?
I understand a fellow in New Jersey is working on a way to run sunpipe transmissions over wires that are essentially the same as those currently used to transmit our telegraph messages over long distances. Imagine the implications for homes and businesses, in which the mirror-adjusting servants of the modern sunpipe might soon be uncommon like the Dodo. It isn't even required to load these "electric sunpipes" with actual sunlight at the supplying end. According to this Edison, his Electronized Sunlight will be generatable from any heat source, including newly cheap and plentiful petroleum oils, with no concern for whether at the current hour our friend Mr. Sun currently favors the company of good Americans or Chinamen instead. I imagine a day soon where it will even be possible to turn telegraph messages themselves into electric sun, so the shop foreman can stay at his machines, or the tired father in his study chair, "reading" his telegraphs simply by observing the brightening and dimming from his electric sunpipe roomlight! How Almighty God smiles on His children, indeed!
I watched an issue of Deutsche Welt news in a cheapish hotel in Brussels.
/.) illuminate office spaces. and in that film with the unicorn and the devil, that hobbit like chap uses mirrors to send sunlight into hell. good flick.
Some crafty Germans use mirrors and reflectors on a mountain to focus light onto prisms in town squares to illuminate dark areas of towns during the day.
In other news, some crafty people have windows that bend light further into the room, giving more even lighting.
In other news - I had this idea ages [20yrs?] ago, concentrating the light down fibers and then using technology like this new refractive cheapo flat screens (see
What I have realised is that innovation is happening faster, and cheaper to implement and simpler ideas are becoming more commonplace.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Lin-Lux
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I saw these on a "home improvement" type show several years ago. I remember on the show they installed these in an office building. They filmed as the inspectors showed up. They were going to fine the builder for having the electricity turned on the wiring was approved. They had to explain in detail that it wasn't electricity running these lights. I've wanted them ever since. I wanted to install them in my house when I bought it, but I've had other more important things to improve first.
But why is the rum gone?
sitting right here on my desk. Has internal nicads, you can also put replaceable batteries, is a flashlight and a radio with am/fm. Has some solar cells integrated with the body, just leave it in a sunny spot in front of a window, keeps it charged. It also has a small crank on the end, has an internal dynamo so you can charge it that way as well, and to top it off, has an external 6VDC jack in. man, you got some options with the power there! One of the better gadgets I ever bought. All it lacks is the bulb is incandescent, I should see about making it LED sometime. Label on it says "Craig Marathon"
The heat has to be filtered before the light is concentrated -- or the glass fiber would melt at the focus.
One way -- long used for microscope illuminators -- is a thin sheet of material at an angle in the light path that reflects (rejects, loses) the infrared, and passes the visible wavelengths.
The picture from the current article shows a thin flexible glass fiber bundle glowing brightly (presumably they'd wrap it in something reflective? Or maybe it's not losing all that much, or that's how it distributes the light, that wasn't clear).
I recall early attempts at this failed because of failure to remove the heat -- and at the bright spot where the focused sunlight was to enter the light guide, the glass melted or the optical glue caught fire.
Is this going to use all that dark fiber optic cable that was put in place just before the dot bomb happened?
Let's see, break the cables out from the telephone switch box and then dial up the other side of the planet?
Sun Dome sells this. They have been around for a number of years.
A far better link is this. Reading that, you'll see that it's much different from a window or solartube.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I saw these things on one of those home shows a while back, it was either hometime or something on the DIY channel....the model they had was basically a reflective tube with a opaque lens at the bottom, it also had a lightbulb in it so it acts like a normal light when there's no sun out...it was kinda neat because it pretty much just looks like a normal light fixture, and works just like one when the sun isn't out.
If you don't want someone to copy something, don't give it to anyone.
I saw a working demonstration of this about 10 years ago. Why the all the noise now?
I wonder how this compares in cost and efficiency to solar panels. My guess is solar panels are less efficient but require less cost to implement (can even make you money if you sell power back to the grid). How much optic fibre does it require to implement? Anyway, good to know we have options should prices lean to favor optic fibres over solar panels.
you know that stuff in cereal box toys from the 80s. saves light to glow later....
yes its a greenish / yellow light, but makes a great night light.just time it when its in the tubes.
The one picture that site has is linked to a AOL user's web site? Ok.. Anyway, more information about solar technology and a picture of a light tube!
Dracula must be pissed
What happens at night?
"Most residential tubular skylights cost $300 to $500, not including installation. The least expensive we found were about $200 for 8" diameter (200 mm) models.... The best selling 10", 14" and 16" (250 mm, 360 mm, and 405 mm) Solatube units provide up to 3,760, 6,300 and 8,200 lumens, respectively, under ideal, full-sun conditions."
This is from 1999 so there's probably inflation, but assuming a 8" diameter skylight puts out as much light as a 100w bulb under average conditions (a 100w bulb puts out 1700 lumens), and given that a 100w bulb would cost 4.8 cents to operate for 6 hours at 8 cents kWh, and lets say the skylight provides 16 hrs of light a day on average, that same light would cost 12.8 cents with a 100w light bulb, or about $46 a year. That means it'd take over 4 years for the skylight to pay for itself, to pay back the $200, if you absolutely needed a light on for 16 hours a day during the day.
Let's not forget the cost of installation, or the fact that you'll still need a light at night, or that you can't turn it off if for whatever reason you wanted to "turn the lights off" like in summer when it's light out until after 10pm, or even the money lost in heating/cooling due to poor insulation since the more holes you punch in a roof the harder it is to insulate, or the fact that those are 1999 prices and in 6 years I'm sure it's more expensive now.
So it's not an cost effective replacement for incandescent lighting and certainly not fluorescent, however sunlight has been proven to be beneficial, from improving moods to influencing cancer, so it might help in that regard, but it's really not worth it for the money, least not in the short run, I'd bet it'd take at least 10 years to get your money back and then it's only 13 cents a day at current average electricity prices.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
I hope this invention's got more bandwidth than it's website, else there's goner be some pretty shady buildings. The usual - /.ed again
Look! Here's a source for dark fiber, we can send sunlight wherever it's needed!
....
BUSINESS/FINANCIAL DESK | May 21, 2002, Tuesday
TECHNOLOGY; Metromedia Fiber Files for Bankruptcy
ABSTRACT - Metromedia Fiber Network Inc, telecommunications company backed by billionaire investor John W Kluge, files for bankruptcy
So if it's evening or cloudy locally, no more prob... one can dial up some sunshine from far away... Hawaii, Australia, etc. As long as there's enough transoceanic and long distance fibre capacity hanging around.
I'm glad someone is finally getting around to implementing this. It's not just saving on lighting costs, but cooling costs as well, as there won't be any extra heat generated from bulbs (while it's in full mode). Plus this would be a great advantage to our health - it's known that our bodies really do need a full spectrum of light that we just don't get with standard or flourescent lighting.
Antisource - antivirus, antispam, antispyware
Keep hitting with the facts, Tom. These Greenhouse Deniers will run out of preprogrammed talking points pretty fast, as the ugly truth outnumbers us all. FWIW, research presented in England this past January indicate that the chances of the Gulf Stream shutting down by 2100 are 45%, and 75% by 2200. Freezing Britain, and plunging Scandanavia and elsewhere into arctic climate.
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make install -not war
This is the funniest thing I've read on /. all week.
They've invented a technology that lets you look right through walls!
It's called a window.
To see how the lighting looks during a thunderstorm at night.
These things seem esthetically appropriate for bringing sunlight-colored light into buildings. They're better than windows for moving the light around corners and deep inside large structures. But the article touts their energy efficiency compared to electric lighting. How much energy is consumed in their manufacture and installation, compared to electric lighting? How long will the fiber system last, what are its maintenance costs compared with electric lighting? If making the fibers costs (in joules) about the same or less than making the wires, or the lenses last longer than current bulbs, this could in fact save energy. But if the fibers or other components cost more, possibly multiples of their electric counterparts, this system's popularity could rush us towards our energy bankruptcy much sooner. With oil production reaching its inevitable decline as soon as a couple of years from now, we can't afford yet another efficiency boondoggle.
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make install -not war
If you could cover the light-collecting thing with something that filters all but a certain color, then the light that reaches the room will be that color - won't it?
Vee interesting... but is it very different from Parans' daylight in a cable?