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LED Evolution Could Spell The End For Bulbs
An anonymous reader writes "USA Today is running a story discussing how LED lamps were unthinkable until the technology cleared a major hurdle just a dozen years ago. Since then, LEDs have evolved quickly and are being adapted for many uses, including pool illumination and reading lights, as evidenced at the Lightfair trade show here this week. More widespread use could lead to big energy savings and a minor revolution in the way we think about lighting."
I'd buy them for that capability alone.
I wonder when we might see LEDs with enough brightess to serve as a projector lamp?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I used to think of LEDs as cute little indicator lights. A nice tiny, soft green LED light tells me that my monitor is on, or blinkenlights let me know that packets are flowing through my router. An orange LED might alert me to standby mode on a device. None of them were really all that visible unless I was looking directly at them, and certainly none put out any ambient light.
Then I got my newest computer. This thing has a single blue LED backlighting an area the size of a dime, behind the power button on the case. When I turn off all the lights, after a minute or so of my eyes adapting, the single blue LED gives off enough light to illuminate half the room. For the first week or so, I had trouble getting to sleep because of the light... From one blue LED.
As the technology gets better I can imagine LED lamps coming in vogue. I seriously doubt that the end of the bulb will come anytime soon, though. Probably not in my lifetime.
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
This is no surprise... it's been this way in flashlights (hand torches, to you brits) for a while, particularly the higher-end ones and those designed for specialty applications.
As an example, some of the weapon-mounted lights being used by the military are also going to LEDs. Some of the regular incandescent bulbs just don't hold up as well to the punishing recoil of most weapons... you were forever changing bulbs. The higher end incandescent lights like the Sure-Fire lights could take the shock, but forget mounting anything like a mag-lite on a weapon.
Best thing about them: they're easy on the batteries. Batteries are heavy, and there's nothing worse than having to carry too many spares. Every ounce counts when you're carrying it on your back.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Unfortunately, like the article says, the first cost is still prohibitive in a lot of cases, although the savings in energy would seem to make it worthwhile. LEDs also tend to get very, very hot in large quantities if they're used for a long period of time, so air circulation is a common problem as well.
Hopefully some of you computer engineers and programers can come up with a cheap way to produce and control LED arrays so I can start using them in practice! Building owners would be extremely happy if power consumption in buildings would go down significantly and if they had the ability to control the color and brightness (they are easily and cheaply dimmable, unlike flourescents) of any room individually.
So which way am I better off? Just using lower wattage "classic" lightbulbs, or with dozens of 120V AC->5V DC converters wasting energy everywhere.
The adapter for my iBook puts out more heat then the iBook. More of the heat from my AMD64 is from the power supply vs. the CPU and Gfx.
Almost nothing I own needs over 12V anymore. When will I be able to just have one nice 120->12V spaceheater and run everything else in the room off 12V?
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Mostly true. When viewed directly, the eye perceives any color in the color space defined by the three LED colors. But the actual light is still trichromatic, so it won't light up the objects in the room the way you expect them to. A beautiful yellow light might make an object of that same beautiful yellow look like a dingy brown, becuse there's no actual light of that color to reflect off the object.
Try it yourself: Tonight, set your screen background to various colors, turn off the other lights in the room, and see what things look like when lit only by the monitor. The effect isn't as pronounced, but it's still observable.
I have an interestiung anecdotal from ye olden days. Way back when, I had a girlfriend who was an artist, and going to an art school. They had a black tie affair for the students faculty and parents,so we went. Hey, free food and champers! Me in a tux, too funny! Anyway, one of the students mom's there lost a diamond out of a setting, fell on the floor someplace. So here's a couple dozen people in gowns and tuxes all bent over squinting at the floor. We saw it, went over to ask "what's up"? Got told about the loose stone, girlfriend glanced down, immediately spotted it, went over and picked it up, like one second. She saw it from her extraordinary ability to see colors. She had been tested in the school and won, ran 10,000 colors in ROYGBIV sequence not missing a single shade, the only student to get all of them correct.
It will be some years before we reach this tipping point in price however as current costs are about $100-$200 a bulb for 65watt equivalent LED bulbs
10 years after most bulbs are LED conventional bulbs will seem anachronistic and stone age. One of the few things in the last 100 years to just be out and out replaced by a new technology. Granted we have lots of bright shining new things in our modern world, but they general have been added to what we already have or evolved slowly from what came before. The switch to transistors from tubes is about the only other thing that comes to mind where this has happened, and perhaps this should just be seen as one of the last hold outs of filaments in tube to be displaced by solid state. All that is left to go are CRTs and this too will happen relatively soon.
In need of a similar revolution: Cars that run without gas - this is a hard one, but we are finally starting to make some progress; Energy production from other than Oil, Gas, Coal, and Uranium. Fusion is about the only way to go here, but it isn't doable at any price today. None of the other energy alternatives have a chance of displacing the big 3 fossil fuels or remaining conventional nuclear plants; Getting to Space without conventional rocket technology. Do all these things and we will have finally arrived in the 21 Century.
Letter To Iran