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."

Comments

Future of Lighting Design

[maino82]

I'm a lighting and electrical systems design student and a lot of talk has been going on about LEDs these past few years. One thing people seem really excited about is the color mixing capabilities. While it may be true that a single white LED might not provide the kind of white you want, you can mix RGB to any color temperature of white you want (from a warmer incandescent color to the cooler color of the sun). I went to Lightfair a few years ago and saw an LED parking lot light that had an array of various color LEDs that mixed to white on the workplane, and an added bonus was that because there were so many colors in the array, the color rending was amazing.

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.

Hrm...

[Duncan3]

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?

Re:Bought some today!

[ebh]

Arrays that mix red, green and blue LEDs can produce any color of the rainbow.

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.

girls and color sense

[zogger]

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.