A Monster LED Array For Irresponsible Fun

Tesladownunder writes "This huge LED is on steroids and then some. It is intended for use as a streetlight. It has a 7000 lumen output at 100W and will burn a hole in a CD case without focusing. And that's without the infrared that a halogen or discharge lamp has. Very efficient and low maintenance. Stronger than HID car headlights or a 500W halogen. Hit the site for lots of data and pics of it in action including burning and irresponsible bicycle luminosity. You'll want one to attach to your keyring, too."

Comments

Sharks

[ikirudennis]

with frickin' LED arrays?

Re:Sharks

[digitalunity]

I hate to ruin the party, but 70 lumens per watt is pretty terrible.

Sure, maybe that's a milestone for high power LED's, but it's not that useful compared to a low pressure sodium lamp that gets 160+ lpw. Also, both high pressure sodium and low pressure sodium lamps(2 most common street lamps) have a more pleasant spectrum on the eyes.

A pink or reddish tone is a lot better at illuminating streets than a faux white spectrum that has high peaks in the blue region.

Re:Sharks

[vlad30]

A pink or reddish tone

Thats why its called the red light district?

Re:Sharks

[Rei]

That's the problem with the lumen scale. The most efficient LEDs are red and blue. The lumens scale weighs green an order of magnitude more than red and blue because it's based on the sensitivity of the human eye. In LEDs, there's a so-called "green gap"; there are no efficient green LEDs, which is right where we need it the most when it comes to lighting that our eyes can see effectively.

Now, for plants, it's a different story. Plants love red and blue, which is what LEDs do best. But really, we're supposed to be impressed by 100W of LEDs? I have 200W of LEDs in the room next to me (I start my garden seedlings under LED light). A standard UFO grow light is 90W, and many dozens of them sell daily on Ebay alone. What the heck are they doing spending $500 AUD on only 100W of LEDs? I got my UFO for $140-some; that took watching for a few weeks, but you can "Buy It Now" on them generally for $225. The rest of my LEDs are LED xmas lights, which are even cheaper (although the UFO seems more effective... pretty nice product, IMHO).

Re:Sharks

[Shark]

Enough with the frickin' stuff already!

Re:Sharks

[Rei]

Oh, and in case anyone is curious about growing plants under LED lights, I've been documenting the experience here.

Net result? The UFO works better than the Xmas lights, but the Xmas lights do work. Everything but the lettuce and brassicas seems to thrive under the LEDs, and the lettuce and brassicas would probably thrive if they were right under the UFO instead of on the periphery. Some plants, like the pumpkins, have been acting like the LED light is steroids. So, if you want to grow plants indoors but don't want a huge power bill, I'd go with a UFO or two inside a reflective chamber.

And yeah, I know, most people just use them for pot :P

Re:Sharks

[Dreadneck]

So, when's the harvest? :)-~

Re:Sharks

[mnemotronic]

...both high pressure sodium and low pressure sodium lamps(2 most common street lamps) have a more pleasant spectrum on the eyes

Which is what makes them totally unacceptable in this here application buckaroo, which is about cooking someones eyeballs in situ. "Pleasing spectrums" is fer them artsy-fartsy, gayboy wanna-bees. Kill-o-lumens is fer manly men. Gimme an "oo-rah".

Re:Sharks

[Anonymous Coward]

That's neon. Sodium is orange.

Re:Sharks

[Rob the Bold]

Also, both high pressure sodium and low pressure sodium lamps(2 most common street lamps) have a more pleasant spectrum on the eyes.

I don't think I've ever heard anyone claim that low pressure sodium lamps have a pleasant spectrum before. Sure, the bright monochromatic yellow may be intriguing to look at, but the world it illuminates is a weird ghostly yellow and black landscape. In fact, they make a good total-color-blindness simulator. There's a reason that despite the power efficiency, low pressure sodium is used only for utility lighting, and it's the color rendering (that and the restart time).

With LED lighting, you could potentially save power by turning on full illumination only in areas in use, and keeping unoccupied outdoor areas much dimmer. LEDs can be turned on and off quickly, with negligible startup and restart times. I'm sure that would require careful planning for gradually lighting up an area to avoid dazzling pedestrians or drivers and not creating a flashing-neon-sign film noir effect for people sleeping indoors nearby, but there could be potential. An unused light turned off is very efficient.

Re:Sharks

[exley]

A pink or reddish tone is a lot better at illuminating streets than a faux white spectrum that has high peaks in the blue region.

Better, or just what people are more used to?

And while the lumens/watt metric may not currently be as high for LEDs as other types of lighting (although it is constantly improving), LEDs provide plenty of other benefits such as energy efficiency, environmental impact, and lifetime.

Re:Sharks

[Zero_DgZ]

Yes, but funky blue-spectrum LED lights will make your downtown area look like a cyberpunk novel cover, which is worth way more awesome points than 160 lumens per watt.

Plus, if existing phosphor-on-blue-die LED's are any indication these will also make fluorescent objects in your downtown area light up like christmas trees.

Re:Sharks

[Rei]

That's not the next step; the next step is transplanting outdoors so they can make use of that nice free light, The Sun. ;) Just this evening I finished setting up vine clips on hanging strings to support my climbing plants. I look forward to the airborne pumpkins and melons ;)

Re:Sharks

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't the high heath discharge a signe of lost energy? the most efficient a light should be, the less heath it should output... so melting CD cases makes me wonder.. lol

Re:Sharks

[robbak]

It is melting them with visible light energy. Visible light is just the same as infa-red light when it comes to heating things up. It's just that it's also useful with seeing things as well.

Re:Sharks

[serviscope_minor]

What?

160lpw is for the most efficient lamps currently known. So, yes, 70lpw is impressive. Also, the 160lpw low pressure sodium lamps don't have a "pink or reddish tone" they are very orange (actually two orange lines very close together). The high pressure sodium lamps, the white ones with the pinkish tone are more like 100lpw, in which case, the LED is quire close.

Re:Sharks

[Alioth]

Also, LED lighting has hit around 100 lumens per watt (the Luxeon Rebel cool white LEDs peak at about 100 lumens/watt). The colour of the cool white LEDs is also a lot more pleasant than the older "white" LEDs which don't actually look white but pale violet.

Re:Sharks

[Whillowhim]

The "flashing neon sign" effect is unlikely without a malfunctioning LED control. While you refer to negligible startup and stop times, I don't think you understand just how small they are. Many dimmable LED lights don't actually dim the LED at all, instead they turn the LED on and off around a thousand times per second - much faster than the eye can distinguish. This has two major advantages: the on voltage is constant and the duty cycle allows easier adjustment of brightness.

With a constant on voltage, you can set it to the most efficient voltage to produce light or the easiest voltage for your power source to produce and it will stay pretty close no matter how much or how little light you want from it. If you compare it to old style incandescent bulbs, at low voltages they start putting out mostly non-visible light wavelengths and their color shifts dramatically. The heat of an LED will shift the amount of on current slightly, but it should be a fairly small effect in a properly controlled circuit (in an improperly controlled one, you end up with fried LEDs as the heat pulls more current which makes more heat).

The duty cycle adjustment also allows much more consistent light output. LED light output is mostly dependent on current, which is exponentially related to its voltage. A small shift in voltage can thus result in a huge shift in current and thus light output. Good current sources aren't all that easy to produce, especially variable current sources (FETs are often modeled as current sources, but the model isn't perfect). However, by varying how much time the LED spends turned on vs. turned off you get a dang close to linear function of brightness. If the LED spends all its time on, its 100% of its possible brightness. If it spends half of its time on, it is 50% of its possible brightness. If it spends 12.5% of its time turned on... you get the idea.

Of course, there can be slight flickering issues if you don't turn the LED on and off fast enough. And the control circuitry does draw some small amount of power. And the heat of 100% on vs. 25% on will cause some drift. And... well, lots of small things. Its still a heck of a lot easier than getting a variable current source properly tuned to the LED's forward bias voltage and the in-line resistance, especially including all manufacturing variances.

Re:Sharks

[repvik]

Depends on your definition of "pleasant". Orange/Yellow light doesn't affect our nightvision as much as other colors. I can see that as a pretty significant reason to use sodium lamps as streetlights.

Re:Sharks

[Iskender]

Also, both high pressure sodium and low pressure sodium lamps(2 most common street lamps) have a more pleasant spectrum on the eyes.

Low pressure sodium has a pleasant spectrum?

Low pressure sodium lights emit most of their light in one specific band. In effect, the light is monochromatic. Under one of these, one cannot see colour. It also makes people look dead.

Personally, I like the light. However, I'm a total nerd and most people I've met with an opinion have hated them. High pressure sodium is of course another thing altogether, which is why it's used pretty much everywhere.

Re:Sharks

[moosesocks]

Many dimmable LED lights don't actually dim the LED at all, instead they turn the LED on and off around a thousand times per second - much faster than the eye can distinguish.

Actually, this has been the dimming method of choice for incandescent lights for several decades. It's extremely efficient, and can be electronically controlled.

It's less noticeable on these types of lamps because incandescents have a much longer "rise" and "fall" time, although you can hear the filament "buzz" on some larger lamps (PAR64 especially).

Some newer dimmers can switch fast enough to simulate a full and proper sine wave.

Re:Sharks

[peragrin]

Anyone who needs their night vision use red and green lights.Once you hit blue and white it can take 10-30minutes for your eyes to adjust back. It is biology.

Light spectrum colors and their effects are known. Meat counters use pink lights, as if they used a bluish color the meat looks rotten. Take a good look Round yourself some day. Various shades of colored lights are used everywhere to promote different products. And for effectivedifference between HPS and white Metal Halide go to a mall parking lot and then to a car dealers. Notice which one hurts your eyes.

Re:Sharks

[lras]

I hate to ruin the party, but 70 lumens per watt is pretty terrible.

Yes. As comparison, a regular light bulb gives you about 15 lumen per watt.

Re:Sharks

[Anonymous Coward]

But really, we're supposed to be impressed by 100W of LEDs? I have 200W of LEDs in the room next to me

Yeah? Well I've been to a Chemical Brothers gig.

Re:Sharks

[Anonymous Coward]

> most people just use them for pot

They would be daft to. You still can't beat an HPS light for that purpose.

Re:Sharks

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the problem with the lumen scale ... it's based on the sensitivity of the human eye.

How is that a problem? Who are we making these for? What good is a scale that gives equal weight to a part of the spectrum that we cannot see?

Re:Sharks

[Rob the Bold]

The "flashing neon sign" effect is unlikely without a malfunctioning LED control. While you refer to negligible startup and stop times, I don't think you understand just how small they are. Many dimmable LED lights don't actually dim the LED at all, instead they turn the LED on and off around a thousand times per second - much faster than the eye can distinguish.

I only meant that if one tried an overly simple motion-controlled lighting scheme, you could be turning the lights on and off all the time, irritating sleeping residents. I didn't mean to imply that I'd never seen a triac, SCR or FET in my life and that pulse width modulation was the tool of the devil. I've seen security lighting set up so poorly that it pops on every time a bunny hops by, then turns off 15 seconds later, making me wonder when Veronica Lake or Lauren Bacall was going to knock on the door. I really didn't intend to address the specifics of dimming at all in that short post, so I am glad that you pointed out the additional advantages of LED w.r.t. dimmability for the sake of discussion.

Re:Sharks

[amoeba1911]

That must be some good harvest if it makes you see pumpkins and melons that are floating.

Re:Sharks

[Anonymous Coward]

Old studies. You need a brighter red light than green light to see the same info, and brightness of the red is more damaging to night vision. An appropriately dim but white light is best.

Re:Sharks

[Anonymous Coward]

"Plants love red and blue, which is what LEDs do best. But really, we're supposed to be impressed by 100W of LEDs? I have 200W of LEDs in the room next to me (I start my garden seedlings under LED light)."

What type of seedlings are you growing? Couldn't be anything related to, oh, MJ, could it?

Re:Sharks

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, may be great light for you, but has stopped being used in outback australia due to people with dark skin being practically invisbile under them

Re:Sharks

[dziban303]

I love the Xmas lights idea. I've tried starting a small garden to help with food costs but I've got a nearly impossible insect problem in my yard. I've tried lots of insecticides but since I plan on eating this stuff I'd rather not carpet bomb them with chemicals.

Re:Sharks

[ankhank]

> Better, or just what people are more used to?

Better. See this good summary; the research has grown quite convincing over the last decade.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/40170/title/Darkness,_melatonin_may_stall_breast_and_prostate_cancers_

Re:Sharks

[AK Marc]

Of course, there can be slight flickering issues if you don't turn the LED on and off fast enough.

Every car implementation I've seen leaves me with flicker. I don't know if I'm more sensitive to it (based on my experiences with monitors and flourescents, I don't think so), but when the vehicle's implementation is to have the tail lights be flickered and the brake lights at full power, I can always tell by the flicker. So, rather than aiming for the 80% or 90% level of people noticing, it would be nice if they engineered it so 99.9% couldn't see the flicker.

Re:Sharks

[robinesque]

Many places use high pressure sodium lamps for municipal lighting so that nearby observatories are not washed over with light pollution. The reason being the sodium lamps emit on a single spectrum, making it easy to subtract that light from the observations.

Re:Sharks

[Chibi Merrow]

Minor quibble... Low pressure sodium is preferred by observatories. High pressure sodium has huge bands all over the spectrum, while low pressure only has a single strong band and a bunch of weak ones.

Re:Sharks

[networkBoy]

FWIW it doesn't stimulate the wake-up response either. I've nearly fallen asleep at the wheel on the road under that lighting...

Re:Sharks

[Rei]

If you care about your power bill or heat signature, you certainly can.

I don't give a rat's arse about heat signature, but I certainly care about my power bill.

Re:Sharks

[Rei]

What good is a scale that gives equal weight to a part of the spectrum that we cannot see?

Human eyes aren't the only thing on the planet that light is relevant for, you know.

Re:Sharks

[srleffler]

This is not a "problem" with the lumen scale. This is what the lumen scale is for. Lumens rate the utility of light sources for human vision. Green is weighted heavily because the eye is much more sensitive to green than to red or blue. A light source that can't produce green efficiently will not be highly efficient for illumination. If you want to know how efficient a light source is as a grow light, then you need to use some other measure than lumens per watt.

Re:Sharks

[Rei]

Yeah, yuk it up. I'd just love to see the DEA raid my home and haul out tomatoes, eggplants, lettuce, pumpkins, basil, shiso, vine peaches, muskmelons, crookneck squash, ronde de nice squash, odessa squash, english daisies, trailing soapwort, lupine, and half a dozen other plants I'm forgetting off the top of my head.

I don't have much in the way of south-facing windows, so if I want to start my seedlings indoors, it needs to be done under lights. And LEDs are the most efficient option available.

Re:Sharks

[Axess Denyd]

But the eye is more sensitive to blue light than to red (in dark conditions), so shouldn't blue tinted be better for seeing than red tinted?

Witness: My watch, with its blue "indiglo" backlight, will light up my bedroom at night, but in daylight the light from it is impossible to detect.

The red-illuminated alarm clock on my nightstand appears to be of equal brightness whether the room is completely dark or it is very bright.

Cones and rods don't have the same low light color sensitivity.

Re:Sharks

[jbengt]

Flicker is mouch more apparent on a moving light, as the "on"s and "off"s may occur at different points on your retina

Re:Sharks

[Rei]

That scale is called PUR, and unfortunately, PUR stats are rarely given out on lights. I've even seen grow lights which use lumens, which is just ridiculous. Lumens has become the standard, but it's not universally applicable.

I simply object to the notion that if something puts off few lumens, that means that it's inefficient. Far from it; it's just that it's not very useful for *general room illumination*. It's great for, for example, growing plants.

Re:Sharks

[rrohbeck]

The "green gap" is just about to go away: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=dawn-of-miniature-green-lasers

Re:Sharks

[MikeS2k]

This is amazing.
Additionally to that he actually made a Tesla Coil in the same style as the Soviet Tesla Coil from red alert 2!
complete with Engineer suit!

http://tesladownunder.com/Red%20Alert%20Tesla.htm

Re:Sharks

[dangitman]

If you're navigating under street lights, you aren't going to be using your night-vision anyway. Isn't the monochromatic nature of sodiums a major downside? It would work against things like identifying the color of a vehicle or clothing in the event of a crime - a pretty important feature for street lighting, I would think.

Re:Sharks

[badkarmadayaccount]

That's fine and dandy, but LEDs need square waves.

Re:Sharks

[badkarmadayaccount]

I'm also a fan of the edges of the spectrum. Blue/violet or orange FTW! I can't explain why, though. I guess LPSodium gives the brain the impression of sun[set]/[rise], while cold white/bluish reminds you of moonlight.

So....

[Darkness404]

So nothing better than to walk underneath a streetlight that can burn a hole through a CD case? Somehow I think this might be an unsafe thing to have....

Re:So....

[Anonymous Coward]

The 20 feet tall people will just have to watch where they're walking.

Re:So....

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Somehow I think this might be an unsafe thing to have....

Luckily we don't currently walk around for 1/2 the day under a light source that's hot enough to burn a hole through a CD case (if it's placed close enough)...

Hey?

Re:So....

[pipingguy]

Quite fun at the office are those super-strong magnets you can buy. I keep mine stuck to the side of my computer case. Can they affect solid state drives?

Re:So....

[Deltaspectre]

I tried this experiment, but the flourescent lighting didn't even succeed in bleaching the color :(

Re:So....

[DFJA]

Or maybe just ensure they don't carry CD cases on top of their head...

Re:So....

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 Made me laugh out loud.

Re:So....

[Anonymous Coward]

>The 20 feet tall people will just have to watch where they're walking.

Thanks for the heads up!

Re:So....

[MadKeithV]

You moron. It's not the fluorescent lighting. We keep that off. It's the monitor glow!

Re:So....

[Lumpy]

Stop taping your CD cases to the Streetlights.

P.S. a standard sodium vapor bulb will make a cd case melt all over and burst into flames. Or did you think those lamps are cold to the touch?

Please, go grab a hold of the nearest 100 watt incandescent lamp for us :)

Re:So....

[zbharucha]

Turn a disadvantage into an advantage. With the amount of research devoted to optical communication these days, these things are a godsend! The streetlamps could each have backbone connectivity to the web and voila - you have internet coverage all over your well-lit city.

Is it just me...

[Anonymous Coward]

...or is that page totally fucked up in Firefox?

Re:Is it just me...

[BadAnalogyGuy]

It's just you.

I like side scrolling and searching for graphics.

It's like a game!

Re:Is it just me...

[kheldan]

It's not you. The page's author used Microsoft FrontPage to create it, so naturally it doesn't render correctly unless you're using IE.

Re:Is it just me...

[Hal_Porter]

It looks ok to me in Opera apart from an ugly gap at the top of the page.

Re:Is it just me...

[Firehed]

So fucked up, in fact, that I couldn't even save it trying to hack the thing in Firebug. Or Safari's inspector. I mean... I've seen websites that fail outside of IE before, but never like this. It somehow even managed to override it's own inline styles for the table width - by several thousand pixels, no less.

The one time I try to RTFA and this is what I get. I should have known better.

Re:Is it just me...

[Profane MuthaFucka]

This is how you fix it real quick:

1. ctrl-A and cut the entire page out of Firefox. Paste it into Open Office.

2. ctrl-A to select all text and change the text color to black.

3. ctrl-A to select all text and go to the Table/Table Properties menu.

4. On that menu, change the right boundary of the table to something that is not a mile off the right side of the page.

You can fuckin' read it now.

Re:Is it just me...

[tsa]

That's a real nerd solution to a problem that shouldn't exist. If the person who made that website wants people to read it it should render correctly in most browsers. Apparently (s)he doesn't care who reads his/her website so I'm not going to bother.

Re:Is it just me...

[BadAnalogyGuy]

IE is "most browsers", if you want to think about it that way.

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0

Re:Is it just me...

[Anonymous Coward]

We three Opera users have no problem.

Re:Is it just me...

[Anonymous Coward]

that may be true but he's still saying fuck off to about 1/5 to 1/4 of every viewer which is quite a bit of people especially for something that has a bit more interest to more technical minded people which tends to use firefox more.

Re:Is it just me...

[windsurfer619]

Oh no!
I'm addicted!

Re:Is it just me...

[Anonymous Coward]

He didnt say 'the browser most people use' he said most browsers. Firefox would be one of 'most browsers'.

Alternatively:

s/most browsers/standards compliant browsers, and then IE if you have time/

Alternatively, Only absolute ignorant fucks use MS Frontpage to make webpages. The only thing worse is using MS Word to 'export' to HTML - I'm sure you could easily make a 'Hello world' page that took up more than 100Kb in html code alone using MS Word.

Re:Is it just me...

[story645]

Not if you open in ie tab/switch rendering agents.

Re:Is it just me...

[Dreadneck]

Three? I didn't realize there were that many left.

Apologies. It was there and I had to do it. :D

Re:Is it just me...

[falken0905]

Wow, finally a site that actually renders -better- with Opera (v9.64) than with Firefox! I'm so excited!.!.!

Re:Is it just me...

[azav]

Screwed in Safari too.

Re:Is it just me...

[Fotograf]

it is you, i have 30" monitor and found it welcome change from that crapy 800px websites around the world

Re:Is it just me...

[Anonymous Coward]

here is a better solution:

In firefox with the Web Developer extension, click the "Linearize Page" under Miscellanious.

you can now read the page

Re:Is it just me...

[robbak]

Also worth noticing: the linked Ebay pages suffer from the same disease.

Re:Is it just me...

[Errtu76]

The words 'quick' and 'openoffice' don't go well together.

Re:Is it just me...

[twinchang]

Wow, you "fix it quick"!

I would just click "View->Page Style->No Style".

This is how you fix it real quick:

1. ctrl-A and cut the entire page out of Firefox. Paste it into Open Office.

2. ctrl-A to select all text and change the text color to black.

3. ctrl-A to select all text and go to the Table/Table Properties menu.

4. On that menu, change the right boundary of the table to something that is not a mile off the right side of the page.

You can fuckin' read it now.

Re:Is it just me...

[Anonymous Coward]

If the site fails in all non-IE browsers, it's more like 1/3.

Re:Is it just me...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not you. The page's author used Microsoft FrontPage to create it, so naturally it doesn't render correctly unless you're using IE.

Or Opera. No rendering glitches here, no hacks needed or performed.

Re:Is it just me...

[Cinnaman]

It all comes out properly in Opera, I have this installed on my computer as an alternative browser.

Re:Is it just me...

[Andtalath]

It works fine in Opera though. Not in Midori though. Not in Dillo either.

Re:Is it just me...

[Canazza]

Just go to View > Page Style > No Style
the table is still a bit screwed, but atleast you can see the images

Re:Is it just me...

[TheThiefMaster]

It has a really screwed font tag (below) round about the first line of the specs. IE and opera seem to just be skipping the two "<" between the first "<" and the first ">", where firefox is assuming that there should be a ">" before each "<". It's closed as if it was just one font tag.

<font face="Times" Roman New NewOutdoor Indoor lighting < font color="#ffffff" width="100%" colSpan="2" <TD>

Re:Is it just me...

[rednuhter]

you sir are a [voicemode value=ominous effect=echo] god ![voicemode /]

Re:Is it just me...

[merlinokos]

Your fix implies effort on my part. The only effort I'm willing to put in here is to contact the site creator and tell him the page doesn't render in my browser, and therefore I can't view his wonderful experiment. Perhaps, if he gets enough of those emails, he'll redesign his page to be viewable for the large minority that don't use IE.

Re:Is it just me...

[xX5h1ll3l46hXx]

Also looks off in Epiphany.

Re:Is it just me...

[tesladownunder]

Hey, I am the poster of the article (that seems to be pissing off all Firefox users). Seems the problem was a table of specs that I cut and pasted from eBay. Hopefully fixed now that I have deleted it and I will put a manual table in - and yes I will get Dreamweaver...

Re:Is it just me...

[melstav]

Running Firefox 3 here, and it rendered just fine.
I did notice, however, that the page assumes that your browser window is at least 1000 pixels wide. I had to expand the Firefox window until the frame was 1019 pixels wide to make the horizontal scrollbar go away.

It's *possible* that the person fixed the page so it's more sane in the time between your comment and mine.

Re:Is it just me...

[dotancohen]

This is how you fix it real quick:

(four steps that nobody should have to take, wtf)

In Firefox just View -> Styles -> None. I use that all the time.

Re:Is it just me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod this into the ground, whatever, but this needs to be said.

Apparently (s)he doesn't care who reads his/her website so I'm not going to bother.

As others have said, maybe the guy's thing is engineering and tinkering rather than web design, and maybe he's putting this up for people who'll think it's cool rather than people who can make him money. So it doesn't have to be flashy, it just has to get his point across. Y'know... that whole content over style thing.

If the site owner didn't care who'd read the site, it wouldn't be on the internet. If you're not going to give the site a chance because it he doesn't lovingly handcraft his CSS and spend a week picking just the right background color, you're not his intended audience anyway, and he doesn't care if YOU read the site.

GTFO my internet. People like you are one of the major problems now, and enabling most of the others.

Re:Is it just me...

[donjefe]

Looks good in 3.1 Beta ;)

Re:Is it just me...

[xdroop]

Or chrome.

Re:Is it just me...

[unl0rd]

It doesn't look pretty, but renders fine for me in FF 3.0.8 @ 1440x900. Also fine in IE7, Safari 4 (win), and Chrome (albeit slow)

Re:Is it just me...

[daenris]

That's odd. I'm viewing in firefox 2 and have none of the problems others have mentioned regarding side scrolling, misplaced images, or visible code.

Re:Is it just me...

[Anonymous Coward]

The issue seems to be fixed. As of Friday morning (about 11:00 EDT) the page renders fine in Firefox (3.0.6). As noted at the bottom of the page, "This page was last updated April 17, 2009."

Re:Is it just me...

[Anonymous Coward]

...or in install noscript (looks alright here).

Re:Is it just me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Folks, the page looks fine in FF 3.1 Beta 3.

Re:Is it just me...

[againjj]

Not any more. It was fixed: http://entertainment.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1201873&cid=27609223

Re:Is it just me...

[Anonymous Coward]

No matter- we have just exceeded his bandwidth limit
Slashdot scores again!

Another use

[clarkkent09]

Staring at one of these LEDs from close range will erase the ugliness of the linked site from your memory. Try it

Re:Another use

[DrVomact]

Ugliness? It looked liked totally trashed HTML to me. No images, visible code, broken tables... How can somebody post a link to this?

Re:Another use

[davolfman]

It's functional on IE 6. Which really doesn't do much for this guys geek cred.

Re:Another use

[Shinmizu]

How can somebody post a link to this?

We're trying to slashdot it out of existence.

Re:Another use

[spydabyte]

Bad website design aside, this guy is what I would call a da Vinci of our time. Just check out all the HV things he does in his free time after being a MD all day.

I personally enjoy his gaming references, but there's something for everyone.

Just... wow. His curiosity and expanse/depth of testing is simply baffling....

No wonder he didn't have time to design a website, he's not interested in boring numbers and code; he enjoys placing himself in, what I would call, risky situations.

Re:Another use

[Dreadneck]

We're trying to slashdot it out of existence.

What's this 'we' shit, Kimosabe?

Re:Another use

[Dreadneck]

You can be a geek without being a computer geek. Maybe his thing is electronics and not coding.

Re:Another use

[gringofrijolero]

How can somebody post a link to this?

Years of practice

Re:Another use

[perryizgr8]

yeah! look there is a photo on his home page in which he is standing inside a faraday cage and there are red sparks all over his head!!
this is some cool shit!

Re:Another use

[quenda]

What is this IE6 you speak of?

Re:Another use

[TapeCutter]

Thanks for that, I agree the madman is indeed a bright spark. Also your links look ok to me in FF, could be because it's twilight here in Oz right now, perhaps he has only just noticed he left the plasma halo around his server switched on.

Re:Another use

[Inda]

His tin foil and gaffer tape safety suit is fucking amazing. I want one. I want one for the whole family.

Re:Another use

[Anonymous Coward]

yet the LED sunglasses massively compensate making him the uber geek.

Re:Another use

[dotancohen]

You can be a geek without being a computer geek. Maybe his thing is electronics and not coding.

Then why is he making webpages?

By the way, webpages were _invented_ for physicists who are not coders to have an easy-to-use markup language.

Re:Another use

[slashdotjunker]

The photos on his website are amazing. However, nearly every photo is a long exposure shot. What a let down. You can make any crazy picture you want with a long exposure shot. These pictures are not real. If you were actually standing there you wouldn't see it.

To his credit, he explains exactly how every shot was made and what the exposure settings were. He's not trying to trick anybody. But, it seems like most people are willing to trick themselves.

Also, you would call him a "da Vinci or our time"? Please mods, don't mod stuff like that up.

Re:Another use

[Dreadneck]

Then why is he making webpages?

Maybe he wanted to share his interests with other like minded people? Last time I checked you don't have to be a coder to make webpages - as his use of Front Page already suggests.

By the way, webpages were _invented_ for physicists who are not coders to have an easy-to-use markup language.

Most physicists have to learn some amount of coding just to process their data, whereas it's not a necessary requirement for an electronics enthusiast.

Re:Another use

[spydabyte]

Okay maybe I used the term lightly. But as far as I'm concerned, anyone who is a MD and has enough time to be qualified in as many areas of interest that he has completely investigated and personally improved upon (I mean he does everything from x-rays to small electronics and can crushing...), I'd definitely call him a Renaissance man, at the least.

Plus it's just my opinion, don't hate just cause you don't agree.

I RTFA....

[Narnie]

While I think the pictures are interesting, the layout makes me wish I didn't read the fucking article.

Re:I RTFA....

[Eil]

While I think the pictures are interesting, the layout makes me wish I didn't read the fucking article.

I guess you could say he wasn't the brightest bulb in the bunch?

Re:I RTFA....

[aliquis]

Yeah, 3x wide in Safari... CSS failure?

Re:I RTFA....

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, all this talk of how bad it is makes me suddenly want to RTFA...

It's like Eddie Murphy said - when someone farts and tells you, you don't run - you pause, smell it, THEN say, yeah you did!

Firefox unfriendly

[Snowblindeye]

That page gets really messed up under non IE browsers. Both Firefox and Chrome show a pretty broken page. IE7 seems to display it OK.

Re:Firefox unfriendly

[alriode]

There are some hints about this issue in the source code:

<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<title>LED's</title>
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 6.0">
<meta name="ProgId" content="FrontPage.Editor.Document">
<meta name="Microsoft Theme" content="black 0111, default">
<meta name="Microsoft Border" content="none, default">
</head>

The horror! The horror!

Re:Firefox unfriendly

[jeffb (2.718)]

<meta name="Microsoft Theme" content="black 0111, default">

I forget the order of the screw flags on the content attribute. The first one is IE, of course. But are the next ones Firefox, Safari, Chrome, or Firefox, Chrome, Safari?

Re:Firefox unfriendly

[bh_doc]

Bad Konqueror 3.5, too.

Re:Firefox unfriendly

[FlyingBishop]

It's Firefox,Chrome, Safari.

But it's only implemented in FF3, so it's quite useful for setting up an invisible box to tell Firefox users to upgrade to FF3 (Since there are people still using it about.

(Honestly, though, I have a span on my site with style="opacity:0;" telling users to upgrade their browser to the latest version of Firefox, Opera, Safari, or Chrome. They've only recently switched over from -moz-opacity, so this works excellently.)

Re:Firefox unfriendly

[GrumblyStuff]

Seemed find (ugly as sin) but still uh, vertical in Opera.

Did they try to mess up firefox on purpose?

[X-Power]

I don't think it could have been worse than this even if they tried.

Possibly questionable design?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

From the pictures, the device is clearly an array of individual LED emitters all epoxied into the same housing. From the drive voltage (32v) they would seem to be arranged as several parallel strands of multiple emitters in series. Further, there doesn't look to be much room inside the package for any sort of per-die regulator circuitry.

That being the case, I'd expect failure of any one emitter to be a serious issue. If, because of bad luck, thermal hot spots, moisture infiltration, or whatever, one of the emitters fails, it will either fail open, and break the circuit for all the other emitters it is in series with, or fail partly or wholly closed, and expose the emitters it is in series with to higher voltage. They will, then, start to die as well, until the whole string is dead.

Once an emitter goes, you aren't really going to be able to swap it out in a package like that, and I'd expect several of its buddies to swiftly follow it off this mortal coil.

Re:Possibly questionable design?

[fractoid]

To be fair, it looks more like a "hey we made this for fun" thing than a serious attempt at making a practical ultrabright array.

That said, LEDs are pretty robust, and tend to fail open circuit rather than closed circuit so if individual LEDs blow in a series chain, they don't destroy others with them. A few years back I did a lot of work with similar arrays to provide controlled lighting for machine vision - you can overdrive them by ridiculous amounts as long as it's only for a very short time (although they do 'wear out' faster with this treatment). We had no troubles passing over 10 times the rated current through standard 'ultrabright' LEDs for up to 10-20 milliseconds.

Re:Possibly questionable design?

[m85476585]

They should be driven by a constant-current supply, so if one emitter in a series fails to short the power supply will just drop the voltage until the current is back to a safe level.

Re:Possibly questionable design?

[bitrex]

I've wondered recently if, with a sufficiently large LED array under microprocessor control that simulates a "double humped" brightness curve, one could point it up at the sky and start triggering these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vela_satellite . I wonder what kind of new government friends I could make?

Re:Possibly questionable design?

[Anonymous Coward]

What?! To me the analogue is obvious. This is clearly revolutionary technology on a Nobellian scale.

Christmas tree lights = Vacuum tubes
100W LED array = Transistors

I await tremblingly the advent of the Integrated Klieg Light.

Re:Possibly questionable design?

[QuasiEvil]

Constant current supplies don't deal with fail opens, though. If a string fails open, then the other parallel strings pick up additional current, likely causing them to fail. It's a cascading effect. The more that fail, the faster the remaining strings burn out. Per-string current regulators would be the way to go.

Re:Possibly questionable design?

[Yvanhoe]

I still don't understand why people consider it a toy. A lighting device that runs on 100 watts and that is capable of rivaling the sun itself is a very interesting thing.

Re:Possibly questionable design?

[Alioth]

Generally the way you make the power supplies for LEDs, a failure closed circuit won't be like you say. Typically, an LED illuminator power supply is a current regulating supply, as in you set the current and the voltage takes care of itself (so you can use the same circuit to power 1 LED, or two LEDs in series, or three... or up to the maximum voltage the power supply can provide at its output). So if one LED failed closed circuit, the voltage across the whole string would fall as the current regulator works to maintain the set current.

On a LED array I built, I had exactly this happen - one LED in a series chain failed. But the power supply did its job, and continued maintaining the set current, and the others continued to shine at the correct power level.

LED power illuminators never (or at least, none that I have seen) contain the power supply in the actual illuminator module. The power supply is separate to the LED - it must be thermally isolated from the LED, so the the array heating up doesn't affect the power supply.

Re:Possibly questionable design?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

For sufficiently large values of "sufficiently large", I don't see why not. Sufficiently large values of sufficiently large, though, might be quite considerable. Even the Little Boy, which is quite small by contemporary standards(save for intentionally limited special purpose stuff), generated a 370 meter fireball and released a nontrivial portion of its energy as light.

Re:Possibly questionable design?

[Hatta]

To be fair, it looks more like a "hey we made this for fun" thing than a serious attempt at making a practical ultrabright array.

For $500 it better be a damn lot of fun.

Re:Possibly questionable design?

[Cassini2]

Every series chain needs its own constant current source. Otherwise, you get into a load-leveling problem between the chains, where if one LED has a negative temperature coefficient, it can overhead, reduce it's resistance, and draw even more current and heat into that particular chain until device failure occurs.

For LEDs, a simple resistor is often used as a constant current source. For efficiency reasons, a constant current switching power supply may be used in high-power designs.

The resistor / switching power supply design can also be combined. Use a resistor to regulate current in the individual chains, then regulate the overall voltage to the module such that the LED chain experiencing the highest current draw is kept within parameters. Depending on the power levels involved, even simple things like wire resistance, inductance and the equivalent series resistance of the LEDs can also serve as current limiting resistances. As such, the "current limiting resistors" might not be physical components, and instead could be the intrinsic properties of some of the devices already in the circuit. The detailed design of a high-power LED array can be quite subtle.

Light vs Heat

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't the goal for a light source to turn as much of the power as possible into light rather than heat? Why is being able to burn a whole in a CD case a good thing for a light?

Re:Light vs Heat

[jeffb (2.718)]

When light hits a surface, some of it bounces off, and some of it gets absorbed. If you dump a whole lot of light onto a surface, it gets hot enough to burn. That's why giant frickin lasers are non-harmless.

Re:Light vs Heat

[clevelandguru]

Light has energy that gets converted to heat when it hits a material. Just like the heat generated on earth by the sun light.

Re:Light vs Heat

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, the difference is totally whether the heat gets created right when the light is leaving the source or when it strikes some surface away from the source.

That array is almost as bright...

[jeffb (2.718)]

...as the site designer is dim.

90s layout

[tsa]

Wow, the person who made that website is firmly stuck in the 1990s. No way I'm going to be reading that webpage.

Re:90s layout

[Anonymous Coward]

More like entrenched in M$ technology... which is stuck in the 90s.

Re:90s layout

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Agreed. if it doesn't render in Firefox, there's no reason to bother. The author is obviously an idiot.

Re:90s layout

[chickenrob]

The guy is interested in playing around with cool stuff, not building websites for YOU to think are cool.

Re:90s layout

[tsa]

Why does he bother to make a website then?

Re:90s layout

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the point of your blog? He probably made the website because he likes to have somewhere to put his thoughts and results of his experiments, in the same way you have a blog.

He is probably quite unaware that his Frontpage created site looks quite broken to most people because he probably doesn't expect many people to read it and he most likely uses IE (or maybe Opera!) which it displays fine in. It's quite easy to view the page without formatting so don't get your knickers in a twist.

How about contacting him regarding the display issues and suggest a solution, rather than slag off this obviously intelligent man for using a poor authoring tool.

Do want.

[John Pfeiffer]

I actually bought some LEDs recently from the eBay seller he mentions. Some 250,000MCD 10mm white LEDs, some little DIP-package white LEDs, and some DIP-package RGB LEDs. I saw these LED arrays and I knew I wanted one of the 50watt 3500 lumen ones for a DIY 1080p projector build. (Also possibly to jury-rig an LED replacement for the $400 2000 lumen bulb in my BenQ projector)

The 7000 lumen one like he's playing around with would be nice if you want to build a projector that doesn't require a light-controlled environment, or is projecting a super-large image. (Or if you want to just burn shit down, lol) I imagine with that sort of output though, it starts to become a real heat problem for the LCD in the projector, just like a conventional bulb.

These days it's getting so that anyone with a little know-how and some cash can build nearly anything they want. Especially if you just built your own CNC milling machine. ;3

Re:Do want.

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw these LED arrays and I knew I wanted one of the 50watt 3500 lumen ones for a DIY 1080p projector build.

Ick, that will look awful.

Re:Do want.

[squoozer]

I've been looking at trying to replace a very expensive bulb in an old projector of mine too but I've not really had time to do much research yet (and my electronics knowledge is sadly lacking). Have you got any further than planning on doing it? I would be very interested in more information if you have it.

Re:Do want.

[Thelasko]

The 7000 lumen one like he's playing around with would be nice if you want to build a projector that doesn't require a light-controlled environment

Screw a projector, I'm using it to burn out the CCDs on those infernal red light cameras!

Re:Do want.

[eggnoglatte]

Actually, for a projector you want more than even a 7000 lumen light source. That is because an RGB LCD panel is only about 10% or less transmissive in "white" state, so your 7000 lumen light source gives you only around 500-700 lumen as a projector. Most commercial projectors these days are 2000 lumen or higher.

Re:Do want.

[dangitman]

Especially if you just built your own CNC milling machine. ;3

Screw that, my CNC milling machine built itself.

That guy has one of the best websites on HV stuff

[zymano]

Great photos too. Look through his laser and HV section.

Amazing collection. Interesting character.

Warning

[Virak]

Do not look into website with remaining eye.

Burn a hole in that site

[carlzum]

Wow, that looks awful in FF. If you're running Windows and really want to read the article, use IE or the IE Tab plug-in for Firefox. If you have any doubt that FrontPage is the worst thing to ever happen to the web, take a look at the page's source:

<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 6.0">

Would it have killed them to learn HTML and CSS?

[Anonymous Coward]

The 1990s called. They want their Microsoft FrontPage back.

The plural of LED

[ChenLiWay]

is LEDs, not LED's.

That is the last time...

[Anonymous Coward]

I RTFA.

bright, but spendy

[Eil]

You can get these on eBay, but they cost a pretty penny.

Also, I really hope that guy didn't actually use this 100W LED streetlight as a headlight for his bicycle as the pictures imply. Not only would that be extremely rude, but extremely dangerous/deadly as well.

Re:bright, but spendy

[Lumpy]

why?

My car outputs 135 watts and it's not extremely rude and deadly.

I think you dont understand what the light output of that unit is. My silverstar headlights together put out 12500 lumens. that array is 7200. mine are focused ahead, that one without optics is an area light.

Most cars on the road and motorcycles put out more light in their headlights than this array does.

Watts for Watt Halogen headlights put out 15% more light than LED systems do.

LED's are very low efficiency in light output per power used. They are getting there, but CFL is far better and they are just getting as good as halogens. they do pass incandescent well though.

Re:bright, but spendy

[minimum]

What are you talking about?
The efficacy of halogen light is about 20lm/W, CFL around 50-70 lm/W
The LEDs, depending of drive current (and make/model) 70-100 lm/W
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_efficacy

So there's no way the halogen and CFL are far better than LEDs.
In fact, the LEDs combined with special optics have the huge advantage over the halogen,CFL and high/low pressure sodium lamps because of the precicely controlled light pattern. Conventional luminaries have usually reflector, which directs the light about to right direction, with efficiency of 30-70% .
In streetlights with LEDs it would mean no "hotspots" under the streetlight pole but evenly distributed light where it's needed and no unwanted glare, light pollution and etc. The even distribution means less lumens needed from light source. What matters is the luminaire efficacy.
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/ssl/comparing_leds.html

The 100W LED module from the original article is not very good for applications where the light distribution is crucial because there's no (good) optics for the large array of tightly packed emitters in one package. Similar situation as with gas discharge and fluorescent lamps where the light is not sourced from one point (LED die is usually around 1mm2 in size) but more like area. LEDs, such as Cree XR-E, XP-E and Philips Lumileds Rebel have huge selection of aftermarket optics available for different applications. The efficiency of the optics ranges usually around 80-95%.
Another matter is cooling of the LEDs. The 100W module definitely needs active cooling to dissipate the generated heat in order to maintain the die temperature below 70-80 degree in Celsius. Temperatures above that will damage the phosphorous coating and die which results in rapid degradation of light output.

The reddish light from high pressure lamps is not better for dark environments because of the spectrum. Human eye when adjusted to dark (scotopic vision) is most sensitive to 505nm light which is cyan. The photopic (daylight vision) peak sensitivity is 555nm (green).

Sounds a lot cheaper than the ABL...

[tjstork]

The ABL... such a cool idea on paper, but 8 billion bucks later and no laser on the plane. They are using a chemical laser.. wonder if they should be using LED lasers...

Re:Sounds a lot cheaper than the ABL...

[Anonymous Coward]

they should do, if solid state lasers were as powerful as chemical ones. But they are not, so currently, its chemical.

Re:Sounds a lot cheaper than the ABL...

[CompMD]

I worked on a project related to integration design for LLNL's Solid State Heat Capacity Laser (SSHCL) into future aircraft. It is a diode pumped "stackable" laser. The SSHCL is slated to have a maximum output power of 100kW (at 20% efficiency) so even though it is relatively small, you need to be able to generate a lot of electricity. The ABL's output is "megawatt class," but its actual max output is classified. It is a very different creature. Comparing the SSHCL and the ABL is like comparing a Barrett .50cal to a 10" naval gun.

You need a southern hemisphere browser

[NotQuiteReal]

You know, the kind that swirl the other way

hard to starboard

[JackSpratts]

that site so doesn't work in chrome.

Re:Would it have killed them to learn HTML and CSS

[Anonymous Coward]

NO WE DON'T!!!!

seriously, like no way!

Gallium Nitride

[nitroyogi]

The source material for this LED is Gallium Nitride(GaN). Its quite a revolutionary semiconductor material developed first by Shuji Nakamura in the 90s at Nichia Corporation, Japan.
It has a multitude of applications in different fields - optoelectronics, HF microwave communications and anti-radiation hardening for space vehicles.

These LEDs are very efficient in the sense that they consume less power and have more lumen output. And they die out gradually, unlike traditonal sources of lights like tubes/bulbs which will immediately fuse off. Which explains why they are robust alternatives for street lights, traffic signals, etc. They need less power, less maintainance and due to their solid state nature are quite tough materials.

Lot of research has been conducted on them. Here are couple of leading centres for GaN research -
UCSB - http://my.ece.ucsb.edu/mishra/studygane.htm
Cambridge(UK) - http://www.msm.cam.ac.uk/GaN/

There is an online journal of Nitride Semiconductor research not updated much now, but very useful -
http://nsr.mij.mrs.org/

Check it out.

Many traffic light signals use these LEDs already across the world nowadays for less power consumption. Watch out for few in your city.
I remember back in my college days that it was already being touted as a replacement for the century+ old incandescent bulb. Buzz and hype I guess but still with a lot of substance.

Cheers!

Re:Gallium Nitride

[nitroyogi]

I forgot to add. The blue laser which is used in Blu-ray disc players is also based on GaN.

Re:Gallium Nitride

[Anonymous Coward]

they are robust alternatives for street lights, traffic signals, etc. They need less power, less maintainance and due to their solid state nature are quite tough materials.

You and the article both say less maintenance but the LED arrays have a mechanical component that existing streetlamps do not: the fan!

When (not if) the fan fails the LED streetlight either shuts itself off or it blows up.

Am I missing something?

Re:Gallium Nitride

[Threni]

> I remember back in my college days that it was already being touted as a replacement for the century+ old incandescent bulb. Buzz and hype I guess but still with a lot
> of substance.

Can these lights be used to grow things indoors with less power consumption/heat output than regular bulbs? It would be good to sort of grow things...you know, quietly, so helicopters and people watching your electricity consumption don't come and take your...tomatoes away.

Re:Gallium Nitride

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes - the massive heatsink you have room for on a street lamp, which means the assembly can be passively cooled. Plus it's only on at night so you've got a lower ambient temperature for extra cooling points.

Re:Gallium Nitride

[Anonymous Coward]

Very hard to etch too, apparently.

Re:Gallium Nitride

[nitroyogi]

Are you referring to the CPU heatsink fan thats attached to the LED array in the article or to an actual installation of an LED array with fan?

In real world deployments, AFAIK, the LED array is actually fitted with a big heatsink and not a fan. That is sufficient to keep it within the limits of operating temperature. In places with low temperatures, even thats not required and installation is fairly trivial. Moreover, because of the relatively low power consumption, it won't dissipate so much heat as to blow itself up.

I guess one of the reasons Portland, Oregon went after it in such a big way is because the climate there suited the operation of LED lamps without raising too much temperature of the unit itself. Look at the operational savings they made!

Also, I think that the lamp shown in the article is not the exact one used at traffic signals atleast. They are different and use bigger LEDs, which are spaced on a larger array and have different energy ratings.

Re:Gallium Nitride

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks! Big heatsinks make sense.

I noticed that some of the lamps in our LED traffic signals have started to flicker quickly. They used to work normally without flickering. Do you know what would cause that?

Re:Gallium Nitride

[Anonymous Coward]

Crappy power supply would be my guess.

Worst Web Design Ever

[hdon]

Dear God what is this person thinking? I have a fairly huge monitor and this page is still completely unviewable!

Re:Worst Web Design Ever

[jrothwell97]

...and that, kids, is what happens when you let FrontPage loose on some HTML. Honestly, what happened to using tables for data and CSS for positioning?

Re:Worst Web Design Ever

[Askmum]

How can Frontpage churn out code like that. There are font tags that aren't closed but end with a td tag. Font face names are loose in the font tag. td tags don't end.

Please, someone tell me that this is hand editted. Please, someone tell me that Frontpage isn't that bad.

Re:Worst Web Design Ever

[julesh]

Dear God what is this person thinking? I have a fairly huge monitor and this page is still completely unviewable!

I've seen this happen before. It's a technique for table-based layout that used to work reasonably well: if you want a fixed, large as possible column, you set its size to something like 2000 pixels. Works fine until somebody translates the HTML literally into CSS, at which point that 2000 pixels (truncated to whatever fits onto the screen) becomes 2000 pixels (really).

Re:Worst Web Design Ever

[Anonymous Coward]

Even maximized on a 30" screen you need to scroll horizontally.

Re:Worst Web Design Ever

[Anonymous Coward]

if you use script blocking, e.g. noscript it becomes readable...

Red lights...

[Anonymous Coward]

Red lights refer to the laterns hung outside of brothels during the days of old by railroad workers.

This and more sexual trivia found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-light_district

Re:Red lights...

[Anonymous Coward]

When you read the link, it has nothing to do with railroad workers. That's just typical "US invented it first" bs. The wiki article says red has been used for millennia. That predates the 1800s by about uh, say a millennium, give or take a few years.

Re:Red lights...

[Anonymous Coward]

Lrn2Read. Article states US codified the term 'red light district', not that the US was the first to hang red lights around their goddamn prostitutes.
Kids, stay in school.

/. really needs a better moderation system

[Anonymous Coward]

I just realized that I no longer read /. discussion threads. Same old, flaccid jokes, insightful comments quarter of an inch deep, etc .. that's what you get floating on top of the page when sorted by score. Compare that to HN for example. Good and truly interesting stuff on top, crappy mundane smart-ass commentary at the bottom.

My IE8 install doesnt see any graphics at all.

[deft]

it also doesnt have any enbedded videos, and I cant seem to tell if its a bad install, im not p4rompted for any plugins or missing items.. although there clearly is. It rarely pics of embedded video, ever.

anyone help?

So someone fix it already!

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely one of you hotshot htmlslingers could
easily create a reasonable version of the web page.

Re:You've completely missed the point.

[Anonymous Coward]

yip - the truth hurts.

Bad site design

[Askmum]

What a horrendously bad pagedesign. It seems ok with IE, but that's only because it's made with Frontpage. In Firefox it looks absolutely ghastly.

People making such websites should be banned from the internet for life.

Re:Would it have killed them to learn HTML and CSS

[Arthur Grumbine]

NO WE DON'T!!!!

seriously, like no way!

Yes we do!

...

NOT!

Gals!!!

[SpaghettiPattern]

See how romantic geeks can be?

Date us and you're bound to spend an evening next to an exhilarating man with fascinating and stylish accessories.
(Which is not to be confused with "an idiot with silly geeky props where you wonder how and when within the next 37 seconds he will offer you eternal faith [and a lifestyle minimizing the chance of osteoporosis]")

Great pictures BTW. Got me into over-autistic mood for the best part of 20 minutes.

Or use a man's browser. Opera.

[SmallFurryCreature]

Nothing says real man more then Opera. After all with a browser name like that, you got to be a real man to use it right? Right? RIGHT?!?

Re:Or use a man's browser. Opera.

[ZERO1ZERO]

Yeah, fucking Firefox whiners. Opera handles it no problem.

Ho-Hum You need to see a REAL LED Array 20,000L

[Car54]

Go visit the wonderful CandlepowerForums.com and look at this post in particular. http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=178130 7,000 L is not a big deal.

Re:Ho-Hum You need to see a REAL LED Array 20,000L

[Car54]

And Data made his in Oct 2007 before more powerful LED's were available.

GAAhhhh Frontpage

[nawcom]

I.... I recognized the template... bad memories.... bad bad bad memories...

Is that all?

[Anonymous Coward]

7000 lumens? 100W? PFffft!
This guy should come see the stuff we've had in entertainment lighting for a while now.
Vari-lite (their fixtures make up at least part of most major rock show rigs) are just about to release an LED fixture with more than 10,000 lumens @ 165W. Then again, their last (non-LED) fixture was greater than 50,000 lumens (@ 1,500W), so it kinda seems like a step down.

Silicon emitting photons?

[geekspeak]

Any pick up on the silicon emitting photons... last pick at the bottom about some transisI didn't think that was possible with the bandgap structure... I thought that you needs phonons to achieve that?

Makes me wonder about some of the other stuff...

Page fixed.

[merlinokos]

I don't usually reply to myself, but I contacted the owner and he's fixed the page.

Time to buy a DLP projector

[Anonymous Coward]

And replace that short life (expensive!!!) bulb they use in them.

OMG! This nerd actually has ...

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

... He actually has a wife. Weirdo! Run for cover slashdotters!

Re:OMG! This nerd actually has ...

[tesladownunder]

Someone once called Jane (my wife) Doom Woman because she enjoyed chainsawing people in DOOM years ago. I've just told her about you. She's coming to break both your legs..

Re:OMG! This nerd actually has ...

[Hatta]

Yeah. She gets really turned on by the size of his emitter.

Aw, damn!

[hack slash]

I'm in the process of making a bike light setup with 300 3mm LEDs for the front light, each LED will have just 1mm gap between them so it'll be about 80x60mm and will use about 24watts (2A @12v), controlled by a PICAXE with several switches for various brightnesses/flashing mode & highbeam - and I just got trumped by that thing!

But hey at least 1000 3mm LEDs only cost £30 whilst that LED array cost £240+.

NOT Brighter than HID (by a long-shot)

[moosesocks]

HID lamps produce a much brighter output than 7,000 lumens, even when you consider the lumens-per-watt ratio.

This 1200W bulb puts out 110,000 lumens.
This 500W bulb puts out 49,000 lumens.
This 250W bulb puts out 18,000 lumens.
This 150W bulb puts out 14,000 lumens.

See where I'm going with this?

Re:NOT Brighter than HID (by a long-shot)

[ColaMan]

aaaaand the summary at the top of the page specifically mentions car HID lights, which are usually 35W and about 3000-3400 Lumens.

See where I'm going with this?

No, not really, it seems a little pointless.

As is the excitement over a AUD500 monster LED array, when any noob can buy 2 x 35W automotive HID assemblies from eBay for AUD140 in total and have the equivalent light output, with easy retrofitting into any number of automotive spotlamps for some truly awesome light throw.

The swirly pictures . . .

[moeinvt]

Look more like LSD arrays than LED arrays.

Cool stuff regardless.

Useful?

[Godkar]

I, for one, think it wasn't irresponsible to burn that Win98 CD. To me that was, in fact, a demonstration of the usefulness of the thing.

Traffic light LED arrays.

[Animats]

The big arrays used in traffic lights have been showing up at Weird Stuff Warehouse in Sunnyvale, CA, and other surplus outlets. These are the units which were used to replace incandescents in older traffic lights. (Newer traffic lights designed for LEDs are lighter and simpler flat-panel devices.) They're wired for 120VAC. Typical prices are $10 to $15. The units are round, 10 to 15 inch diameter, with the LEDs embedded in a heavy plastic casting.

The available colors, of course, are red, yellow, and green, so as a source of general illumination they're not too useful. But if you want a green spotlight...

Agreed

[Benfea]

People don't appreciate the value of this kind of thing. I for one have never forgiven the city of Chicago for getting rid of those monochromatic green lights in Lower Wacker drive. The creepy lighting attracted low budget sci-fi film crews like you wouldn't believe. ^.^

Retrofitting projectors !

[formfeed]

lumen/watt might not be the best, neither is $/lumen.

But: It is small and might be useful for retrofitting a projector.