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Hong Kong Company Develops Solar-Powered Lightbulb
hussain_mkj writes "A Hong Kong-based company, Nokero, has introduced what it claims is the world's first solar powered lightbulb. Nokero is trying to replace traditional kerosene lamps in developing countries with its solar-powered N100 LED lightbulbs. The bulb is about the same size as normal incandescent bulbs, and will shine for two hours when charged for a day. The company claims that the new bulb is five times as bright as a kerosene lamp and uses 1/200th the energy. It will cost $15 for one and $480 for 48."
People in developing countries don't give a fuck about 15 dollar light bulbs, or the kerosene they replace, since they can't afford that either.
I'm still awestruck by the novelty of this invention. Who would have ever thought to combine a solar cell, light bulb and battery to produce a solar powered lantern. I mean its not like you could just waltz into your local hardware store and...oh wait..
"The LEDs are meant to last 50,000 to 100,000 hours, and the solar panels are rated to last 10 years. The life of the N100 is basically 5 to 10 years, according to Nokero representative"
Leave it to the "Nokero representative" to conviently skip over the part about where they disclose how often the batteries need to be replaced.
But this lamp seems least useful where it would be most needed - where days are short, nights are long, and the weather uncooperative.
Yes, because it's high noon from dawn till dusk, and everyone lives on the equator.
But will anyone in the developing countries know or care about this?
The problem is what does mean a "developing country"?
Really, people apply that term from places with reasonable life quality (but considered "developing" for some reason) to places lacking a funcional government and where famine is widespread.
In the not-so "developing countries" people won't care since - unless it's a desolate area - even the poorest houses are connected to the power grid.
From Nokero's website:
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
They look better thought out than the light bulb shaped N100 LED bulbs. The solar panels on the N100 are pointed in such a way that only half of them could be put even approximately facing the sun and are pointed down at a steep angle if hung up to charge. I would rather be able to aim the solar panel. Over all it looks like the N100 looks like it was designed by marketing, those Boglights seem a bit better thought out.
If by freedom, you mean freedom from government services, including police, education and health services, then yes, you'd be right.
I live in a country with a lot of freedom as defined above. Trust me, the malaria, dengue, lack of dentists and occasional outbreaks of mob violence make it a taste that few would willingly acquire, given the choice....
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
They are being stupid, and your ridiculously obvious "experiment" does nothing to prove otherwise. It goes without saying that if you have no artificial light available that waiting until your eyes adjust to the darkness gives you better vision. The point is that it's better vision only in comparison to what you would have if you had no light at all. How you've managed to take this answer and extrapolate it to night-vision being superior to a source of light in the darkness is stupefying. If you truly believed this wasn't stupid, tell me, do you drive at night without your headlights on? No? Thought not. As to the argument of counting the pennies saved on petrol - that works right up until the first time you hit a tree because you couldn't see properly. The only short-sighted thing here is these morons driving so dangerously and your leap to defend them from deserved criticism.
What other absurd superstitious beliefs of technologically backwards societies do you feel compelled to defend out of some political correctness gone awry? Voodoo? Condoms being responsible for AIDS? AIDS drugs being a plot of the "white man" to test out dangerous substances and keep their society down?
Romanticising and defending these cultures as somehow more "natural" than our own, is ridiculous, and I feel inclined to remind anyone bent to do so that the second they need their modern society for something, they'll jump straight back into it, romanticism be damned.
Every single hotel room I stayed in had a slot for the key. You walked in, put the key in the slot and the power came on to the room. If you took the key, you lost power. It was annoying trying to charge stuff, but how many times to people leave their rooms in the USA and leave a TV on, some lights, etc?
You know you can put a business card/membership card/whatever in there and it works?
Most hotels in the UK have this as well now, even those costing USD 500 a night for the cheapest room...
I am very sucseptible to "let's have another drink"
The trick is to leave the lights on. Then you don't need night vision.
And your missing the other function of the lights - to be seen by other drivers.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
if you bothered to RTFA you'd see that it has a hook to hang like a lantern. Thinking is to hang it from a branch or something.
Obviously if you're in a house you probably already have electric power or some other more reliable source of lighting
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
With regards to the key slot for power ... fairly true of Europe as well.
It is (sadly) us North Americans who are free and loose with power because it is still relatively cheap here.
Ouch
Every single hotel room I stayed in had a slot for the key. You walked in, put the key in the slot and the power came on to the room. If you took the key, you lost power. It was annoying trying to charge stuff, but how many times to people leave their rooms in the USA and leave a TV on, some lights, etc?
That's very common in European hotels too
Seems pretty common in hotels all over the world actually. Stayed in the Shangri-La in Hong Kong a few weeks back and they had the same setup.
And an additional useful side effect: the other cars on the road, which are far more dangerous than the pedestrians and animals that might be out there, will also know you're there, from a *very long* way away.
Which is quite useful, really.
Just look at it. The design has abysmal panel coverage. Do note that there seems to be a couple mm of margin around the solar panel within the area covered by the clear plastic meniscus. They could have rather trivially increased the panel coverage by a factor of two, and with a bit more sweat it could have been 3x larger. I'd also like to see how they waterproofed the switch's operator (the black button protruding on top). It's not a trivial task, as not only you get water going straight down onto the switch, but also you get dirt from your fingers that will act to eat away any O-ring-like seal arrangements.
I'd also like to know what sort of power conditioning electronics do they use to charge the rechargeable cells, and to extract power from them. Designing efficient micropower power converters is quite an undertaking if you don't have an engineer who has done that once or twice (and done it well).
Having seen the abysmal design of common solar-powered garden lights, I don't really have high hopes. Now if anyone wonders: your typical $3.99 garden light sucks at power conversion efficiency. And by sucks I mean it's underperforming by 60%+. And the cell life is shortened as well: it's hard to maintain cell life without a power converter when all you have for energy source is PV cells.
Jim Williams should tackle that one and write it up in an app note ;)
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Same here - I think hotels in the UK are now required to put these systems in when refitting / building, as they seem to be in >75% of hotels i stay in nowadays.