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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."
Seriously how many light bulbs to you have where there is sunlight hittinng the top of the bulb regularly?
You can get the 48 light deal and setup a grid of lights to provide night time lighting for six hours and you won't have to pay the electricity bill.
But will anyone in the developing countries know or care about this?
Eat sleep die
Well, considering that these: http://www.siliconsolar.com/solar-garden-lights.html, have been around for many years, I think 'first' is a bit of a stretch. They may have made them CHEAPER, and longer lasting, or more useful, but certainly not FIRST.
It already exist, in another form.
SODIS
But they are afraid of Chuck Norris. So is the dark.
But this lamp seems least useful where it would be most needed - where days are short, nights are long, and the weather uncooperative.
Except those LED lights ($3.99 at Walmart) tend to shine for six hours or more, not a paltry 2 hours. I have a couple single LED lights among the set in my yard that will often still be lit when I leave for work in the morning.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
I have owned a couple of Boglights for a few years now and they've been solidly reliable. They can last up to 6 hours on a days charge, they work as both a flashlight and an area light, they give 6 levels of light, and are designed for developing countries. However, they cost twice as much, $30 a light. This page has a lot of technical information about them, http://www.bogolight.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=BOGO-BUYONESN2&Show=TechSpecs
During the day you hang it from the metal clip on a branch (with no foliage) or a string (like a washing line). Or, simply place it on a safe surface somewhere that catches the sun.
At night you either hang it from the metal clip or screw it in. By the picture, it looks like there is a black "on" button at the top that may work such that screwing it in further switches it on (would have to remove the clip though).
Ikea was selling a $19.99 solar reading lamp that if you bought one, one was sent to Africa. Even if they didn't make a profit, that means the light cost significantly less than $15 dollars individually. Plus the LED is bright and lasts six hours easily.
From Nokero's website:
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Diplomats adjust terms to keep from offending nations where people have little income and limited freedom. During the cold war there was the 1st world (NATO, neutral western Europe, Japan), 2nd world (Warsaw Pact), and 3rd world (everyone else). Late in the cold war, 3rd world was replaced by developing nations to counter the Soviet goal of creating Communist revolutions, and indicate the new US policy economic development (replacing the anti-Communist strongman policy). After the cold war saw the creating of the emerging economies (BRIC {Brazil, Russia [after deflating the CIA myth of a Soviet economy as large as the US], India, and China}, Asian tigers {primarily South Korea and Singapore} and former purgatory countries {South Africa [Aparthid] and Israel [peace treaty with Egypt]. The former 1st world is now called developed. So now we have Developed, Emerging and Developing. Of course people closer to the academic world will know the newest buzzwords.
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Westinghouse-Solar-6-Piece-Pinnacle-Garden-Light-Set/13446849
dunno which 3.99 one's he's talking about, but it's feasible considering the cost of these.
Wait, since these bulbs also give off light, if you use the light from the solar-charged bulb to charge more bulbs, you can then use those bulbs when the first one goes out, and use the second round of bulbs to re-charge the first round, ad infinitum! Suck on that von Mayer!
i'm not kidding
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2482/are-camp-lanterns-radioactive
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
As someone posted in the article's comments, there is already a cheaper, better-designed, and longer-lasting product already in-use in the developing world.
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.