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Smartest Light Bulbs Ever, Dumbest Idea Ever?
An anonymous reader writes "A spate of smart LED bulbs and light sockets are coming to market and seeking crowdfunding, following the (apparent) success of Philips Hue. But do they really make sense for lighting control? Here's a comprehensive roundup of 13 products and the pros and cons of the category." I like the idea of controllable, long-lasting light bulbs, but I haven't yet been tempted enough to pay $50 apiece.
Ok. Slightly better. But why wireless? Why internet? If you are not home do you need to control lights? If you are that bad about not turning off lights when you leave are you really going to remember once your gone? You need more than a dimmer switch? Really? Why? Why not wire all the lights to a central keypad in the home(think dedicated tablet computer). Can't wait for these to be wide spread enough to where you can drive down the street at christmas time, hack the entire blocks house lights and turn it into a spectacular light show for yourself set to music.
"Cowardice in a race, as in an individual, is the unpardonable sin." --Teddy Roosevelt
In the UK, normal LED bulbs designed as plug-in replacements for incandescent and CLF bulbs typically cost about £13. The Philips Hue bulb, which can change colour with a remote control costs about £50.
I have noted some MR16 LED's I bought run hot. The "Shoe Palace" at the local mall installed this same kind of lighting and I notice about 10% of their emitters are now dead. It is my belief that the LED's were sold on their initial appearance of being very bright, not for their longevity. So the marketers overdrive them to make the specs look good for a quick sale.
I bought mine for outdoor illumination, but after examining them, it appears they are very poorly sealed against moisture. Not the LED, rather its the inverter electronics that appears quite vulnerable to condensation which would be expected in an outdoor application, much like you would expect same in a bathroom application.
I have been looking at those 10-watt LED chip arrays from China, which look like they would survive outdoors as long as I ran them substantially below their rated power due to not having them heat sunk very well. They still need a driver, but in this case, I will put up with the inefficiency of using a ballast resistor in order to get the reliability and robustness against moisture that I do not believe I can get from a buck ( switching ) converter.in a wet environment.
I definitely wanted the outside lighting to run on 12 volts ( DC, full wave rectified, minimal filtering for voltage spikes that would destroy the LED ), I considered the 12 volt 20 watt MR16 halogens unsuitable because their current draw demanded heavy expensive wire, I wanted to run my lights with repurposed CAT5 cable ( which I have lots of) snaked in old garden hose as a direct burial conduit. Obviously, the ends are exposed to water, kids and pets, so line voltage is definitely out. I can get 10 ohm 25 watt ( 1 volt per 100 mA ) ballast resistors pretty cheap, and run them way under rating so they barely run warm. They are well sealed, so if they get wet, no big deal.
You may have seen a lot of indicator type LED's and small flashlights and think these things are the ideal cold light source. When I played with higher powered LED's ( 1 watt and up ), I was quite dismayed with how much heat I was going to have to deal with. Incandescents make even more heat, but the heat does not destruct the lamp like heat will shorten the lifetime of a LED.
I have several UltraFire WF-502B flashlights I bought so I could re-use the lithium 18650 style cells I recovered from "spent" power tool and laptop battery packs. I was doing some research on how to build charge equalizers with the cells and later fell in love with the lithium cell technology. These are quite nice high powered flashlights which deliver an unusual amount of light. The flashlights are made from machined aluminum, and they are the first flashlight I have ever had that ran noticeably warm after it has been turned on for a few minutes. They have about a 5 watt LED in them, on a massive block of aluminum heat sunk to the aluminum body of the flashlight. Yes, a beautiful design, and it also illustrates well that high power LED's will heat up.
I know our Government is doing all they can do to ram Fluorescent and LED technology down our collective throats. It is still my firm belief that those technologies are downright dangerous in the bathroom, where condensation wets the innards of the thing, then when you turn it on, ka-blooie! By their construction, incandescent bulbs are extremely resistant to condensation ( and if they are on, no condensation will happen because of the heat ).
Yes, there are some good bulbs out there. There is also a lot of junk. I do not want to diss the new stuff, but in my book, its too early to retire the legacy incandescent.
I have seen the color changing ones where one can custom mix red, green, blue, white LED outputs to make almost any desired hue, and they have their application. I do not know if I really want it all that bad, but maybe it would be good for things like mood lighting. I know I highly prefer my light around 2700K, ( quite yellowish ), but others may want the higher temperature 6000K ( downright cold bluish ) light.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Admittedly not a lot of people want this but .... We have a place out in the forest... Sometimes when we arrive, it's late at night and it's _dark_ out there... I mean, if it's overcast and the middle of the winter, you can't see _anything_... So we have a yard light that I control remotely via crappy unreliable X-10.. The house is already internet connected via cellphone so I have various scripts on my webserver to let me control things like the thermostat and the X10 yard light. yeah; you could keep the car headlights on until you can get up to the door, unlock it, and turn the lights on.. The remotely controllable yard light also works well in conjunction with the security camera.. Infrared mode doesn't work all that well.
No, not life changing but a small matter of convenience.