People read "cottage on Cape Cod" and immediately assume the owners must be wealthy. That's actually unlikely to be true. In fact, the only private cottages inside the Cape Cod National Seashore are relics. The Park Service would just as soon they were destroyed, but they are grandfathered into the law when the land was designated as national parkland. They cannot be sold outside the family which owned them historically, only handed down through the generations. They are mostly tiny, weatherbeaten shacks, and they cannot be updated or expanded. Many were once the homes of poor artists, now used as vacation homes by their descendants. Cape Cod was not always a playground for the rich.
You remember Very Incorrectly. Whatever you recall, it certainly isn't based on easily-available facts of public record.
Color Kinetics/Philips holds over 80 patents in this area. The fundamental patents were already issued YEARS before frostbyte even started working there or did any work with LEDs.
His name appears as a contributor on a handful of their later patents, along with many others.
It's a disservice to the other engineers there to suggest that frostbyte played a major role in that company's technology or success.
If you mean those sickly-yellow Low Pressure Sodium streetlights that are becoming increasingly hard to find because they look so awful, that would be technically true at around 200 lumens per watt.
But if you are referring to the FAR more common High Pressure Sodium streetlights, you are way off the mark, or perhaps more correctly you are out of date in a fast-moving field. HPS lamps put out about 100-150 lm/W when they're new.
All of the major white LED manufacturers have demonstrated >100 lumens per watt in the lab, and some have been independently verified at >140 lm/W. Every previous advance in the high power LED technology has hit the market within 2 years. Many experts agree that 200 lm/W is theoretically achievable for white LEDs, and the most recent claims for quantum dot phosphors driven by LEDs are already pushing 200 lm/W.
Hardly what I'd call far behind. If the quantum dot thing is verified, then what you say is simply wrong all around.
Some cities have already started installing LED streetlights on an experimental basis. Where comparable brightness is called for, you simply put more LEDs in the fixture.
Do any art galleries even use HPS lighting? The color rendering is poor, and they're a poor substitute for other lights if you want white to look like white instead of yellow.
Oh, and HPS lights last 1/2 - 1/4 as long, are fragile and hot, have limited form factors, and they contain mercury. Raw efficiency isn't the whole story here.
The author has not done his homework.
It's absolutely untrue to state that existing full-color LED lighting products do not go beyond RGB.
It's also highly subjective and misleading to state that they are "not nearly good enough for doing high-quality art".
I think it's debatable whether this could be called a "new class" of LED illuminator, although the inclusion of near-UV as one of the >3 color channels may be a first.
For example, Selador has had products on the market since 2003 - long before this project was begun, which use 7 different wavelengths of LED sources.
Their largest fixture puts out nearly 5,000 lumens, twice as much light as he claims for the Ultraluminous Illuminator.
http://www.selador.net/
These were developed specifically to address the same true-color and color-rendering limitations, and are becoming increasingly popular in theatrical and studio lighting applications for that reason.
There are and have been other LED lights available on the market that incorporate RGB + Amber, and these 4 colors are even available as OEM LED clusters from suppliers such as Lamina, Enfis, and LedEngin.
How was the total light output of this device determined? There are many factors such as LED operating temperature which affect actual light output, so one must be careful not to extrapolate from an LED manufacturers' data sheet in order to calculate total light output. The addition of optics, including those cool holographic diffusers, also causes some light loss.
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People read "cottage on Cape Cod" and immediately assume the owners must be wealthy. That's actually unlikely to be true. In fact, the only private cottages inside the Cape Cod National Seashore are relics. The Park Service would just as soon they were destroyed, but they are grandfathered into the law when the land was designated as national parkland. They cannot be sold outside the family which owned them historically, only handed down through the generations. They are mostly tiny, weatherbeaten shacks, and they cannot be updated or expanded. Many were once the homes of poor artists, now used as vacation homes by their descendants. Cape Cod was not always a playground for the rich.
You remember Very Incorrectly. Whatever you recall, it certainly isn't based on easily-available facts of public record. Color Kinetics/Philips holds over 80 patents in this area. The fundamental patents were already issued YEARS before frostbyte even started working there or did any work with LEDs. His name appears as a contributor on a handful of their later patents, along with many others. It's a disservice to the other engineers there to suggest that frostbyte played a major role in that company's technology or success.
If you mean those sickly-yellow Low Pressure Sodium streetlights that are becoming increasingly hard to find because they look so awful, that would be technically true at around 200 lumens per watt. But if you are referring to the FAR more common High Pressure Sodium streetlights, you are way off the mark, or perhaps more correctly you are out of date in a fast-moving field. HPS lamps put out about 100-150 lm/W when they're new. All of the major white LED manufacturers have demonstrated >100 lumens per watt in the lab, and some have been independently verified at >140 lm/W. Every previous advance in the high power LED technology has hit the market within 2 years. Many experts agree that 200 lm/W is theoretically achievable for white LEDs, and the most recent claims for quantum dot phosphors driven by LEDs are already pushing 200 lm/W. Hardly what I'd call far behind. If the quantum dot thing is verified, then what you say is simply wrong all around. Some cities have already started installing LED streetlights on an experimental basis. Where comparable brightness is called for, you simply put more LEDs in the fixture. Do any art galleries even use HPS lighting? The color rendering is poor, and they're a poor substitute for other lights if you want white to look like white instead of yellow. Oh, and HPS lights last 1/2 - 1/4 as long, are fragile and hot, have limited form factors, and they contain mercury. Raw efficiency isn't the whole story here.
The author has not done his homework. It's absolutely untrue to state that existing full-color LED lighting products do not go beyond RGB. It's also highly subjective and misleading to state that they are "not nearly good enough for doing high-quality art". I think it's debatable whether this could be called a "new class" of LED illuminator, although the inclusion of near-UV as one of the >3 color channels may be a first. For example, Selador has had products on the market since 2003 - long before this project was begun, which use 7 different wavelengths of LED sources. Their largest fixture puts out nearly 5,000 lumens, twice as much light as he claims for the Ultraluminous Illuminator. http://www.selador.net/ These were developed specifically to address the same true-color and color-rendering limitations, and are becoming increasingly popular in theatrical and studio lighting applications for that reason. There are and have been other LED lights available on the market that incorporate RGB + Amber, and these 4 colors are even available as OEM LED clusters from suppliers such as Lamina, Enfis, and LedEngin. How was the total light output of this device determined? There are many factors such as LED operating temperature which affect actual light output, so one must be careful not to extrapolate from an LED manufacturers' data sheet in order to calculate total light output. The addition of optics, including those cool holographic diffusers, also causes some light loss.