A Monster LED Array For Irresponsible Fun 225
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."
Sharks (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sharks (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
A pink or reddish tone
Thats why its called the red light district?
Re:Sharks (Score:5, Informative)
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).
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So, when's the harvest? :)-~
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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 (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, and in case anyone is curious about growing plants under LED lights, I've been documenting the experience here [gardenweb.com].
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
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...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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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,
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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 (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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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.
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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
Re:Sharks (Score:5, Funny)
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 (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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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.
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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 [wikipedia.org].
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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.
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Enough with the frickin' stuff already!
So.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So.... (Score:5, Funny)
The 20 feet tall people will just have to watch where they're walking.
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Re:So.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.... (Score:4, Funny)
I tried this experiment, but the flourescent lighting didn't even succeed in bleaching the color :(
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Is it just me... (Score:5, Informative)
...or is that page totally fucked up in Firefox?
Re:Is it just me... (Score:5, Funny)
It's just you.
I like side scrolling and searching for graphics.
It's like a game!
My IE8 install doesnt see any graphics at all. (Score:2)
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?
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Also worth noticing: the linked Ebay pages suffer from the same disease.
Re:Is it just me... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Is it just me... (Score:4, Funny)
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... (Score:5, Informative)
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... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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here is a better solution:
In firefox with the Web Developer extension, click the "Linearize Page" under Miscellanious.
you can now read the page
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you sir are a [voicemode value=ominous effect=echo] god ![voicemode /]
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The words 'quick' and 'openoffice' don't go well together.
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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.
Page fixed. (Score:2, Informative)
You need a southern hemisphere browser (Score:2)
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Not if you open in ie tab/switch rendering agents.
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Screwed in Safari too.
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Just go to View > Page Style > No Style
the table is still a bit screwed, but atleast you can see the images
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<font face="Times" Roman New NewOutdoor Indoor lighting < font color="#ffffff" width="100%" colSpan="2" <TD>
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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.
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Three? I didn't realize there were that many left.
Apologies. It was there and I had to do it. :D
Another use (Score:5, Funny)
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How can somebody post a link to this?
We're trying to slashdot it out of existence.
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We're trying to slashdot it out of existence.
What's this 'we' shit, Kimosabe?
Re:Another use (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Another use (Score:5, Insightful)
You can be a geek without being a computer geek. Maybe his thing is electronics and not coding.
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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.
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What is this IE6 you speak of?
Re:Another use (Score:5, Informative)
I personally enjoy his gaming [tesladownunder.com] references [tesladownunder.com], 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 [tesladownunder.com].
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I RTFA.... (Score:5, Funny)
Burn a hole in that site (Score:5, Informative)
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 6.0">
Or use a man's browser. Opera. (Score:2)
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:I RTFA.... (Score:5, Funny)
I guess you could say he wasn't the brightest bulb in the bunch?
Firefox unfriendly (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Firefox unfriendly (Score:5, Insightful)
<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 (Score:5, Funny)
<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?
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Bad Konqueror 3.5, too.
Did they try to mess up firefox on purpose? (Score:3, Funny)
Possibly questionable design? (Score:5, Informative)
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? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Re:Possibly questionable design? (Score:4, Informative)
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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.
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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 wor
Light vs Heat (Score:2, Insightful)
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Re:Light vs Heat (Score:4, Informative)
That array is almost as bright... (Score:5, Funny)
90s layout (Score:2, Troll)
Wow, the person who made that website is firmly stuck in the 1990s. No way I'm going to be reading that webpage.
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Why does he bother to make a website then?
Do want. (Score:4, Interesting)
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
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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.
That guy has one of the best websites on HV stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
Great photos too. Look through his laser and HV section.
Amazing collection. Interesting character.
Warning (Score:5, Funny)
Do not look into website with remaining eye.
bright, but spendy (Score:2)
You can get these on eBay [ebay.com], 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.
Sounds a lot cheaper than the ABL... (Score:2)
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...
Gallium Nitride (Score:5, Informative)
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 [ucsb.edu]
Cambridge(UK) - http://www.msm.cam.ac.uk/GaN/ [cam.ac.uk]
There is an online journal of Nitride Semiconductor research not updated much now, but very useful -
http://nsr.mij.mrs.org/ [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!
Worst Web Design Ever (Score:4, Funny)
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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).
Gals!!! (Score:2)
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.
Ho-Hum You need to see a REAL LED Array 20,000L (Score:2, Informative)
OMG! This nerd actually has ... (Score:3, Funny)
Aw, damn! (Score:2)
But hey at least 1000 3mm LEDs only cost £30 whilst that LED array cost £240+.
NOT Brighter than HID (by a long-shot) (Score:2)
HID lamps produce a much brighter output than 7,000 lumens, even when you consider the lumens-per-watt ratio.
This 1200W [bulbconnection.com] bulb puts out 110,000 lumens.
This 500W [bulbconnection.com] bulb puts out 49,000 lumens.
This 250W [bulbconnection.com] bulb puts out 18,000 lumens.
This 150W [bulbconnection.com] bulb puts out 14,000 lumens.
See where I'm going with this?
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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.
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NO WE DON'T!!!!
seriously, like no way!