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The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy (2014)

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Re: The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy (2014)

#81

Post by twic »

cmurf wrote: post #79

Blackbody radiators and millions of years of evolution are hard to beat. I like the energy efficiency of CFL and LED but I do not like the spectral power distribution or the decay rate and ensuing hue shift of these light sources. And it's not something only experts notice. If you have multiple bulbs in the same proximity, one fails, whether replaced under warranty or you just buy a new one with identical color tempe…

> heat loss from incandescent to make them more efficient, maybe even on the order of today's LEDs seems more promising to me

This is already happening - you can apply a 'hot mirror' coating to reflect infra-red radiation back into the bulb, while allowing visible light out. This is a very old idea - here's a patent from the early 1960s which states that the basic principle was already in use:

http://www.google.com/patents/US3174067

And another which applied it specifically to coating a halogen incandescent light bulb:

http://www.google.com/patents/US3209188

Here's a report / puff piece from 2013 asserting that this technology is currently taking off and claiming that "by 2018 the efficiency of a hybrid halogen incandescent light bulb will exceed that of the current compact fluorescent lamps (CFL) and equal light-emitting diodes (LEDs) on the market by 2023":

http://www.smithmillermoore.com/Pdfs/technicalarticles/3-6-1...

Re: The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy (2014)

#82

Post by Obi_Juan_Kenobi »

superuser2 wrote: post #78
whoopdedo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Planned obsolescence would be changing the base on the lamp every few years so that people would have to buy new fixtures when they can't buy replacement bulbs anymore. Have you bought a light fixture recently? That sounds like the new state of affairs. Aided by government regulations that require new lamps not be able to accept older "inefficient" bulbs, there's been an explosion in the variety of sockets. I've co…

Which government? I have not seen this in the US, and I purchased quite a few lamps in the last couple of years. If it happens here I'll be extremely sad. CFLs and LEDs have an extremely strong negative effect on mood for me. Fortunately I can still buy halogens, which aren't quite as cozy but suffice.

Sounds like you react to bad LEDs. Good ones have stable power supplies that don't ripple, and phosphor coatings that produce fairly even frequency distributions. LEDs for room lighting are still relatively immature, but they're getting there quite quickly.

Re: The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy (2014)

#83

Post by Obi_Juan_Kenobi »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #53
alex_duf wrote: post #50

I can't believe an LED that adapts the colour temperature to the time of the day like F.lux does isn't a standard yet. LEDs are great but boy are they agressive to the eyes. (Yes that's a bit unrelated, I figured I'd rant and hope some poeple starts mass proucing it thanks to my message)

I have no trouble getting hold of 2700K LED bulbs here in Australia. I agree though, the cold white 4500K or higher bulbs are really only suitable during the day. Every bulb in my house, CFL or LED, is 2700K.

The difference between a 2700k and 3000k bulb can be quite large, too. I prefer the ones I've gotten labelled 2700k, 40w equivalent.

Better LED bulbs also have better power supplies, and therefore less ripple.

Re: The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy (2014)

#84

Post by Stratoscope »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #62
Stratoscope wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your comment, you raise some good points. I do have to question a couple of things: > Consumers only buy on price. Really? Everyone I know also looks at reviews, brand reputation, and other factors. Of course you're right that sometimes we just buy the cheapest option. :-) > Your mobile phone is intensely regulated across a number of different regulators. There seems to be plenty of innovation in cellphone…

> Really? Everyone I know also looks at reviews, brand reputation, and other factors. Of course you're right that sometimes we just buy the cheapest option. :-) Anecdata time! :). I think that this sometimes turns out to be more often than not :). Not many people have time to read reviews and check brand reputations for everything they buy. Personally, I divide shopping decisions into two groups - where I care about…

I think your anecdata is right on the money!

(Pun unintended, but now that it's there I'll take credit for it...)

Yeah, when I said "everyone I know looks at reviews" I meant "at least some of the time". :-)

So my list of cellphone characteristics I didn't post - I was thinking of things like this:

Size, shape, and weight. Battery technology and capacity - removable or not? Display technology, size and resolution. Resistive or capacitive touch? Stylus? Physical keyboard? Processor technology, how many cores, what instruction set, what GPU? Memory size? Storage size? External storage (SD)? Charger standard? External audio and digital ports? What kinds of sensors? Operating system and application software. What programming languages are used. How software is distributed. Who is allowed to write software.

I don't think many of those are specified by a government agency. At least I hope they aren't!

Re: The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy (2014)

#85

Post by legulere »

alex_duf wrote: post #50

I can't believe an LED that adapts the colour temperature to the time of the day like F.lux does isn't a standard yet. LEDs are great but boy are they agressive to the eyes. (Yes that's a bit unrelated, I figured I'd rant and hope some poeple starts mass proucing it thanks to my message)

Also brightness. At night you just need a bit of light so you can still see stuff, without the light disturbing your circadian rhythm. At daytime you want the light to be much much brighter.

Re: The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy (2014)

#86

Post by dr_zoidberg »

Bromskloss wrote: post #74
Noseshine wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean spectrum - a big difference. "Color" means little or nothing. Very different spectra can have the same "color". I highly recommend reading through this, very educational about how complicated "vision" really is: http://webvision.med.utah.edu/book/part-vii-color-vision/col... It's a long read but well worth it. "Color" is something your brain creates, it's not "physical". Frequencies of light of course are a…

I mean colour, not spectrum. I don't expect, or at least don't count on, LEDs to reproduce a black-body spectrum. I recognise that two light sources with the same colour, but different spectra, might give different results when reflected off things. Is that what you had in mind?

I think he meant that 2 things having the same colour, but different spectrum, can have different effects on your vision (and body?). The example that most easily comes to my mind is a LED screen representing a yellow colour, versus a lemon under the sun.

Shame he didn't elaborate, it seemed to be an interesting topic.

Re: The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy (2014)

#87

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

brianwawok wrote: post #68
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern heat pumps are three to four times more efficient in their use of electric power than simple electrical resistance heaters.[1] I have a 7.1kW heat pump, it uses a little over 1.79kW of power generate that heat, so a thermal efficiency of 3.96:1. Any light bulb, whether it's incandescent or CFL or LED produces heat a 1:1 thermal efficiency. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump

Do many people have heat pumps? Most people I know in the Midwest make 100% if heat from burning natural gas. So in the winter not a huge loss (just the delta on cost between electricity and natural gas). In the summer obviously you pay double..

Heat pumps / reverse cycle air conditioners are very popular in Australia, but the temperature here is fairly moderate, even in Tasmania where I live there are few places where it's below zero for more than the over night period. Heat pumps don't work so well sub zero.

Re: The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy (2014)

#88

Post by Noseshine »

Bromskloss wrote: post #74
Noseshine wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean spectrum - a big difference. "Color" means little or nothing. Very different spectra can have the same "color". I highly recommend reading through this, very educational about how complicated "vision" really is: http://webvision.med.utah.edu/book/part-vii-color-vision/col... It's a long read but well worth it. "Color" is something your brain creates, it's not "physical". Frequencies of light of course are a…

I mean colour, not spectrum. I don't expect, or at least don't count on, LEDs to reproduce a black-body spectrum. I recognise that two light sources with the same colour, but different spectra, might give different results when reflected off things. Is that what you had in mind?

Every light source produces a spectrum - even a laser, albeit only small one.

Have a look at this link: http://www.soundandvision.com/content/led-vs-cfl-bulbs-color...

As you can see a lot of LEDs have quite a lot of blue. Which is exactly what is responsible for synchronizing your own "clock": http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2831986/

    > Not only does light reset the human circadian rhythm, but the same blue
    > light that has the strongest impact on dinoflagellates has equal power
    > to reset our own clocks — although most visible wavelengths can reset
    > the clock, the blues do the job with the greatest efficiency.
Which is the whole reason f.lux became so popular.

Re: The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy (2014)

#90

Post by khedoros »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #51
khedoros wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honestly, I'd be fine with optimizing products like that if two things were true: If you're talking about technology being expected to break down and be cheaply replaced on the scale of single-digit years, it sounds like a never-ending nightmare. I'd need to add two more points, at least. - Strict upgrades (that is, there must be nothing about a new version of a product that's worse than the one before it); if one…

I was thinking primarily about appliances - lightbulbs (dumb or smart), washing machines, cars, cellphones / smartphones, etc. Those two points you added don't apply to most of them. That said, I'm not sure if I agree with the first one. At least not completely. I'd like to have some ability to recover old/special features but I wouldn't mind if it required some extra work (like tracking down that motherboard model t…

I guess that my overall point is that I dislike almost everything about the idea of disposable possessions, and I would resent being forced into it. I could imagine leasing a car, my washing machine, or another appliance if the TCO was reduced, compared to outright ownership for 10 years, but nothing that I actually care about.

> I'd like to have some ability to recover old/special features but I wouldn't mind if it required some extra work (like tracking down that motherboard model that still has parallel port on it). In the reality where all technology is being obsoleted fast and my two points hold, whatever you want to program over parallel has probably broke down already anyway.

If they're willing to replace the parallel device with a functionally-equivalent piece of hardware that connects to a bus that the new hardware provides, then that would be equivalent. I'd just want to avoid situations like this: If I took pains to keep OtherOS on my PS3, the replacement hardware must not have a firmware that's incompatible with my use of it. If I've got a gaggle of microcontrollers and a parallel-port programmer for them, the new hardware must either let me program them.

> On Unix you end up moving your dotfiles; on Windows I used to spend an hour or three for setting things up "my way".

On Unix, I move my dot files, a couple hundred gb of data, install about 500 packages, and end up tracking down, compiling, and installing a few things that aren't usually included in my repos. In Windows, a lot of the data was already transferred from the Linux side ("Unix" is invariably "Linux", on my machines), and I spend the next week tracking down installers for software, re-downloading games, etc. For the next 6 months, I'll be running into things that I need to track down and re-install. I cope with this by keeping hardware until it's absolutely unusable for what I want to do. If someone expected me to upgrade more frequently through a forced process, I'd expect them to ease my way as much as humanly possible.

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