[Click here to see the full article.]

Make: Magazine, one of my favorite mags, and subsequently the website, has a really cool and informative movie on the history of LEDs. Did you know the first LED was actually a rock? Yeah, me neither. They also give a quick tutorial on how LEDs work and how to make a simple circuit. Go check it out and learn a thing or two thing Monday morning. At least you’ll know who Nick Holonyak, Jr. is the next time you Trivial Pursuit.

[Make via Gizmodo]

$75 or $2? How much would you pay?

So with the economy in a downturn, it seems that EVERYONE is cutting down on spending now. Lighting included. By now most people know LED’s are AWESOME in termss of energy savings, money savings, environmental benefits but many still aren’t spending the money.

LED bulbs right now range anywhere from $10 (of the Ebay variety) to $150 across the internet. The ONLY way they’re going to get cheaper is simple supply and demand. If there aren’t enough people buying, then manufacturers won’t be able to sell enough quantities to bring prices down. So it seems the path to adoption is sell to large-scale projects like hotels, office buildings, chain restaurants to bring prices low enough to the point where average homeowners can afford LED lighting.

A couple manufacturers and large distributors I’ve spoken to recently have been focusing on targeting large scale projects, government projects (street lighting, government buildings, universities etc.). This makes sense since they’re not as price sensitive and can actually SEE the savings on their final bill by switching out hundreds, if not thousands of light bulbs that are on typically 12 to 24 hours a day.

Now average Joe-Six-Pack *wink*, by switching out 1 or 2 bulbs or even 10 bulbs in his home won’t really see a huge difference. So it seems the strategy for most people/consumers is to “sit and wait till the price drops”. But to how low? How much would YOU pay?

Powered by rice....kinda.

Imagine a world where you could have a coat or a bag that has solar panels on it that would charge your gadgets while you were using it. What, that’s already been done? Well, sure but what I meant was have it done it a way that doesn’t scream “uber-nerd”. I mean how do we expect Lindsey Lohan to wear something that’s ugly?

Well, this technology may be it. It’s a solar cell that is created using tiny solar cells(1/4 the size of a grain of rice) that can potentially be put into a solution and sprayed on various material like a car, a house, your head, etc. and produces a seemingly unheard of amount of energy for the size/power ratio. Not only that, but they plan to double the power in just a few months. I can’t wait for my hawaiian-shirt-powered laptop in the next few years.

[Via Reuters]

Mmmm.....tallscreen.

Is bigger always better? In this case, I would say yes. At least in terms of sheer awesomeness. What you’re looking at here is a future 33-story LED screen on a building in Dubai. You know, the place where the mega-rich go on vacation and they have nothing better to do than create their own islands in the shape of palm trees? 

This screen is so large that you can see ads on it from 1.5 km away. How’s that for getting your message across to the masses. All I can think about is a massive game of Tetris, where each block is the size of a small office building. 

Then when I’m done with than, how bout some Arkanoid and then finish the day off with a quick game of Raiden Fighters. Oh the possibilites…. How much do to you think it would cost for me to rent that for a few hours? Do you take Amex?

[Via Engadget]

Burn Baby Burn!

It’s 6pm the night before the prom and you stare at yourself in the mirror. You realize that no matter how much makeup you put on, it’s apparent that your pasty white skin is the result of all those long days studying indoors so you could get into MIT, rather than hanging out on the beach like the rest of your friends. All the tanning salons are booked solid through the weekend for the last-minute party rush and those tanning sprays made you look like a carrot the last time you used it. What do you do?

Being a future MIT alum, you craftily Macgyver together a rig of CFLs and toast yourself for 10 hours underneath to make it to the ball in time to claim the crown of Prom King.

Now you already know that those long fluorescent tubes used in tanning beds share the same genealogy, but did you know that they also carry similar hazards?

A study by the Health Protection Agency in the U.K. showed that some compact fluorescent lightbulbs, which have a visible coil emitted ultraviolet (UV) radiation above the recognised safety limits. Basically it’s saying that those lights that giving you a tan. Now that would be a good thing if you needed it, but sitting in front of one for 8+ hours a day is definitely more than you should get.

About 20% of the CFL bulbs tested emitted UV-C radiation which is more harmful than the more common UV-A or UV-B, and and it’s the same kind that’s used in hospitals to kill germs, and can cause DNA damage, leading to skin cancer.

The highest levels of UV radiation, about an inch away from the bulbs, was the same as exposure in direct summer sunlight, the agency said.

Now this doesn’t apply to all bulbs, but the most common bulbs do have this problem. So stop sitting so close to the light, cuz that burning sensation you feel in your eyes may or may not be just simple eyestrain. Oh well, on the bright side, I guess it gives me a legitimate reason to take more breaks during work…

I think I’ll stick to LEDs for my office lighting needs…

[Via The Guardian Via The Health Protection Agency]
[]

Size comparison to a regular incandescent bulb

“It walks down stairs
Alone or in pairs
And makes a Slinkaty sound

A spring, a spring
A marvelous thing
Everyone knows it’s Slinky”

Which this is not. But it does have that feel with its funky looking heatsink. This monster is made in Korea and is one of the brightest screw-in replacement LED bulbs I’ve ever seen. This is WAY brighter than the LR6 we mentioned in a previous post. The size is almost definitely for heat dissipation reasons. Which works wonders because for the brightness and light that this things produces, the bulb only gets slightly warm. Other lesser sized bulbs with a smaller heatsink and more compacted LEDs would definitely be too hot to hold, though not skin-scorching like an incandescent can be. The size IS quite…large…but it’s not as heavy as you would think considering it’s for heat-sinking purposes.

It’s interesting because many people think that if you buy an LED bulb - it must have a CREE chip to be the “brightest”. Absolutely untrue. The LEDs in here are “no-name”, but put into a package that can disperse heat extremely well, you can pump up the power and get more light. See the pictures below for an example of how it lights up a room. And this is a terrible placement for it too. I was lazy. :(.

22W Lighting up a room

Looking at the top of the bulb, you can see the array of LEDs used to give off this massive amount of light. The nice thing about using so many LEDs vs. say 10, is that you’re not driving each element so hard that it HAS to give off lots of heat in order to function without overheating. Touch the top translucent plastic cover, and you’ll see its cooler than the back of your LCD monitor that you’re using to view this picture. OVerall, a pretty good design. Unfortunately, this sample I got is not yet in full production yet, or I’d get a crate full of them. Have you seen brighter? Let us know in the comments!

P.S. I’m eventually going to make a video of this bulb too. And it won’t need to be connected to an AC outlet to work. I heart LEDs. 

Closeup of the monster

Luke, I am your father.

As long as there's money involved...

Its always hard to push innovation for the sake of innovation, if there’s no immediate need or immediate benefit from it. Its kind of like procrastinating from doing that term paper since it’s not due until the end of the year. The later you start on it, the less time you have though, to make it good. So along the same line of the X-Prize, the Department of Energy has sponsored the Bright Tomorrow Lighting Prize (L-Prize for short) to try to kick the asses of the industry to create something amazing while there’s still time before the “end of the semester”. 

The contest is to see who can make a 10-watt replacement for the 60-watt incandescent bulb. The contest was introduced last May, and requires that the lights last 25,000 hours (at 4 hours a day, that’s 17 years!) That’s actually not too difficult, as our 10-watt bulbs are almost at that 60W mark. The “deal-breaker” as far one of the guidelines go, is that the price should go down to $8 a bulb by the third year of production. Now that’s probably the biggest hurdle. Like any emerging technology, the earlier designs, before they become mainstream, are going to cost a considerable amount more. But then it becomes a Catch-22. We can produce the bulbs for a lot less once people start buying more, but we people won’t start buying more until we can produce them for less. Something here has to give for the wheels to start turning, and hopefully the straw that will break the camel’s back will the want for innovation, rather than the need because we have no choice.

The DOE says that if every household in the U.S. switched all their bulbs to LEDs, you could save enough energy in a year to power everything in Las Vegas for two full years. That’s a lot of incentive in terms of energy saved.  If you look at any large-sized company, there is a ton of space that is used as their working environment, and to light up something like that, you must be able to see the cost benefits of switching to eneergy efficient lighting. Well, hopefully this prize can be handed out sooner than later, because time is slowly ticking away….

[Via NY Times and L Prize]

Chevy Volt...Yay!

Ok so we’re finally ALMOST there. I was lurking through my favorite blog the other day, and they seem to have put up some new ads on their site. This time, it’s about the Chevy Volt. For those that have been living under a rock, the Volt is supposed to be the “new hotness” when it comes to green vehicles. Now it does not have the fame of being the first well-known “green” car (that honor would go to the very homely Honda Insight) but it is the first highly publicized made-for-the-general-public primarily electric model.

When I say primarily, I mean that it still swings both ways, but definitely has a penchant towards liberal rather than republican. It’s getting all the attention because even though it has the same overall parts as the past hybrids, this one has a trick up its sleeve. Through normal everyday driving, providing it’s under 40 miles, the car will use only use electrical power. So if you’re going back and forth from work everyday, then you never have to fill up the tank. Once it goes beyond that, the battery won’t be able to keep up and the engine kicks on. Pretty novel idea and seems like something that a lot of people are  excited about. 

This is not by any means the holy grail (since it still sips dead dinosaur juice), but from a usability standpoint, goes a long way towards almost never having to fill up a tank. One of my good friends swore that he would get one when it comes out, so if that happens, I will definitely be doing an in-depth review of the experience. Or maybe I should just go to the lot for a test drive….

Either way, I’m definitely excited about the possibilities of it all, and maybe in a few years, we can completely wean ourselves away from foreign and domestic oil, for the better of the economy, and ultimately, the planet.

[Via Chevy Volt]