LED Lighting - And All Things Green

So this is a quick and raw video of one of our new products that can be found on the website. It’s the Eternaleds Lumistick. It’s 4.5 watts of PURE POWER! But seriously, it’s actually pretty bright and small enough to put anywhere, like under a kitchen cabinet, or in a drawer. Which also means that I have a lot of ideas for some arts and crafts for it. Imagine taking two of these and attaching it to an AC battery back, adding a red tinted filter to it, then running around in a park. Can you say Instant Lightsaber? That is one of my ideas for a video in the next coming months. If you have any questions about it or if you’re interested in seeing any other Eternaleds bulbs in action, post in the comments. Enjoy!

Luke, I am your father.

I’ve finally gotten around to offloading and organizing all the pictures from the Eco Gift Expo at the Santa Monica Convention Center in December. It was an exciting and productive trip, and we met a lot of great people there. This was the first expo that we’ve done (and definitely not the last) so it was good to get out there and talk to like-minded eco-conscious individuals that were as passionate about being green as we were.

Now being that it was the first time we have had a booth at an expo, there’s some things you should know if you ever decide to do one…

1. Know your stuff - There will be a ton of different people going to the expo, be it consumers, business owners, as well as media (both print and web). They will all have different levels of knowledge about your product, and your competitors, ranging from completely uneducated to Mr. (or Ms.) Know-it-All. Know what you’re talking about inside and out so that you can be the trusted expert to answer any and every question that may come your way.

2. Break out your wallet - The initial cost of booth may seem like a large expense, but for all the other costs like displays, building material, tools, rentals, it will quickly add up. The final cost after all was said and done was almost the cost of two booths. My recommendation is to call up your credit card company and ask them to raise your credit limit, and at the same time lower your interest rate.

3. Drink lots of coffee - Plan on moving around quickly and talking to everyone that walks by the booth. The hardest thing about this is when it’s the second day, and you haven’t gotten enough sleep, and your energy is waning. Your mood reflects on what you are selling, so if you look tired, or unmotivated, people will think you’re not interested in your product so why should they? If you can’t stand there for 10-13 hours straight, then you probably need to hire someone to do that.

4. Expect the expected and unexpected - There were so many things that went wrong from start to finish that we basically made up as we went along. Setup ideas, broken displays, talking points were all changed on the fly. It did help a huge amount that we planned everything else down to the tee so that everything else ended up being quite manageable.

So this is the story of our experience at the Eco Gift Expo…

The booth that we had purchased had a great location right near the main entrance and we were really excited about how lucky we got. Unfortunately, luck goes both ways. We mocked up exactly how all the displays would be set up and got the visual aspect down of what people would see as they walked by. About 3 weeks before the expo, we were told that our booth location had changed. The spot that we had before had been a sponsor spot, so we were moved to a different location. It didn’t look as good on paper, but the actual location ended up being just as good, a corner booth near another entrance.

About a week before the convention, and the deadline to ship the displays from New York was coming up fast. The friend that I hired to make the clear boxes, fixtures, tracks, and wooden light boxes was finishing up the final pieces. By a random stroke of luck, I saw how the “12+1″ display was coming together and made a last-minute major design change to it by putting all the fixtures on the outside of the box rather than the inside. This ended up saving the display and actually making it usable, as you’ll see later.

As things always seem to go, we packed up everything in boxes and shipped them to L.A. at the very last minute. And by last minute, I mean the paint was still drying and UPS was about to close in 20 minutes. If we didn’t ship it when we did, it would not have made it to the expo in time. But what is success without the looming chance of complete and utter failure? I like to live on the edge. Unfortunately, there was a casualty upon arrival of the boxes in L.A…..

Let’s see the pictures…..Go to the Picture Diary

Alright, so it’s done. Jeff did a great job at the Green Health Live interview.

Here’s the link to the blog on The GHL site. Marc did a good job of writing an overview of how LED’s work using the images that we gave him for the show. Check it out.
http://thestream.tv/blog/?p=379

Here’s the link to the video.
http://www.thestream.tv/watch.php?v=560

I don’t quite agree with Jeff’s fashion choice (I mean who wears cyan dress shirts, really?) but that didn’t deter from his knowledge of the product. There was another 45 minutes of Q&A afterwards with some interesting questions, but unfortunately, that didn’t get aired.

The best question that someone wrote in was “So what happens when the bulbs explode?!” The look on Jeff’s face was classic. It was a cross between “Is that a real question?” and “Uhh….is anybody screening these submissions?”

The answer to that, is that LED bulbs DON’T explode. They are solid state electronics (kind of like a USB drive), meaning it’s just a chip. The newer bulbs casings are made mostly from aluminum (rather than polycarbonate, a stiff plastic) which are used as a heatsink to dissipate the heat produced from the high intensity LED chips. Compact fluorescents are glass tubes that have an argon gas (or sometimes krypton gas) and a little bit of mercury inside. The old style and office fluorescents had a separate block of electronics called a ballast that’s meant to “jumpstart” the lighting process. The compact fluorescents have a mini-ballast inside the base of the bulb to do this. I haven’t heard of these lights exploding either, but I have heard stories of these burning out, especially when you turn the lights on and off rapidly. Apparently doing that will greatly decrease the life of a CFL. Luckily, LEDs don’t have this problem. And of course you definitely don’t want to be in the vicinity of a broken CFL or fluorescent due to the small mercury issue. (Just kidding, it’s not a small issue…click here for the cleanup instructions.)

Incandescents and halogens are both glass “globes” that contain a metal filament that heats up to an extreme temperature, which creates light. The bulb contains no gas, but actually contains a vacuum, so the filament is less prone to oxidation from the air (and thus burning out more quickly). As you can imagine, this high heat is transferred to the thin glass bulb and dissapated through the air. Halogens are a bit more efficient that incandescents (more light for the same wattage) but they both get hot enough to burn you (and start various curtain/paper/fabric fires) if you touch them.

I remember back in my younger years, we had one of lamps with a lampshade. Nothing special, just the typical run-of-the-mill table lamps. I had one of those mist bottles, the kind you use for Windex, but it was filled with water for ironing clothes. In my infinite wisdom, I knew that such a fine mist would evaporate quickly from warm surfaces, so I thought it would be fun to see the water turn quickly into steam by spraying it on a hot light bulb. Bad idea. I was (and still am) a little scientist and thought I knew what I was doing, it seemed so simple in my head. In the same way that glass cracks when heated up and dunked in water, the light bulb did the same. Except being under pressure and being so thin, instead of cracking, it EXPLODED. Bulb shards everywhere. Luckily the lampshade was still on, which shielded me from flying slivers of broken glass to the face, or you’d be probably be calling me Patches right now. What happens is that the glass on the outside contracts due to the cooler temperature, while the glass on the inside of the bulb doesn’t. This non-uniform stretching causes stress in the glass, and ultimately rupture.

I can’t believe I actually made it to my age in one piece when I think about all the dumb things I did as a kid. Retrospectively of course. At the time, it was pure genius…

Tonight at 6PM PST, Jeff is doing an interview with Mark Ryan at Green Health Live. The URL you can see him at, AND participate with questions to ask him are :

LIVE STREAM:
http://www.thestream.tv/series.php?s=11
WEBSITE:
http://www.greenhealthlive.tv/

Green Health Live is an online talk show (which is part of a larger video and entertainment site) that does weekly segments on how to live greener and educate people on green issues that they may not be aware of. I watched a few episodes (The Fish and Recycling episodes are good) and I like the style that they use, it’s not preachy or boring (as content like that *could* be in another person’s hands) and actually makes it fun to learn about how to do your part for the environment. It caters towards the general public which is really nice, especially if you don’t know a lot of the acronyms or technologies that are just thrown around nowadays. Personally, in this age of fast-food entertainment, if you lose my attention or go over my head for even a second, my hand is already on the back button to see the newest Youtube viral video.

Of the episodes that I saw, Mark kept it interesting with his funny quips and comments, and co-host Carrie is a good bastion of knowledge on the medical aspect of each show. I think just the fact that he sports a faux-hawk while talking and interviewing guests is entertainment enough, but then again, I just have a natural predilection towards mohawks. Jeff will talking a little bit about the industry/business, but the focus of the interview will be on more informational topics such as

• What LED stands for and how it works
• Comparing and contrasting with conventional incandscent bulbs and fluorescent lights
• Environmental impact and health implications of each
• Cost and savings of LED technology
• Interesting stories and thoughts

It should be interesting to see how well Jeff does, and if anything, this will be a great resource for people that want to find out about or want a general introduction about LEDs. I’ll be posting the video up after it’s finished tonight. Stay tuned! Or better yet, watch the show and submit a question!