Next message: Ken James: "Re: lv-ab: comparing LEDs and lights for economic benifit"
On Sun, Apr 06, 2008 at 08:56:23PM -0500, Ken James wrote:
> Here is a brief explanation of why buying a 20$ LED light is not a good
> way to get the most for your money, and why buying a light that is more
> expensive "up front' can give you much more light per dollar.
Yes, but buying a pre-fabricated LED light, regardless of price, helps
avoid the headaches associated with temperature and moisture management
when designing your own LED light with high-end LEDs, or at least that
was the opinion I formed when back when the X-Lamp first exceeded CFL
efficiency.
Ideally, I'd love to have bulbs consisting of 6-LED arrays, using the
high-intensity, high-efficiency LEDs, angled slightly away from each
other to get good broad coverage, run 3 to a series on an efficient
enough voltage regulator to keep them at 350mA under any non-depleted
charge condition of my batteries. All this suitably housed to prevent
any thermal or moisture problems, attach to the light fixture I want to
use, and take the already reasonably broad light pattern, and spread it
even more evenly (I'm willing to accept some loss of luminosity to get
this, so a solution like shining the light at the back side of a piece
of paper is fine with me).
But right now, I'll acknowledge that this IS too much to ask for, and
grab some of the $20-ish lights as a stopgap measure, since using
0.78A of power to light my cabin still beats the hell out of drawing 8.3A
for the same amount of light from incandescents (especially since the
incandescents don't do a good red for night sailing).
And as a digression on the topic of good red lights for night sailing,
can anyone tell me if there are any manufacturers of instruments
(particulary knotlogs, depth sounders, and handheld GPSs) which are
actually designed with (red, or even orange) backlights which preserve
night vision, rather than (blue or white) backlights whose primary
function seems to be to make it look new-high-tech-sexy at boat shows?
Legibility of the LCD at any reasonable angle of heel while wearing
polarized sunglasses would also be nice (come on guys, you know which
way the glasses lenses are polarized, just polarize your base/clear
screen the same way instead of 45 degrees askew, so I can still read the
thing in a heavy wind without having to tild my head over to match the
boat).
Cheers,
Kris
--
Kris Coward http://unripe.melon.org/
GPG Fingerprint: 2BF3 957D 310A FEEC 4733 830E 21A4 05C7 1FEB 12B3
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