NEWS : TECH (NFPC)

A Household of Wi-Fi Bulbs Controlled By Remote

In one of the older "Treehouse of Horror" episodes from The Simpsons, Pierce Brosnan voiced a murderous home automation system. Back then, the idea of home automation was practically a dream (or a nightmare) to average folks, but now it's becoming an attainable reality. This set of Wi-Fi-controlled lightbulbs from Greenwave Reality will give homeowners control over their home's entire lighting system with a remote control.

The wireless LED lighting kit consists of four 40-watt equivalent bulbs, a remote control and a gateway box that connects to any home router. They won't be readily available at your local home improvement store -- instead the company plans to sell the sets through utility and lighting companies for around $200, with each new bulb costing under $20.

ANALYSIS: Smartphone Controls Brainy LED Wi-Fi Bulbs

Each bulb has its own IP address and once installed, automatically pairs with the gateway. Once all of the bulbs are paired and the gateway is connected to the router, lighting in the home can be controlled through the remote, which will be able to control up to 500 bulbs at one time.

An app downloaded to a smartphone or tablet controls brightness, timers or a large section of lights. Controlling lights through your mobile device might just seem like a novelty but it does serve a purpose. Setting up schedules and timers for when the lights need to come on, or setting dimmers is pretty easy and provides the same piece of mind that persnickety timers do.

via Technology Review

Credit: Greenwave Reality

---

Email:

---

CFL Bulbs Have Yet Another Contender

Vu1 R30 Bulb: $14.95

The incandescent light bulb’s popularity has been waning over the last decade thanks in large part to compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) and light-emitting diodes (LEDs), both of which are pushing for more energy efficient electricity. If an incandescent bulb uses 60 watts, a CFL emitting the same amout of light would use about 13 watts and and an LED bulb would use just 8 watts (see chart here).

NEWS: LED Lighting Makes Food Look More Appetizing

Now a new kind of bulb has entered the fray. This week, Vu1 announced that Lowes will be selling their electronically stimulated luminescence (ESL) R30 bulb. According to Vu1, ESLs use accelerated electrons to stimulate phosphor in order to create light. The bulb uses 19.5 watts of power, a little more than CFLs, but they last longer -- 11,000 hours compared with 8,000 hours. And more than that, they don’t contain the mercury CFLs contain, and the ESL bulbs are not plagued with the delay inherent to fluorescent lighting; these light up instantly with full brightness. The company also has plans to sell an Edison-style A19 bulb in the United States and Europe, both styles have received UL certification.

Via: CNET

Credit: Vu1

---

Email:

---

Adaptive Lighting Could Slash Electricity Bills

According to this handy little booklet (PDF) from the U.S. Department of Energy, 11 percent of a household's energy budget is spent on lighting. And it accounts for 22 percent of all the electricity used in the United States, according to a 2009 Department of Energy study.

A new development from MIT could slash a home's energy budget in half. Researchers Matthew Aldrich and Nan Zhao built a system that's able to monitor available light and adjust it automatically. The setup was made using LEDs, the most efficient form of lights that are commercially available. Unlike compact fluorescent bulbs, LEDs can be adjusted to any level of lighting intensity.

An important component of the light-adjusting system is a control device about the size of a business card that's placed on a work surface. The card contains sensors that measure the intensity of light coming from different fixtures or windows.

The control device then adjusts the lighting accordingly. If plenty of natural light is coming in through the windows, for example, the controller lowers the amount of artificial light.

Currently, the control device is wired to the lighting fixtures. But Aldrich thinks the system could be built to incorporate infrared lights, like those used in a television remote control. The infrared lights could be embedded in the control device and the fixtures and used to automatically turn lights up or down.

The team found in their testing that this system reduced the energy used for lighting by 65 to 90 percent. That’s on top of the already high energy efficiency of LEDs.

MIT's work is attracting attention from lighting companies as well. Jeffrey Cassis, the CEO of Philips Color Kinetics, told reporter David Chandler of the MIT News Office that the team doing this work “is world-class — they are working on a hard problem and a quality, cost-effective solution has great potential.”

Preliminary results of the ongoing research were published this summer in the Proceedings of the SPIE.

---

Email:

---

Another Lightbulb Revolution Brewing

Lightbulb manufacturers are preparing to sell new residential light-emitting diode bulbs designed to be more efficient and last longer than compact fluorescent bulbs. I want to be excited, but I'm irritated instead.

Every light source has some sort of tradeoff--even the sun now that I think about it. Back in 2007 I dutifully recycled my inefficient incandescent bulbs and switched to CFLs, even though they were costly, the light was colder, and the mercury made them problematic to recycle.

They'll pay for themselves over time. That's been the refrain with expensive energy-efficient products. Back in 2008, I noted that LEDs cost 20 times more than incandescent bulbs in this post about efforts in the lab to make them cheaper. While the price has gone down slightly, Fortune Magazine writer Michael V. Copeland reported recently that a Home Depot in California is hardly selling any of the new $20 residential LED bulbs they just got in stock.

Should buying a lightbulb be like buying a boiler? Heirloom design proponent Saul Griffith would probably say yes, but I think it's too much to expect consumers to view lightbulbs as long-term investments. The plastic-packaged CFL movement left me wondering just how much of a positive impact it had. I'm not eager to swap bulbs again. Besides, I hear that engineers are working on electron stimulated luminescence lighting.

Photo Credit: Windell H. Oskay, www.evilmadscientist.com.

LED Christmas Lights are Magical

This weekend I did a little Christmas shopping and decided to pick up some LED Christmas lights. LED lights offer several benefits over incandescent and even compact fluorescent bulbs. 

• Long-lasting. My box of Philips blue icicle lights claims that these bulbs will last 25,000 hours.
• Durable. LEDs are solid and hold up well under conditions that might break other bulbs or jar their filaments.
• No Heat. Incandescent bulbs get hot; LEDs stay cool.
• No Mercury. One of the problems with compact fluorescent bulbs is that they contain mercury, a heavy metal that is poisonous. LEDs do not contain any heavy metals to harm people or the environment.
• Efficient. My string of LED lights is rated to 7.2 Watts. According to the box, I can connect up to 29 strings for one outlet.

That's all good stuff. I'm just wondering about the quality. In some initial searching on this product, I came across a few reviews saying that these lights last just one season, when used outdoors. The wires seems to rust and even some strings did not work right out of the box.

My strings did work and I'm using them indoors, so I'm hoping they'll last more than one year. And the effect with these particular lights is truly magical. The blue LEDs cast swirls and circles of light onto the walls. Even with the blinds closed, the light effect is even magical from the street.