LED lighting, and a small ranty rant,

[Hammerskjold]

Gee Hammer, I was hoping for more content about LED lighting, less politics. Can't avoid politics on the lounge though hah.

You have a valid point, and usually I try my best to steer away from politics. Usually.

But again, it is a valid point. I'm venting mostly because I'm getting fed up with the anti-science crap I see from some so called 'leaders' in my corner of the world.

My outrage is not purely altruism, but because these clowns are getting in the way of science potentially bringing me the next cool stuff. Especially since my tax dollars are -paying- for these scientists! Let them science it up! I want my robot butlers, my space elevators, and my asteroid space fortress\cottage. For all those things to come true and feasible, I need un-muzzled scientists.

There's already a lot of LED's in places that make sense, like traffic lights which are always on. Little unexpected things happen though, such as in winter the stoplights aren't warm enough to melt snow-- so people are sent to desnow the traffic lights! Still cheaper than paying the power bill and cost of replacement (including disruption to traffic infrastructure / economy due to downtime).

I wonder if there's a manufacturer out there who managed to route the heat generated by high powered LED, to melt the snow. I remember reading a while back that the automotive industry was tackling a similar problem, since traditional incan headlights also produced IR\radiant heat.

Then again after a certain brightness level, some high powered LEDs can produce heat in the sheer amount of photons it produces.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChJkEfGiv00

Though with traffic lights, that'd probably be too bright.
No seriously, I wonder if there is a way of transfering more of the heat into the housing\the housing acting as another heatsink for the traffic light. There's more LED traffic lights installations here as well, though I'm not sure if they use the LED types that generates much heat at all.

I too am impressed by cree lighting.

Absolutely, they're one of the game changers in my book. Apparently they were around since 1989, but they weren't on my radar until they went into the white LED business. IMO they gave Philips Lumileds serious, and much needed competition.

I've been following them on and off, and I'm glad you pointed out the A19 form factor available! I've been waiting for those for a long while. I'm glad they're finally available.

LED in A19 form was available maybe 1-2 years ago, don't hold me on that exact number. But the price was either a non-mover for most people, or the quality was really bad at only a slightly cheaper price. Unless you meant that it's finally available at a more affordable price point. Then yes, I've been waiting a while for them too.

While this Cree bulb is still new-ish that I can't say 'yeah, I had them for years and years they're great'. Going by Cree's past track record so far, I'm excited that they're entering this market segment.

I have some CFL's currently, but all my handheld lights are LED's.

One interesting aspect to me is LED improvement almost worked in reverse compared to most other electronic technology. By that I mean usually the first generation items are bigger physically, with later generations becoming smaller.

My first actual sighting of white LEDs was my friend's flashlight years ago during camping, which was a beefed up, supersized version of these coin cell squeeze type LED light.

http://www.rei.com/product/838889/inova-...flashlight

Instead of one coin cell, it probably took a few and had a row of 4, 5mm LEDs.

I was able to get higher powered LEDs in a flashlight and retrofit flashlight drop-ins, way before I was able to buy household LEDs light bulbs.

I'm taking a look at their website, and they also have full spectrum 5K available as well. I must've missed that in my initial reading of your post--Daylight spectrum.

Oh, and the best price I've found is at home depot 14 USD per when rounded up. There's 6 packs available too for a slight bulk discount (only 3$ though).

The home depot I got them from carries 40 watt, and 60 watt equivalent in warm white (2700k iirc), and daylight (cooler white temp). 15.99 Cad bucks before taxes though, and no 6 packs yet.

Tint wise I can say it seems to be even more uniform than previous generations. I remember some of the earlier gen of power LEDs can have significant colour tints, puke green to Princely purple was not uncommon. (mostly some of the early gen Philips, Cree had some tints but the ones I have seems to be less dramatic.)

The two I bought so far seems to either have no tint, or if they do it's virtually undetectable to my Mk1 eyeball.