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Designing with LEDs Designing with LEDs: Perspective on the technology that will tame light while greening lumens.

29/04/2015
Smartphone microscope takes LED teardown photos | Designing with LEDs

How how to use a laser pointer lens, iPhone, and a tripod to take 175x-mag photos of LED filaments http://www.designingwithleds.com/smartphone-microscope-led-photos/

I often need to take photos of deconstructed LED, lights, or drivers and look at them at a much smaller than normal scale. For this purpose I bought an eScope a couple of years ago. This was not an ideal instrument: The software is difficult to work with and requires tweaking to work with a …

27/04/2015
LED filaments teardown reveals clever packaging | Designing with LEDs

I used to think LED filaments were just LEDs-on-a-stick --wrong! They seem to use a clever packaging method of chips wire-bonded to a square wire lead-frame. Very versatile. http://www.designingwithleds.com/led-filaments-teardown-packaging/

I was inspired by seeing a quick video clip from Micah Scott of some LED filaments she had purchased off Alibaba. I found several different ones for sale on eBay and purchased these. The cost, including shipping, was $2.45, so I wasn’t risking much. And then I pretty much forgot about the…

20/04/2015
The New Cree TW Series LED T8: Review and teardown | Designing with LEDs

Gorgeous light quality: The NEW Cree TW series LED T8 tube light at a third less than the original one. http://www.designingwithleds.com/the-new-cree-tw-series-led-t8-review-and-teardown/

The Cree TW series LED T8 replacement lamp is a brand-new light, not to be confused with Cree’s original T8 replacement lamp. That lamp, introduced a year ago, is no longer being sold. Like the original Cree T8, the new T8 TW series is a replacement lamp: You pull out the old fluorescent tube light…

09/12/2013
Intematix ChromaLit Linear remote phosphor looks like a winner, even when off - Designing with LEDs

Off-when-white remote phosphor for could drive a stake through the heart of fluorescent tube linear lighting. http://www.designingwithleds.com/intematix-chromalit-linear-remote-phosphor-looks-like-winner-even-2/

Intemamtix has introduced the ChromaLit Linear remote phosphor that enables a linear white light with uniform luminance over its length, and which has the aesthetic advantage of appearing a very pale yellow in its off-state. Intematix calls it a white off-state remote phosphor – like I say, I’d call...

04/12/2013
Should "omnidirectional" be a key feature in an LED bulb review? - Designing with LEDs

Is omnidirectionality a must-have for bulbs? Or is the directional light that LEDs inherently produce a feature, not a bug? Maybe it's time for a change/addition in the Energy Star criteria. http://www.designingwithleds.com/omnidirectional-key-feature-led-bulb-review/

First, a lighting jargon translation: The lighting industry refers to the thingies that screw into a light fixture – the light sources that consumers call light bulbs – as ”lamps”. Mere mortals think of lamps as being the devices that hold bulbs and sit on tables, but that’s not how lighting indust...

14/10/2013
Walmart’s sub-$10 LED bulb flickers and flashes - Designing with LEDs

Review and product teardown of Walmart's new 800-lm LED bulb. Dimming looks ok - until you go hunting...

There’ve been some interesting developments in the world of LED replacement bulbs for incandescent lighting. Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, has introduced a series of four LED bulbs under its Great Value house brand. The bulbs are made under private label by TCP and manufactured in China. Th...

10/10/2013

Walmart’s 800 lm LED replacement bulb has an interesting power control IC (with all its markings removed.) 10 pins at one end, a large gap, and then two pins at the opposite end. No idea what chip it is.

19/07/2013
Cree LED 65W-equivalent BR30 flood light: Tear-down and review - Designing with LEDs

I found a couple of surprises in this LED flood light tear-down: Cree didn't just re-purpose its A19 design. (Sadly, the potting means it's kind of a mess to take apart.) It's a very nice $20 LED flood light -- with a 10-year warranty.

The Cree 65W-equivalent BR30 LED flood light is based on many of the same components as its sibling product line, Cree’s 60W-equivalent A19 bulb. So it’s not too surprising that the flood light bulb has a similar performance: Its light quality CRI number of 80 and its color temperature of 2700 — b...

08/07/2013
Safety standards and non-isolated LED bulbs: What UL compliance means - Designing with LEDs

I put my questions about non-isolated LED bulb safety issues as well as the implications of regulatory compliance to Michael Shulman, Principal Engineer (Lighting) at Underwriter Laboratories (aka "UL"). He answered them quickly and clearly; I’ve posted his responses in full. http://www.designingwithleds.com/safety-standards-and-non-isolated-led-bulbs-what-ul-compliance-means/

I put my questions about non-isolated LED bulb safety issues as well as the implications of regulatory compliance to Michael Shulman, Principal Engineer – Lighting, Product Safety at Underwriter Laboratories (UL). He answered them quickly and clearly; I’ve posted his responses here in full.

04/06/2013
Sapphire savvy requires a peek into LED market - Designing with LEDs

Sapphire, GaN, Si-on-carbide - LED substrates are the very guts of LEDs. Here's a white paper by IMS Research (made public my Rubicon Technologies) that gets into advances in substrate technology, and how they are affected by market changes. Hint: LEDs are being driven by Lighting markets.

Industry analysts often announce the publication of their market research into growth technology sectors. But unfortunately, these analysts usually expect to be paid a hefty fee to read their reports.

23/05/2013
$12 phone vs a $13 LED light bulb: What do YOU think Cree’s profit margin is? - Designing with LEDs

Companies with parts inside the $12 Gongkai phone seems to be making a nice profit. Can the same be said for LED light bulbs?

Bunnie Huang is a guiding light in the open-source hardware community. He wrote the book on hacking the XBox and has extensive experience with Shenzhen contract manufacturing. He also tries to understand and communicate what he’s learned about the big picture philosophy of how open-source products w...

09/05/2013
Analyzing the parts costs for LED bulbs: Where's the profit? - Designing with LEDs

I've occasionally seen articles on the percentage breakdown of parts costs in LED bulbs, but this is the first (I think) that gives actual $$ estimates. http://www.designingwithleds.com/analyzing-parts-costs-led-bulbs/

LED bulb cost is a factor in the adoption of LED replacement light bulbs. The entrenched technologies of incandescent and CFL bulbs have such a low initial purchase price that the first versions of LED bulbs, priced at $40 and up, were doomed to novelty status. So the constant move downward in LED…

04/04/2013
Comparing light patterns for Cree, Philips LED bulbs - Designing with LEDs

How does the shape of an LED bulb affect its light output pattern? Here's a simple rig that shows light distribution for LEDs (Cree and Philips) and compares them with an incandescent and a CFL bulb. http://bit.ly/11opY0Y

Incandescent light bulbs produce light omni-directionally so that the light falls evenly through a spherical pattern. LED’s, however, are inherently directional: They perform like tiny spotlights. Designing an LED bulb that mimics the hemispherical light pattern of an incandescent is one of the bigg...

27/11/2012
Anatomy of a (kind of) intelligent LED Christmas light string

Really felt like Scrooge -- tearing apart a string of LED Christmas stars...
http://www.designingwithleds.com/2012/11/anatomy-of-a-kind-of-intelligent-led-christmas-light-string/

Not all LED Christmas lights are created equal, and there’s a lot of difference in their circuit designs. The manufacturer’s design choices have a big impact on how much the lights will cost — both to purchase and to operate — and how they can be used. Let’s take a look at a string of 10 color-cha...

07/11/2012
LED clothing sparks fashion trend for entertainers

Does this LED dress make my bumpus look beeg? No, but it does add several pounds in the control electronics and the 2,000 RGB LEDs. It looks gorgeous in action - and you can tweet to it! http://www.designingwithleds.com/2012/11/led-clothing-sparks-fashion-trend-for-entertainers/ #

Continuing the trend in entertainment fashion to incorporate LEDs into clothing, singer Nicole Scherzinger debuted adress with 2,000 RGB LEDs, capable of displaying tweets texted to the dress in real time, at the EE 4G mobile network launch party held at the Battersea Power Station in London earlier...

25/10/2012
Cree bumps up LED array output to 5,000 lumens and 146 lm/W

Cree bumps up LED array output to 5,000 lumens and 146 lm/W - adhering to its goal to make it so brain-dead simple to make LED-based lights. http://bit.ly/UDiLsl

The four new members of Cree’s CXA family of non-directional LED arrays — the CXA1507, CXA1512, CXA2520 and CXA2530 — can deliver system-level performance ranging from 500 to 5000 lumens and up to 146 LED lumens per watt, enabling applications ranging from LED replacement lamps to commercial downli...

15/10/2012

LEDs don't always fail closed, and when they fail open - oops, there's goes a whole string in a lighting array. Fault protection and management devices to the rescue, like this new one from STMicro.

15/10/2012

Cheap green laser pointers could shrink cost and *really* shrink the size of Raman spectrometers. Imagine a spectrometer in every pocket. You could sniff out explosives, drugs, bacteria -- in a flash. bit.ly/TjApeN

11/10/2012

Many more process steps -- as well as labor -- goes into making LEDs compared to your basic silicon chips. This 8-minute video does a great job of explaining: http://bit.ly/QmtbqX

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