LED Lamp can be even more pretty

I met this artist Holly Peters, she has a thing about making things more beautiful. By looking at photo at our Kickstarter project, she had few ideas about making our lamp more pretty from a already distinctive looking lamp  such as:

So we met and I gave her a set of our World Lamp. This is the result of her work.

She did some paper carving and painting and put those small decorative item on the lamp shell, and that look nice.

But wait, that's not all. Wait till we turn on the light:

The aquarium scene of Under the Sea is more attractive with our blue lamp shell, nice.

How about your own design? For sure you can come out something is even more nicer.

Summer is coming, another reason to switch to LED lighting

Did you hear the true story happened in Europe after they banned selling of incandescent light bulb?    One guy put out ads to sell 100 Watt incandescent bulb and it was completely legal. How come? His ads reads "Electrical Heating Device". The Ads can't be more true, traditional incandescent bulb converts 5% energy into light; and 95% of energy into heat, quite a efficiency heating device.  
You may or may not know this: all your lighting device has a common byproduct that is heat.
At winter time, that's not a problem at all. just burning a little bit more electricity. At summer time, the heat can be quite annoying.
For example, My kitchen was using 4 T8 tubes in ceiling light, that's 140 watt of heat and light in total; but ultimately everything would come down to heat.  Later on I convert the light using 4 LED modules and that was 60 Watt. Weeks later, I feel the light is too much and took out one module and re-arrange the positions and that become 45Watts and I feel the light is just right. By doing so, I also trim off over 90 watt in heat. If we had to move energy using AC, we have to use more energy. That's quite an effort for Air Conditioner to move out during summer time.

LED light not only use less energy to light up, at summer time, it also require less AC effort to remain coolness.  That's double saving.

EasyLEDLighting.com has many LED Lighting products of choice.

Should lamp weight a lot? (Earthquake safety)

Last week LA was hit by a magnitude 5.1 earthquake, we were just glade no one was killed or serious injured, then this week Chile was shook by a magnitude 8.2 earthquake. Thanks to strict building code, only few were killed in this earthquake despite its super strength.

I remember watching a video of simulated earthquake, everything was shacking, especial the hanging shop light style lamp in the middle of room. It started moving back and forth, suddenly one chain that leash one side of lamp broke, and the lamp just swam though the room, like a knife hang by its end, then fall on floor, smash into piece. Of course, that was a fluorescent shop light with glass tubes. With the power of simulated earthquake keep increasing, eventually cabinet, bookshelf all fall, making bigger mess; but I remember the lamp fixture was first one that broke out of control.

Why? a typical 4' long T8 fluorescent shop light weights nearly 10lbs, and they are hang high by two thin chains which give it waggle room to work on the damage. And after it fall, shattered glass can further do more damages.

Look at the traditional shop light design, sheet metal lamp shell, metal box ballast, long glass tubes, sounds like a trouble prone combination. and no wonder it has to weight so much. Do we really have to have all that to make light?
Here is our answer to that. Our World Lamp LED shop light is a 36" long shop light that illuminate as good as a 4 feet long two T8 fluorescent tube. Yet our lamp only weights 1 lb 10 oz. It can be hang by two small nails or thin chain/wires.

Illustration: World Lamp shop light hang by two thin metal wires

 And the lamp is made by safe material; it doesn't contain glass, mercury or any other dangerous material. Even when it does fall from high space, it wouldn't do much harm.
This is a nice lamp, low cost as lower than $50 per lamp. The price near a traditional fluorescent shop light , but it's LED light source, use about half of energy and will last much longer.




World Lamp is available at EasyLEDlighting.com

Example of convert Fluorescent lamp to LED lamp

Here is an example how I convert a fluorescent ceiling lamp into LED lamp. To decide if a lamp can use Easy LED module for conversion, there are couple of things we should be looking into.
First, Easy LED module is about 9" long and 3 inch wide. We can decide where and how many modules to be fitted into lamp case. Some lamps could use two, some lamps could fit 3 or more modules. In this example, we choose two modules for the size of lamp and light output. The second thing we want to check out is whether it has proper diffuser and the diffuser should be placed at least 4" away from light source.

The lamp of target a 14" square lamp, it uses 2 round fluorescent tubes of 32W and 22W, totally 54W, and the Easy LED kit I use is 30Watt Easy LED kit to replace the light source.

32W + 22W fluorescent tubes

To install, the first step is to remove fluorescent tubes and the ballast, we only need the power feed. The ballast can be removed by losing two screws, and the metal hooks can be removed by moving them back and forth several times then pull off.

Second step is to mount Easy LED modules and driver on the lamp base. I mount the module at symmetric far side location and mount the driver in the middle for balance of weight and light output. Make sure you leave the lamp base mounting screw holes uncovered. The lamp base is clean and smooth, I use attached double sided tape to fasten the modules and driver; however the lamp base is somewhat soft and twist-able (wobble) , so I also use included mounting screw to enforce the mounting (use 7/64" drill bit to drill a pilot hole first, the the screw can be easily screwed in ), I only need one screw per module.


Once modules and driver are mounted, follow the link to connect the wires, put the diffuser cover back on. The conversion is then completed, it took me less than 20 minutes. Now this lamp only cost about half of energy to run and the 30 Watt LED lamp is brighter than existing 54 Watt fluorescent tubes for this lamp. And I don't think I will be needing a ladder for replacing burn tube for a long long time.


30 Watt Easy LED kit is available at www.easyledlighting.com for sale with $39.
Typical LED ceiling Lamp would run at $90.

Purpose of diffuser

The purpose of diffuser in a lamp is to soften light output for soft viewing, which is especially important for LED light. LED is a point light source that can emit a lot of light. Fluorescent light tube in this area is a lot of better since its light come out from a long, although narrow area. In some cases fluorescent tube can be view with naked eye.
LED light, on the other hand is another story. Even a LED tube with 300~400 small LED doesn't look very comfortable by eyes. Direct view into our 5Watt LED can hurt our eyes. Unless the lamp is a reflectional design, a diffuser of some kind is needed.

The work of diffuser is to break down intensive output light into random directions, of course much less intense. A point light source would look like light is coming from all directions, hence, looks like from entire area.

There are two type of diffuser design, one use translucent type, the material itself is not complete clear. Its particle absorb light and emit light at all directions. 
The other one is clear type, use its shape to redirect light. the finer its shape, the better it diffuses.

Diffuser panel at 2'x4' size can be found at Home Depot or other home improvement store, these panels can be used as direct drop in for a 2'x4' Troffer lamp.
Our LED module has optional integrated thin film diffuser.  The film is about 0.7mm thick, basically clear film with micro structure at surface.

Click to see how to install thin film diffuser.

LED Lighting Product Quality

What's should we be looking at LED lighting product for quality?

* Color Temperature and Color Rendering Index (Quality of light)
    Like CFL/Fluorescent light, LED light is not a full spectrum light (vs incandescent light). Early LED light products usually look bluish at around 6500K, for its high lumen efficacy number. Recent years there are more day light white (5500K) and warm white (below 3000K) products which are more suitable to human visible range.
    Color Rendering Index (CRI) is the number in percentage to measure how good the ability of light to bring out true color of objects, Incandescent light bulb is highest as 100. Usually you want the number to be greater than 70 for most applications, professional who works with color would require 90 or higher CRI.
* Heat Handling (Quality for product life time)
   Almost all electronic parts emits some heat, that is especially true for LED products. Lighting grade LED converts about less than 33% of energy into light; the rest would become heat. Driver does better that has only less than 20% of energy become heat. The number is better than traditional light source such as incandescent, fluorescent or HID. However, traditional light sources work at much higher temperature above 400F(200C) or higher; on this end, electronic parts usually won't be able to sustain more than 250F(120C). That's why LED lighting is more sensitive to heat. Heat can damage LED, shorten their life span, decrease light output and ruin their CRI.  Similar effect applies to driver, too.
    Thermo design is big topic in LED lighting since beginning. It's complicated and no fixed rule for user to exam products. One general rule is metal conduct heat better than most of other materials; the other rule is size counts. lots of heat trap in a small space isn't a good thing.
* Energy efficiency
    There are some room of difference in energy conversion rate among various LED products. Since lumen is measured as energy, blue light has higher lumen number than other light. LED working temperature also plays a role, too. Cooler LED does better work to convert electricity into light. Of course, circuit efficiency made few difference, too.

    All these variance doesn't compare to difference made by basic lamp design. LED by nature is directional light source, while all other light source is omnidirectional. Use LED to make a omnidirectional lamp requires mounting LED at different directions.  On the other hand, use other light sources to make a directional lamp, such as ceiling light/Wall light/ shop light, usually include reflective panel to reflect light to desired direction. But no matter how it does, there is no match to directional lamp that uses LED. in some cases, directional LED lamps use only half of energy as fluorescent ones.

Easy LED Lighting quality

Our LED module uses aluminum plate as mounting bracket, which also makes direct contact with the belly of all LEDs.  The aluminum takes heat away from LED and allow them to work at much cooler temperature.
Our LED kit or lamp uses external driver that has much durable design. It's water and dust proof and doesn't have to be crumble together LED heat source.

LED tube demystify

LED tube is a newly emerging product from China. They typically have aluminum back half tube, diffuser from tube cover, LED PCB and driver circuit. The whole thing is packed inside a narrow long tube that has less than an inch in diameter, compatible size as fluorescent tube in order to retrofit. LED tube usually use many small low power LED, typical hundreds of them. Because the distance between LED and diffuser is less than half inch, to make the light output look uniform, the distance between LEDs should be less than that too.  Depends on the design, a typical 4 foot long T8 LED tube uses 18W ~ 22 Watt of power, is less than average 32 Watt used by fluorescent tube to achieve same brightness..

Although the goal was to retrofit into existing fluorescent light fixture, there is a ballast between household AC and fluorescent tube connectors to reduce current in  fluorescent system. Install LED tubes into fluorescent fixture need to bypass this ballast, and there are two kinds of LED tube standards that's not compatible with each other. Mix use these two may cause catastrophic damage and dangerous. Therefore remove or bypass the fluorescent ballast is considered invalidation UL warranty.   

Put that aside, diver used in LED tube has to be crumple inside a tiny space that's less than half of tube. So their design is usually delicate. Since both of LED board and driver generate great deal of heat in such a close proximity, they affect each other in many aspects. There are reports about poor lifetime of driver and color degeneration of LED at near the driver.   

On the contrary, Easy LED kit or lamp use external driver with good safety and quality, and our module handles heat excellently, we believe is a much better choice than LED tubes. Easy LED kits and Lamps can be get at easyledlighting.com