Speaking of light, I loaded a lux meter onto my phone yesterday. Today I recorded the light in the kitchen by which it is comfortable to read at 136lux and daylight outside on a cloudy cold day at 8,600 lux. Inside my bus I put two of my LED lanterns onto full power and held the meter up. When the naked LED shines directly on the meter from 3 inches I got 60 lux. From 3 feet away, zero. That should tell you how tremendously pathetic these LED lanterns are! I have a GE lantern that professes 350 lumens but I had my doubts.
Using the same lux meter, with the meter pressed up against the diffused glass I measured 500 lux. Moving the meter away two feet yielded 10 lux. I didn’t bother recording zero at 3 feet. So basically, these LED lanterns are children’s toys. They’re good enough to see large objects faintly or to see your way to the bathroom but that’s it. My measure of light is whether I can read a book, comfortably. None of these lanterns afford that luxury. Whether putting some white, reflective card inside the glass to reflect the light in a single direction would help, I don’t know.
This whole LED illumination thing seems to be smoke and mirrors. If you remember, when the idiots decided to do away with the good old incandescent bulb about 20 years ago, a 7W forescent was alleged to be as bright as a 100W incandescent. It most certainly was not and everybody had to go to 13W and even then the light was lacking a certain substance. Now they’re playing the same game saying that woefully underpowered LEDs are as bright as the 100W bulbs we cannot now obtain. Of course, they are not!
Somewhere I read that 1200 lumens is about equivalent to a 100W bulb. I’m unconvinced but out of curiosity I paid $5 and ordered 3 LED panels from China that claim 1000 lumen output. I’ll bet my bottom dollar that 1000 lumens will be a total disappointment. Having said that, if they do in fact work then I’ll get some of that plastic fluorescent tube diffusing plastic from Lowes (hiss, spit) and put them up as mini fluorescents. As I said though, I have my doubts about them.
One alternative to the miserable 12V lighting would be to put in 120V lighting. That’s not quite as daft as it sounds. If I put in 120V bulbs (incidentally a 40W incandescent lights the inside of the galley nicely) then a 60W equivalent LED bulb would consume 8.5W at 120V. If I were to put an inverter to convert 12V to 120V then that 8.5W would probably be about 2A of 12V power. Quite a power hog but then I never was fool enough to believe LED lighting was going to save any power.
One of the thoughts I’d had yesterday was to spray the nasty unshielded LED lanterns with the white fogging spray I had on my windows before I put tint and blinds up. That stuff was pretty good though patchy. Several coats correctly applied would likely reduce the horrible glare from the unshielded LEDs. Having seen though, how poor those lanterns are, the point of doing so has evaporated.
I keep meaning to do a comparison between these laughable LED lanterns and a simple candle lantern. Indeed, back in my dad’s place I have an old oil hurricane lantern. That produced a decent quantity of light. Not quite enough to read comfortably by but I have a feeling it was way better than what the rather pitiful LED lanterns produce.
Years ago I used to cycle about 8,000 miles annually. Where I used to live, there was a cyclepath from just outside my home to the center of the city. It made sense to cycle because it would take 45 minutes to cycle at zero cost versus 35 minutes by bus or 25 minutes by car (then spend 20 minutes trying to find a free parking space). That meant cycling through a valley that had trees forming an archway over the cyclepath. It was so dark that on a cloudy night it was not possible even to see the path. Thus after trying many different cycle lamps and finding all to be insufficient, I got myself a dynamo light from a dynamo set and put a 6V gel battery on it. That worked wonderfully and illuminated my path for 50 yards. Whether I’d be able to get the 12v version of the 6v krypton bulb I don’t know. I’m sure that would provide me with far more light than any of these LED contrivances.
Eventually I tested my GE lantern and found that was better than the no-name Chinese lanterns from Big Lots but even so, not by much. At 3 feet it was zero lux but at 2 feet it was 6 lux. That light level truly drops off rapidly! I get very much the feeling that unless I can get some form of incandescent lighting in here then I might as well stick with these horrible LED lantern abominations. It’s just too easy to follow the technology path. You do remember the technology path? First you buy something truly despicable then you buy something truly worthless then you buy something half-assed then you buy something that’s just not good enough then eventually after a few more iterations of not good enough you end up with something barely passable.
In a past life I worked for Barnes & Noble where I sold their ridiculous Nook device. The first edition was pure and utter junk. I remember the manager threatening to fire me for calling it half-assed junk. Thy worked out how to palm them off on the unsuspecting public though. Then there was a second edition then came the half -assed Nook Color where the thing just went bananas in even low levels of humidity. Eventually they cycled through a few more iterations before doing what they should have done in the first place and jacking it in and rebadging somebody else’s tablet. Technology always follows that path and it’s never ever a good idea to be in during the first decade of a device’s existence. LED lighting has been around for maybe 7 years. It’s still not a mature field. Maybe by 2020 it will be mature.
If you recall, I ordered LED lights. I also ordered some G4 bulb bases. The thought is that if the LED lights turn out to be as abysmal as I expect then I can simply install my G4 bulb bases and put krypton, xenon or halogen bulbs in the system. Three bulb bases will see my bus fully illuminated.
Meanwhile those of you with memories will recall that I glued a USB/fag-lighter socket to the top of a battery. Well, the glue did finally set. Though it was wet and cold today so I didn’t do anything with it, I can work on the setup over the next few days. There is a half-baked plan to combine my 5W solar panel with my security camera and that battery setup. Who knows - it might even work. If I end up junkingthe battery - who cares - I have another identical battery and no particular use for either.
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