This lighting blog covers a wide range of lighting topics including current events, the lighting industry and product related blogs. I, Dr. Edison Bulb have 30+ years of lighting experience, my specialties include LED, commercial lighting and sports lighting. I am continuing my learning by keeping up with current lighting events and keeping track of them in this lighting blog.
While you’re upgrading to LED lamps or LED high bays, don’t forget to consider the energy-hogging holiday lights that decorate your house during the holidays. Like other applications, LED holiday lights can save 80 percent or more of the energy used by incandescent lights. Incandescent lights have been used during the holidays for more than 100 years, starting with Thomas Edison when he strung some bulbs outside his laboratory in 1880, according to BusinessMirror.com. Eventually, it became the norm to decorate Christmas trees with...
read moreLED lighting is an effective way to save energy and money, but what else does it have the power to do? I, Dr. Bulb, took a look at how LEDs are improving patients’ moods during hospital stays. Retrofitting outdated T12 fluorescent fixtures with LED troffers is a great start, but these hospitals went above and beyond to make their patients happy. LED Lighting for Intensive Care Patients – Reducing Stress Intensive care units are often pretty grim environments, which is the last thing that critically ill patients want or need. In Charité...
read moreThe temperatures are falling and your air conditioner has retired for the year, and now you’re thinking about replacing old incandescent bulbs with energy efficient LED lamps. Good for you! But hold on a minute—will your heating bill increase if you switch to LEDs, which don’t give off excess heat? If your home is heated with a gas furnace, using incandescent bulbs as a heat source isn’t the ideal solution. Electric heat is generally more expensive than gas heat, so in the long run, incandescent bulbs will cost more to heat your...
read moreWe know that energy efficient lighting like LED and CFL is helping to reduce energy use across the world. But with cities, towns and property owners still looking for ways to cut energy and costs, sometimes energy efficient lighting is not enough. Even with LED lighting, there is still an issue of “over lighting” spaces. Is it necessary to illuminate certain spaces at full brightness at all hours? Read my blog at Ban the Bulb to learn how smart controls can further reduce energy...
read moreHalloween may be over, but I’ll be celebrating until my candy runs out! (Which should be soon…) The Empire State Building in New York City put on a nine-minute Halloween light show using 15,000 channels of LED lighting. I continue to be amazed by all of the things we can do with LEDs—even if I’ve been a lighting expert for ages! From the video’s description: On October 31, 2013, the Empire State Building’s world-famous LED tower lights were synchronized to Halloween-themed music that was broadcasted on Clear Channel’s...
read moreA new Kickstarter project called Pixelstick is the most impressive light painting tool yet, breaking the limitations of previous tools. Light painting is a photographic technique which requires a slow shutter speed, usually a second or more. When photographing the light at this speed, it creates interesting pictures and compelling works of art. Typically, the pictures are small and basic. Pixelstick, on the other hand, creates unbelievable images and animations using LED arrays. Check out the video to see the magical quality of LED lights! I,...
read moreAn Australian woman recently lost a sex injury court case after being injured by a light fixture that fell on her and a colleague in 2007, reported BBC. According to the article, the woman claimed to have suffered damage to her nose, mouth and a tooth and psychological trauma after the light fitting above her bed was pulled from its mount. Unfortunately for the woman, she ultimately did not receive compensation because her employer had not encouraged her to have sex in a motel with her colleague on a business trip. I, Dr. Bulb, am not a prude...
read moreLight is virtually a magical power, right? It enables us to see the world, use a computer, along with countless other things. In the last couple years, researchers have been trying to use light as a new way to transmit data. In other words, as an alternative to Wi-Fi! But what’s wrong with Wi-Fi? Well, nothing, if only a limited amount of people use it. In a story posted on Quartz, it explains Wi-Fi’s problem: the more popular the wireless networks, the slower they are. You can only transmit so much data at a given frequency. Light, on the...
read moreCheck out this Halloween light show set to “What Does the Fox Say?” Two of my favorite things: LED Lighting and Halloween! According to the video’s details, the display uses over 8,500 lights (mostly LEDs) and roughly 1066 channels of computer animation. They estimate the electric bill to be $25-$35 to run the display for the Halloween season. A worthy investment to celebrate the spirit of Halloween! The display is named “Edwards Landing Lights,” but the family insists that it’s only a hobby—not a business. Luckily for the...
read moreTubular LEDs (T-LEDs) continue to be a hot topic among lighting experts. While I highly recommend LED lighting for other applications, I do not think T-LEDs should be used as retrofits for T8 lighting. I discussed this in a previous blog post. My opinion remains: For general lighting applications, tubular LEDs cannot match the efficiency of T8 lamps, they lack reasonable ROI or sometimes any ROI, and many are not safe. Safety is a big concern when retrofitting T8 lamps to T-LEDs. The most common tubular LEDs have internal drivers. Because of...
read moreStrategic Web Marketing by Applied Interactive
