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I received another Designing With LEDs post today, reviewing the Feit LED replacement for a four foot two tube fluorescent light.  She says it is $33 but only available from Costco.

The fixture is meant to replace a four foot, two T8 tube fluorescent light fixture. The fixture is integrated – the tubes that hold the LEDs are a part of the fixture and are not removable.

The fixture is shown disassembled. There are photos of the guts of the lights; PC boards, LEDs, etc. 

With the current ban on the sale of most fluorescent light lamps, in a few years, as more lamps are replaced by LEDs, the amount of mercury in the environment will be reduced greatly. Of course the old lamps will have to be recycled. Most will be because most are being used in commercial buildings where they are all removed when the contractors relamp all the fixtures at the same time. In California, in the U.S. this typically happens when the utility company is using a government grant to upgrade the company’s lighting to cut down on electricity usage.

I have read that more mercury is emitted into the environment by coal burning power plants than the mercury inside of the fluorescent lamps. So cutting electricity use also reduces the mercury in the environment.

I just received another Designing With LEDs post about Hollywood Lighting LED replacement lamp for fluorescent fixtures. This post reviews a 48 inch T8 replacement LED lamp.

Quoting from the post:

I used to think triacs were electrically noisy and a crude way to dim a light, but I now understand the advantage of not having to string a separate line for dimming control information.

The TRIAC operates by delaying turn on until part way through the cycle of AC current. When conduction begins it happens very quickly which gives a spike of current that creates electromagnetic interference or EMI. This is the buzzing noise you may hear when you listen to AM radio and turn on the dimmer.

The TRIAC does have this advantage. But I don’t see why not using it causes one to have to add wiring. The dimmer can be controlled remotely by using the existing wiring to carry the signal from the dimmer to the light. This may not be inexpensive, but it may be cheaper than having an electrician add wiring.

The dimmer can also send a signal by the same radio signal method as a garage door opener. IR or infrared could also be used. I just bought three remote shutter fobs for cell phone cameras. This uses Bluetooth to control the camera. Something similar could be used to ‘press’ the dimmer buttons.

Another way to send a signal is to run a fiber optic cable between dimmer and light. The reason to use fiber is the fiber is nonconductive, so fire and safety hazards are not an issue. I predict that someday the electric outlets will have a fiber optic connector for not only light and other controls, but also for data Comm at very high speeds. The fibers will be included with the electric wiring.

So the TRIAC and SCRs have been used for decades. But they are best for AC power. If low voltage DC power is used, then the MOSFET can be used. Either way, the EMI can be minimized by filter capacitors and inductors. Most dimmers skimp on these to save money. You can add them to an existing dimmer for a few dollars.

I noticed that the LED lamp requires that the original ballast be disconnected. This is a gotcha, since most people do not feel comfortable working with AC wiring. Rightly so, since it’s a shock and safety hazard. It’s better to have a professional do the work, but that can get expensive. So keep this in mind when researching your upgrade to new lighting.

My sister sent me this link to a 5 minute video from Corning Glass about all the things of the future you might see that will be made of glass.

I think a good amount of what it shows may come true.  But I would like to add my fair share of what I have learned about electronics that may apply to the things seen in this video.

First off, the electronic devices we have today are made of silicon, which is light sensitive.  All those chips inside of our electronics are encapsulated in black plastic, to keep out the light.  As far as I know, there is no way to get around this, so some part of those see-through cell phones and other devices is going to have to be opaque to keep out light. 

All the electronics run on electricity, and most of the electric conductors are made of metal, so those would have to be see-through too.  As far as I know, there is no see-through metal that would be cheap enough to do this.  I know that a form of carbon is ‘see-through,’ but I don’t think those electric conductors could be made of diamond!

The power source for these portable devices is usually a battery.  These typically take up most of the space inside.  I don’t know of any battery, with its mix of chemicals, that is see-through.

Most of what I saw in the video were displays.  Many of these are already made of ‘gorilla glass’ which Corning already makes.  I don’t see how Corning would leave their core business of making glass and get into making something that can cost billions of dollars just for the chip factory.  But then seventy years ago no one would have believed it if you told them that in the future, the electronic devices would be made out of the same thing that window glass is made of: SAND.

I have one major complaint about the remote controls: the buttons wear out quickly.  But what if they had few or no buttons?  Is this possible?  I began considering what could be done to make this happen, and came up with some ideas that I believe will happen in the future, if they haven’t already happened.

One solution is to make the remote like a mouse.  The remote could be made to sense its position in space or on a surface, which might be less convenient.  The cursor would be on the TV screen just like a PC.  It would move through menus just like a PC, and could be implemented using open source OS such as Linux or Android.

I think this solution has several advantages.  There would be very few electromechanical parts such as buttons.  The interface would be intuitive just like a mouse. I can’t remember the first time I used a mouse; it was like, so easy it might have been an extension of my fingers, like a writing instrument. I think that the PC was an Apple ][ computer, because the others didn’t have a mouse.

Fewer parts means less cost, a plus for the manufacturer. But one of my biggest complaints is that the menu system is different for every TV brand and is horribly user unfriendly. Getting away from this and toward a more intuitive interface would be a major improvement.

The TV is already acting like a computer and computers are already serving as TVs, so it’s just a matter of time until the two are so similar they can’t be differentiated. So what should they be called? A TVC, or television computer? A telecomputer? An infotainer? I could name a few more but they sound like brand names of some equipment from the past. My prediction could miss the target. The remote could be more like the glasses that Google developed, especially if 3D vision ever becomes popular. Or the TV screen could become so large that the menus are always on the screen, along with multiple sources of information such as news and weather. The mouse may be replaced with gesturing using the user’s hands. There may be other possibilities. The user could become an interactive icon on the screen, and have to walk from one point to another on the screen – great for exercise.

We already have touch screens; I like them on hand held devices, but not on tabletop displays. I really can’t imagine having the TV screen so close that I could touch it, because that would limit the screen to a single viewer.

Back to the mouse. The current optical mouse has a sensor that senses movement on a surface. But as far as I know, the scroll wheel still uses a wheel with slots in it which breaks an IR beam between a LED and a sensor. Why not just add another surface motion sensor and have it sense the motion of the wheel? There will be less moving parts.

About 3D TV. An inventor has made a 3 dimensional image by projecting light into a haze or mist. They call it Displair. I’ve seen the 2D video of it, but not in person. It may be all smoke and mirrors, or at least mist and smoke anyway.

Last year the power banks became popular, even though they’ve been around for awhile. 

For the last month or so I’ve been assembling my own 5v power banks mostly from stuff I got from Goldmine Electronics.  Last year I got some green 6 volt NiMH battery packs from them and I hadn’t found a use for them.  Then this year they sold some power banks so I got ten of them for a few dollars each. They’re Zap! model RX-4 and come with a pouch with a cable and interchangeable tips.  They take four AA rechargeables (not included).  I had to cut off the green shrink tubing and remove one of the 5 cells (5 cells = 6 volts).

The cells were slightly larger diameter than a AA cell, so four of them were about 3/8 inch or 9 mm wider.  I had to cut out one side of the battery pack and lid to get them to fit.  I soldered them in and held them and the lid to the pack by wrapping the pack with black electrical tape.  Looks ugly but it works!

The reason the packs were cheap is that they don’t have a micro USB connector to charge them.  Instead they have a mini coaxial power jack.  Coincidentally Goldmine sold 5 volt 1/2 amp AC adapters with the matching plug.  I bought a bunch of those so I was all set to charge the power bank!

I also installed four AA rechargeables in another one and it works just fine with the adapter.  The power bank has four green LEDs to tell if it’s charged or needs to be charged.  I think they went out once when the power bank was fully charged, but I haven’t always seen them go out, even when charged overnight.

I have also taped two battery packs together to get 12 volts.  I connected them to a 12 volt to 5 volt converter and put them in a plastic soap dish. It works good, too, but it’s too big to fit in my pocket.  The 4 cell power bank fits just fine.

I have also bought several other power banks, but my friends have talked me out of a few of them.  Last week I went to Fry’s Electronics and as I walked down the checkout aisle I saw single cell power banks for $5.00 each, so I grabbed five of them.  This week I had to go back for some micro SD cards and saw they had raised the price from $5 to $12!  Last week the Samsung 32G EVO SD cards were $14.99, this week they are $29.99.  Glad I bought them last week!

I have to assemble a few more of these so I can use up the batteries.  If I don’t they will lay around until they go bad.

I realize that this is a labor of love, because I spend more time and money than if I just ordered power banks online. About the only advantage is I can easily identify them if they get misplaced or stolen. Like, how many people have a power bank with a green battery bulging out the side and taped up with electrical tape? 😛

Update Mar 5 – I put a second one together. It only took about a half hour, mostly the cutting off the plastic case. Works, but I need to charge it up overnight.

It’s very innovative!  Notice that in the cutaway view there is a large amount of insulation between the fuel cell and the case.  That’s because it gets very hot!  (This is like my solar rechargeable power pack that sits in the sun and it gets hot!  Too hot for the battery, so I usually charge it from the wall.)

That fuel cell heat has to go somewhere, and I saw a tiny fan so I guess it puts out hot air.  I don’t think it will stay cool if you put it in your pocket or purse.  Also, 2 watts is only 400 mA at 5 volts.  One thing I like is it runs a long time on a single fill.  I wish my CNG car was like that!

Speaking of Honda, I just got an email from HMC that said their FCV is still a year away from release in Japan.  Later for the rest of the world.  There is still a huge shortage of fueling infrastructure.

kraftwerk – highly innovative portable power plant

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/265641170/kraftwerk-highly-innovative-portable-power-plant