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December 3rd, 2009
All I want for Christmas is an LED light bulb
I spent Black Friday wrapped in a sleeping bag outside a Best Buy store with the goal of snagging a ridiculously cheap laptop for my kid sister when the doors opened at 5 a.m. After hours of shivering outside the store, it turns out there weren’t enough doorbuster laptops to go around. I went home empty handed, but believe me, there’s more than one tech item on her holiday wish list (that’s the danger in asking a 14-year-old what they want for Christmas).
I was so close to the front of the line and I still didn't get it.
But what happens when you ask one of the founders of Cree to name the product or technology on his holiday wish list? Well, let’s just say the answer is something you can’t find at an electronics store – yet!
Cree Co-Founder John Edmond.
ECN Magazine recently asked one of our founders, John Edmond, to answer the question. And John –who still works in the labs researching and developing brighter, more efficient LEDs 22 years after helping found the company – channeled his love for LED lights to answer the question. Here’s a snippet of what he told them:
“If I could wish for any technological development this holiday, I would put an LED A-19 lightbulb at the top of my list. One that can replace a 60 Watt incandescent or a 20 Watt hazardous CFL and is available for any homeowner to purchase at a local store. Sure, engineers around the world are working on this right now. But I’m impatient and I’d like it now.”
You can read his full holiday request here.
Now let’s turn the question around on you. What’s on your technology wish list?
5 Responses to “All I want for Christmas is an LED light bulb”
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Sorry for writing OFFTOPIC … what WordPress theme are you using? Looks cool!
@Kemdueque The theme was built especially for us, so it’s not available for download. But thanks for the compliment.
For Christmas, I’m trying to get a bunch of XR’s together to stuff in a floorlamp. It’ll perform way better than any retrofit bulb on the market right now.
As for your A19 retrofit that will fit in existing sockets, you very well know that the biggest problem is the removal of heat. My question is, do you think that heat is so much of a concern that in order to make truely acceptable bulbs comparable to the higher-wattage incan.’s, we would need to redesign a better socket that can aid in the removal of heat?
If you are thinking of making a design that fits within the dimensions of a regular bulb, I’m thinking it’s time to go active with the cooling. It would add quite a bit onto the final price, but that new technology developed by Georgia Tech, (trademarked as synjet or something of that nature) seems promising. Don’t know if it is truely silent, but if it were, that would definitely be a plus! basically, a diaphram increases and decreases the pressure in a chamber, and through some sort of fluid dynamics magic, results in a directional jet of air that can be directed over a heatsink.
Anyways, I’ve begun to ramble. Cree, if you’re listening, let me live in your basement!!!
I also wanted to mention that another company has released an A19 LED bulb for replacing 100W incans. Unfortunately, at 850 lumens, 83 lm/W, I feel as if it can be done better.
I think 850 lumens is good for a 60W replacement, but 100W? not so much. Not to mention, 83 lm/W? Psh, please.
Now, you could easily squeeze 900 lumens out of an MC-E with adequate heat sinking, but assuming enough heat sinking and power to do this, the light pattern will be a big issue as well. One approach that seems to work alright is shining the LED into a translucent dome. Perhaps with some modifications, you could use this method without too much loss in output. Perhaps even an acrylic optic to allow for a “fatter” dome that can be seen from a larger angle, could help create a softer, less-directional light.
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