Solar Keychain LED Flash Light

Found this on I4U…

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Here is a little gadget to show your support for green energy. The solar powered Keychain LED light gives you light when you need if you expose it to some sun once in a while.

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The Solar panel on this keychain is very small, but the 3 white LEDs just do not need much juice.

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The Hong Kong based Gadget store Brando sells the Solar keychain for $9.50.

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See also the Hymini personal Wind power generator.

Loop LED Desk Lamp by TRØKK16

From Inhabitat

 

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Award-winning Norwegian design house TRØKK16 will be exhibiting their latest designs at this year’s Milan International Furniture Fair , but before we unveil their latest works, we’d like to highlight a few of their outstanding past projects. The Loop LED Lamp puts traditional desk lamps to shame. This stylish desk light uses LEDs and needs only 5 watts to light up your work space and, perhaps, inspire your own eco-creations.

 

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In addition to being a sleek, functional desktop accessory, the Loop lamp shines with impressive energy efficiency. It produces 600 lumen with just 15 Watts of power and the light source has a long expected lifespan of more than 50,000 hours. Since Loop takes advantage LED, the color of the light can be changed to fit any mood or set any ambient lighting feel, making it a versatile design that goes from work to play easily.

We’re not surprised that The Loop Lamp’s stellar design was the winner of the Prixluxo Award at the 2007 Stockholm Furniture Fair.

We first discovered TRØKK16 last year at HauteGreen in 2007, and since then, the Norwegian design team has continually inspired us with elegant, intelligent, eco-friendly interior designs. TRØKK16 will be debuting a whole bunch of brand new sustainable designs at this year’s Milan Furniture Fair and we can’t wait – stay tuned!

 

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LED lights, Solar and Wind Powered, Oh My!

Found this on Inhabitat..

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Imagine your next summer backyard party: the sun has just gone down, the music is playing, and, as the breeze picks up, the lights come on from a string of solar powered, wind-lit LED lights. This innovative design for enchanting outdoor lighting is from Yoshihiro Shimomura, a circuit designer design lecturer at Chiba University in Japan. Shimomura first used battery powered prototypes for his wind-lit creations but has since upgraded to tap into the sun’s energy to light up summer nights.

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The light is composed of a glass, bell-shaped, vessel, that holds the LED light, circuitry, and solar panel. Wax holds the electronics inside the glass vessel and disperses the emitting light. Paper is suspended from the center of the circuitry, and as the strip of paper is blown, the light turns on. The light will burn depending on the weather that day – more sun charges the battery longer and stronger winds keep it on.

Shimomura and his assistants exhibited their design in 2005 at the STARNET show in Mashiko. They set up 100 lights outside of the gallery for people to come enjoy. One visitor wrote in the message book, “I closed my eyes and sensed the wind, and when I opened them, the wind lamps had sensed it too and were starting to glow.”

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These very zen and beautiful fixtures are unfortunately not available for sale, but keep your eye out for them. It is good to see more designers utilize the sun, wind and other renewable sources to power electronics. There is so much more potential out there; it is only a matter of how we harness that energy.

More Info Here

LED bulbs brightness

We all kind of know by now that LED bulbs last long. In fact that is the one thing manufacturers try to keep to. At the expense of other things like brightness. (And still some bulbs don't last.) So here we go, I investigate this further. All LEDs are very sensitive to even minor fluctuations in current. My thinking is that because bulbs are built from many such LED units (with ever so slightly different qualities) they have to be under-driven to keep them last long. And that what most responsible manufacturers do. Problem is, this will affect brightness. Lifetime is straightforward - you see when your LED dies. Brightness is a little murkier subject. There is candela, lumen etc. Luminous intensity itself is measured in various circles with various depth. Also LEDs are narrow beam "bare lights", so to compare them to compact fluorescent bulbs or to the now trendy long life light bulbs (incandescents) that are housed in a luminaire (or armature) doesn't compare apples with apples. But let's check out others opinions. cons (mostly) Otherpower had a different position. But they recently reviewed it and them seem to be saying that on the whole they are not as bright as claimed. Not surprisingly, Don Klipstein , the undisputed LED guru seems to be saying the same as he has been doing for some time now. He even calls screw in and other LED bulbs for incandescent replacement a "hype" for the most part. Rob 'Linear' Arnold has a very thoughtful points about a catch 22 for household LED bulbs in the US: Underwriter laboratories (UL) doesn't see the need to list them, and surveyors doesn't see the need to approve them with UL listing. So there you go. Pat Mullins is not convinced about the proper heat sinking of screw-in LED replacement bulbs. I tend to share hat opinion, I and haven't change it. pros Pual Matthews has a good point on the single color department. This he says in favor of LED "bulbs" since LEDs don't need filtering to create colors. And filters take a lot from brightness. Point taken. Conclusion? I still think secondary heat sinks (not just the aluminum plate in the junction) is needed for good brightness performance. And since the best of those is still for external flood light, I am going to assume that the rest is very promising, but in development for now.