Consumer Products Blog
Hong Kong Electronics Fair Day 3
By Derek Wallis - Last updated: Thursday, April 15, 2010As I mentioned in my post yesterday, my plan for Thursday was to visit the Hong Kong Lighting Fair (which is part of the Hong Kong electronics Fair). I’m pleased to say that it was a generally worthwhile experience, and that my eyesight has more-or-less recovered from – what was effectively – 4 hours of staring into thousands of 1 watt LEDs in a dimly lit room. If you want to experience how bright these LEDS can be, get yourself a Princeton Tec Apex head torch (my preferred choice for off-road cycling at night). Accidentally looking into the beam results in a purple blob in your vision that stays for hours!
My hope was that I would see vendors of LED lighting products that were hitting the sweet-spot of cost vs. brightness vs. efficiency vs. service life that consumers would find acceptable. If so, then maybe we would start to see the demise of the dim, slow-starting, not-as-efficient-as-everyone-thinks and don’t-last-long-as-everyone-thinks compact fluorescent lamps. The thing that really bugs me about these things (rant_mode_on) is that – if you consider the complexity of the electronics they contain, the manufacturing processes and materials required to make them, and the fact that they contain mercury and other noxious chemicals – they are nothing like as ‘green’ people would have you believe. They just use less electricity for the ~6,000 they are emitting light (rant_mode_off) . Funny that we worry about lead in solder, but not about mercury vapour…makes me mad as a hatter, don’t you know!
Anyway, my enthusiasm for the future of LED lighting was partially sated today. I saw GU10 and GU16 LED lamps that were able to provide an acceptable replacement for a 35w (and possibly even 50w) halogen lamps. Most of them were using 3x 1watt LEDs, like the one shown below.
3x 1w LED GU10 Replacement
This gives an output approximately equivalent to a 35w halogen (I will properly verify this when I get back to the office), but give a slightly uneven lighting pattern (looking – surprise, surprise – a bit like three narrow-beam LEDs shining in approximately the same direction). However, some of the vendors had done something slightly more radical. They were using a single, 3 watt blue LED, and had made their own phosphorescent optics (which is effectively how most white LEDs are made) to optimise the lighting pattern. An example of this type of lamp is shown below.
1x 3w LED GU10 Replacement
Unlike most UK ‘business’ hotels, those in Hong Kong do not usually provide a Corby trouser press. So, being a bit bored this evening, and having nothing to take apart in the Alan Partridge style, I nipped over to Mong Kok, bought myself a few basic tools, and took apart some of my LED lamp samples. The inside of the GU10 with the custom phosphorescent element is shown below.
Inside the 1x 3w LED GU10 Replacement
What you effectively get is a whacking great white LED (dia ~20mm) and a collimating lens on the front. This gives a very nice light pattern. They are also very bright!
The LED replacements for non-directional, GLS lamps (aka your plain vanilla 60w bulb) were, by comparison, quite disappointing. It seems you can have the required light output, or the required omni-directional performance, but not both. Those that achieve omni-directional light distribution are generally made up of somewhere between 30 and 100 ‘conventional’, white, SMT LEDs. The light output of all the examples I saw was pathetic, so they do not – at this time – provide a viable alternative to the dreaded CFL lamps.
So, that leaves as with the bright, but directional ones. To – somewhat unscientifically – illustrate the kind of light output pattern currently being achieved, I removed the shade from my bedside light (and why not?) and tried each of the lamps in turn. The results are shown below (note: the left-hand image is an incandescent GLS lamp, for comparison).
GLS Replacement LED Lamps
So, in conclusion, LED replacements for conventional incandescent lamps – and hence CFLs – are getting better, but we’re not there yet.
In addition to this ‘grown-up’ lighting, there were lots of vendors of all sorts of coloured, flashing LED products – I love multi-coloured, flashing LEDs, as anyone who has been to my house at Christmas will confirm! A typical vendor booth is shown below.
LED Vendor Booth at HK Electronics Fair
One of the most pointless – but nonetheless amusing – gadgets I saw is shown in the video clip below. I’m not even sure how you might describe it – a recently truncated, LED-filled snake, perhaps? Anyway, it made me laugh (actually, I nearly bought one, but how to explain it on the expenses claim form…).
The Demented LED Snake...
On a completely different note, I don’t think I could be accused of any “..‘isms” if I were to say that Chinese companies (allegedly) have a bit of a naughty habit of copying things designed by others (I may have mentioned this before…). In fact, the sales manager of a Chinese company I know well once said to me: “…of course, in China, R+D stands for replicate and duplicate…”. Anyway, I had yet to see one of Cambridge Consultants’ product designs copied – until today!
Some years ago, we developed a smart ‘cane’ for blind people – lovingly known by the designers as the ‘bat cane’, because it used a clever arrangement of ultrasonic transducers to detect (i.e. measure the range of) all kinds of hazards at both foot and forehead level. It provided sensory feedback to the user through vibration transducers in the handle. A picture of it is shown below.
The Cambridge Consultants 'Bat Cane'
Today, I saw this (apologies for the blurred picture – it was a ‘grab-shot’, as photography is not allowed at the HK fair, and I’d already been told off a couple of times):
Chinese 'Bat Cane'?
Admittedly, they have removed the overhead transducer (so reducing its forehead related effectiveness), added a blue LED (de rigueur en Chine), and added a pre recorded voice to warn you of the impending trip to A+E, but it is – nonetheless – a copy. Cheeky blighters!
Last day of the fair tomorrow…
Last day of the Hong Kong Electronics Fair » Consumer Products Said,
April 16, 2010 @ 2:50 pm
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