LED/Flashlight technology in 5 years...

What do you think we'll be seeing? Thought this might be a fun discussion

Well, in 5 years, we'll have this LED that when turned on, we'll see the moon's shadow on the sun!!! :naughty:

But seriously, 5 years is too long a time to even predict what's gonna happen. :shrug:

EsthetiX said:

What do you think we'll be seeing?

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Everything? :naughty:

Light-Eater said:

But seriously, 5 years is too long a time to even predict what's gonna happen. :shrug:

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I KNOW... That's why this is a fun topic!

EsthetiX said:

What do you think we'll be seeing?

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Actually it depends a lot on your eye sight

1 watt 200 lumen lights run by 1AA. People will be happy buying the new tactical lights that run on 2AA that have a sparate control for brightness. 400 lumens is great on max, but 200 lumens is all you really need and you get longer run time. Cr123A tactical lights running 800 lumens for the military, probably with a low setting of 200 lumens to last all night long for patrols.

And don't forget the improvement in batteries. There will be at least a 20% improvement in rechargeable batteries. Both NiMH and Li-ion.

Well, personally, I'll be happy if we'll have 100 lumen on 1AA with a run time of 10 hours to 50%

A man can dream...

Light-Eater said:

Well, personally, I'll be happy if we'll have 100 lumen on 1AA with a run time of 10 hours to 50%

A man can dream...

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I see a 1AA 100 lumen light that lasts around 6 hours to 50% in 5 years as possible. Not sure if any one will have it. Many people like a higher high and a lower low.

We'll see something that would seem impossibly small, bright, and longlasting based on today's standards, but at the time is nothing special.

According to Back to the Future, I'll be busy installing a hoverconversion to my S2000 around that time.

I heard someone somewhere came up with a way to make a pure white LED. I Think those will be seen in flashlights.

Vehicle headlights using one larger die 55 watt 10,000 Lumen LED. = 180 lumen's per watt.

Most laptops, monitors and TV's using LED's for back lighting.

Rear Projection TV's using a single LED

LED's + super-capacitor ultra-capacitor replacing camera flashes

Mainstream LED home and business lighting

LED's built into handguns and rifles from the factory.

Incandescent slowly going the way of the dinosaur

Wide spectrum LEDs

50 lumen Photon VIII

EngrPaul said:

According to Back to the Future, I'll be busy installing a hoverconversion to my S2000 around that time.

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And flashlights will run on garbage. However, it will turn out that the Mr. Fusion power unit has problems similar to Lithium primaries, but with a bigger BOOM!

Well, first the physics.
You're not going to see 1000 lumen 1W LEDs ever.

The physics and eye sensitivity mean that 200lm is about the light emitted from a 1W source with a reasonable colour rendition.

You can get up to around maybe 300lm/W with nasty sort-of-white colours.
(700lm/W with monochromatic green)-

Then there is how efficiently you can convert electricity to this white light.

If you have the current blue LED + phosphor model, then for every blue photon you generate that hits the phosphor, at most, you can get one red/green photon out. As the energy of a red/green photon is less than that of a blue one, you lose at least 30%.

This is 140lm/W / 210lm/W for decent or nasty white.

Then you've got how good the conversion efficiency is from electricity - blue photons.

Note that cree has _already_ produced 130lm/W white, which is a bit over
half of the theoretical possible brightness for nasty white , made by shining blue LEDs on phosphor.

So, at best we have a factor of maybe 4 to go from current production cree white power LEDs to the theoretical maximum.

What I think we'll see.
140lm/W 'nasty' white, or 100lm/W decent white.

I don't think batteries are getting much better, and fuel cells won't be flashlight size and power yet.

How would it improve my current lights?

Well, the fenix l0p (1AAA 1W) gets rather warm at max, and being able to have a decent 'warm white' beam at the same brightness, with maybe 4.5* (some for better battery tech, some for better inverter tech, mostly the 3* better LED) the battery life, while remaining only slightly warm, yet being able to clearly illuminate stuff at 20m clearly on high, would make it pretty much the only flashlight I really need.

At the other end, I suspect we will see high power lights, with truly silly light outputs.
Even a 3AA light can put out a thousand lumens for around an hour, which is in the range of most car headlights.

SpeedEvil said:

The physics and eye sensitivity mean that 200lm is about the light emitted from a 1W source with a reasonable colour rendition.

You can get up to around maybe 300lm/W with nasty sort-of-white colours.
(700lm/W with monochromatic green)-

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The reality is actually a little better than that. First off with white LEDs of either blue plus phosphor or RGB there is really no such thing as "nasty" color rendering. Both approaches yield CRIs at least in the high 70s which is better than the CRIs of the halophosphor fluorescents used for many years, and as good as the lower grade triphosphor fluorescents currently in use. Second, theoretical efficiencies are a bit better than the numbers you give.

For a blue + YAG phosphor white LED 100% efficiency would be around 330 lm/W. Because the Stokes efficiency of the conversion process is around 75% that puts the theoretical maximum efficiency at 0.75x330 or ~250 lm/W. My guess is after we get close to 200 lm/W, which may well happen before 2010 at the rate things are going, at best we'll see little improvements of a few percent here or there. Blue plus YAG phosphor gives acceptable color rendering in the high 70s to mid 80s.

Of course, we can theoretically approach 400 lm/W using RGB of the proper wavelengths. CRI using this approach would be around 80 (acceptable for most interior lighting uses). We can get a CRI of 95 using 5 colors and get up to about 320 lm/W. These numbers assume 100% conversion efficiency which of course we won't reach in the real world. I think we can eventually attain 75% efficiency so that would mean 300 lm/W with decent color rendering or 240 lm/W with excellent color rendering.

You can make white using only two colors but color rendering is very poor and there are no efficiency gains compared to using three.

My predictions for the next 5 years:

1) Power LED emitters will drop in cost to $0.25, and give at least 200 lm/W

2) We'll have 7.5 watt, 1500 lumen emitters with the driver electronics to run off 120 VAC built in, and costing less than $1. These will directly replace CFLs and incandescents.

3) Ultracapacitors will attain capacities of 5 times today's best NiMH. Combined with the more efficient emitters this would mean a 1000 lumen flashlight which runs for over an hour off of a battery the size of a AA cell. The same light will also be able to run half a day at 100 lumens.

4) Incandescent and HID will completely disappear from the flashlight world. Incandescents and CFLs will completely disappear from homes. Linear flourescent will stick around for a while, but within a decade it will be gone as well.

5) LEDs will become available in tightly binned color temperatures similar to the way fluorescents are sold today.

6) LEDs will have 70% lumen maintenance at 100,000 hours or more, perhaps much more.

7) Lighting will be integrated more and more directly into the structural elements of new buildings since there will no longer be a need to make provisions for lamp replacement. Things like lighted ceilings may well be the norm instead of discrete light fixtures.

8) Lighting will be much more intelligent. You'll be able to adjust not only brightness, but color temperature. You may also be able to have colored lighting to set moods.

9) Much more efficient light sources will cause people to light both residential and commercial spaces much more brightly than previously while still saving energy. Eventually lighting rooms to 10% of daylight levels, or 10,000 lux, might become the norm.

10) LED streetlights will start replacing sodium vapor en masse. The new fixtures will be designed to minimize light scattered upwards so city dwellers may finally see stars they haven't ever seen. The new lights will also save energy and improve safety by eliminating the tunnel vision effect associated with yellow sodium vapor lights.

jtr1962 said:

The reality is actually a little better than that. First off with white LEDs of either blue plus phosphor or RGB there is really no such thing as "nasty" color rendering. Both approaches yield CRIs at least in the high 70s which is better than the CRIs of the halophosphor fluorescents used for many years, and as good as the lower grade triphosphor fluorescents currently in use. Second, theoretical efficiencies are a bit better than the numbers you give.

For a blue + YAG phosphor white LED 100% efficiency would be around 330 lm/W. Because the Stokes efficiency of the conversion process is around 75% that puts the theoretical maximum efficiency at 0.75x330 or ~250 lm/W. My guess is after we get close to 200 lm/W, which may well happen before 2010 at the rate things are going, at best we'll see little improvements of a few percent here or there. Blue plus YAG phosphor gives acceptable color rendering in the high 70s to mid 80s.

Of course, we can theoretically approach 400 lm/W using RGB of the proper wavelengths. CRI using this approach would be around 80 (acceptable for most interior lighting uses). We can get a CRI of 95 using 5 colors and get up to about 320 lm/W. These numbers assume 100% conversion efficiency which of course we won't reach in the real world. I think we can eventually attain 75% efficiency so that would mean 300 lm/W with decent color rendering or 240 lm/W with excellent color rendering.

You can make white using only two colors but color rendering is very poor and there are no efficiency gains compared to using three.

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I don't think I went to enough school to understand all of that.

THE POWER OF THE SUN IN THE PALM OF MY HAND MUWAHAHAHA naughty: ) aka an uber aa something with X lumens