ANSES April 2019 Report on LED Lighting

Finished going through this report tonight.  It’s an important read.

 

 

I found a nice solution for upgrading our home’s outside lighting.  I purchased a Hue Outside Motion Detector and a pair of Hue Ambient White lights.

I set the lights to the warmest tempeture, 2200K, set them fairly dim, and have a Hue routine running that turns them on and off at the appropriate times of day.

The sensor routine is set to brighten the lights slightly and raise the CCT a little when triggered.  The lights then return to the 2200K dimmed setting after a short amout of time (5 minutes).  After the lights are turned of by the time of day routine, a triggered sensor will turn them on and then return to them to off after a short amount of time.

While I could add a shield to the light fixtures to hide the bulbs, the light level and warm CCT makes the lights look very nice and not obtrusive at all.  They are pleasant to look at and with our roof overhang do not shine light up in any way.  The flexiblity to make them brighter and raise the CCT if there was a need, makes this a great all around solution.

– Mark

As I left the church the other night, I was surprised by this crazy example of skyglow from lights along the Carlisle Pike?  I don’t think I’ve ever seen so bright and vivid of an example of skyglow.  All those lights pointed up without any purpose or benefit.  It’s not the lights in the foreground, lighting up Rt. 15.  Look at the bright blue-gray swath above the building.  Not sure what those lights are from yet but they are amazingly bright with absolutely no good worthwhile purpose.

So why would we do that?  What a total waste of energy.  There might as well be a big smokestack billowing smoke into the air to generate that energy –  Oh, somewhere there is…..   How can we destroy the Earth in so many ways at once?  Remarkable, eh?

Mark

National Geographic Starstruck Project

Our nights are getting brighter, and Earth is paying the price

This morning, I watched a video done by IDA Starry Skies Lake Superior.  The documentry talks about Duluth’s plan to install 4000K LED street lighing and the public’s opposition to the plan.

The 20-some minutes to watch the video, is well worth the time.  Citizens, lighting engineers, and others talk about the issues as specific to Duluth.

City Lights Starry Nights Documentary

Mark

 

Chilling the scope down a bit and adding a couple notable links to the Lighting Resources.

In January, I attended this Signify Webinar titled, Light Pollution, the Effects on Animals and Humans.  A very good watch.

Signify Lighting Academy Webinar Replay: Light Pollution, The Effects on Animals and Humans.

Also, a good add was three links containing definitions for the BUG rating system.  The first of those links on the Resource Page have a graphic at the end that is worth 1K of words.  Check it out.  LEDs need a lot of attention paid to this, especially the Glare rating.  From what I see, most lighting engineers are paying it no mind.  Spend a moment and look up the BUG rating in the device specs and do customers a favor.

ALSO! If you can, go checkout Globe at Night and Loss of the Night app.  Submit some data tonight!

Globe at Night Citizen Science

Well, I’m going out in the cold to chase down a hunter and look at a big dog, a little dog, and another little dog.  We have little dogs in the sky and one in the house.  It’s appropriate the brightest star in the sky is in the Big Dog, and another in the Little Dog, and they are both watching over us and the littlest dog tonight.  Go outside and look up tonight!

Mark

 

 

 

Something I was pondering.  Why was my light meter not showing light that I could see.  I mean I saw strong shadows but little or no light was registering on the meter.

Well, something that is probably in widespread misuse.  And it doesn’t seem to be owned up to by the lighting engineers and architects I am talking with.

Gigahertz-Optik has a nice document about LED measurement and a very nice tool to go along with it.  Their MSC15 Low Cost Spectral Light Meter looks like an amazing tool.  https://led-measurement.com/MSC15-spectral-light-meter/

Their LED measurement document sheds some light on the subject of my pondering. https://led-measurement.com/practical-LED-light-measurement/

Quoted from their document:

Traditional light and luminous color meters are built with photometric V(λ) and colorimetric RGB filtered detectors. The spectral response of these detectors are made to match the CIE and DIN standardized V(λ), Y(λ) and Z(λ) spectral functions as close as possible. For decades the filter photometer has been the basic tool for all kinds of light measurement applications in research and industry. Filter photometers and luminous color meters are typically calibrated with CIE Standard Illuminant A calibration lamps which are tungsten halogen lamps operated at 2856°K. Test light sources with a similar broadband, continuous with low blue spectral content emission spectra can be measured using the filter photometer with acceptable measurement uncertainties.

However, measurement uncertainties increase significantly for light sources with a different spectral distribution than the calibration source like fluorescence tube lamps (FTL) and compact fluorescence lamps (CFL) which have higher blue spectral content. This is due to the filter photometer spectral mismatch error. Quasi-monochromatic LEDs and blue LED stimulated white LED emission spectra are totally different than that of the calibration source and may create further unknown increases in measurement uncertainty. Note that filter photometers are still widely used and do an excellent job when properly specified and applied. Plus their large linear dynamic range and fast response time makes them irreplaceable for several applications.

(Gigahertz-Optik LED measurement)

Bottom line, use the right meter to measure blue stimulated white LED lighting.  There may be a lot more light than you think.  Like Whisper, my little lighting mascot, you might not be seeing the whole picture!

Mark

 

Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh is a pretty familiar painting.  On the left is the original.  On the right is a worthless, washed out version.  Where light pollution is prevalent, a washed out image of the beautiful night sky is all we get to see.  The beauty is missing.

It seems much of lighting design is all about the light.  Often a greater truth is missed.  Contrast is required to make lighting beautiful and functional.  Just like with Van Gogh’s painting, lighting design is about the light AND the dark.

In music, if all the instruments play crazy full on at the same time, you lose the beauty of the music.  Music becomes only a dreadful noise.  In audio engineering, the mix and mastering is all about the contrasts.  Each element is balanced and put in the perfect spot by the engineer.  Writing and arranging music is all about contrasts between empty space and the parts.  A groove does not exist if there is no empty space for the musical transients to live in.

Lighting design should be the same.  Light and Dark need to be artfully combined.  It’s not about light and it’s not about dark.  It’s about the whole.  The dark and light working together to create a thing of function and beauty.  The ebony and ivory of piano keys, the letters on a page, a beautiful painting, a wonderful photograph.  Contrast.  Light and the Dark are required for something to be seen in its full beauty, in it’s fully expressed function.

Design for the whole.

Mark

Update:  Interesting app but I have to agree with the review.  It’s not very accurate for spectrum analysis.  Price-wise, it would be amazing if close.  Does’t appear to be though, at least for taking a quick look at outdoor lighting SPD’s.  Will have to read the documentation more.

I found a cool iPhone app today that will give you the spectrum of lights.  You can find it on the Apple App Store as Light Spectrum Pro.

The app website:  Light Spectrum Pro developer website

Another app by the same company is named LuxMeter.The manual for the LuxMeter Pro Advanced has good information about the app and how to take measurements.  The manual is titled for LuxMeter Pro Advanced so not sure if the app has been renamed?

I have no idea on the accuracy.  There was one review that said it wasn’t very accurate so I wish I had a real tool to do a compare.  Any one out there who could do the compare?

The interface is pretty nice.  It also includes the CCT reading and the spectrum. The pictures are from a lamp with a Philips Hue Color LED device – during daylight – just for a quick test.

I will visit some lights tonight and post the results.

Mark

 

 

I started on my morning ritual these days…. looking up links on light pollution and following the rabbit trails.  Today, my search query turned up mostly research about human health consequences from light pollution and ALAN.

Cancers, obesity causing Type II Diabetes, initiation of Bipolar Disorders and their future increase.

In a few minutes, I added 15 research reports or media articles to my read list on various maladies and how ALAN is exacerbating or causing the disease.  Very sad when we know what is causing the increase but we can’t stop drinking the poison.  Very sad when evidence is abundant and we can’t get a handle on implementing solutions to prevent the problems!  Very sad when government fails us.  Very sad when solutions abound but are ignored.

Yes, last night I watched a bike race on my iPad.  Shouldn’t of done that.  I had the time so….  It was a little rainy last night, so I had to shut our curtains to reduce the skyglow hitting the back of our house – from a warehouse complex almost a mile away.  The first thing, that was on me. The second thing….  I had no choice in.  Second Hand Light?  No thank you, please.  I don’t want all the stuff that comes with it.   That’s not nice!

Tally the human cost.  Add that to the wasted energy costs….

Mark