References and Links

General Articles on LEDs and LED lighting

The Promise Of Solid State Lighting For General Illumination A report to the Department of Energy by the OptoElectronics Industry Development Association (OIDA)

Scientific American Interview with Shuji Nakamura Background information with the developer on Nichia's Blue and Green LEDs.

LED Technology and Products TechTV's article on the progress of LEDs

LED Displays

BARCO Projection Systems America

Lighthouse Technologies

Saco Smartvision

Bring Out the Sunglasses Sound and Contractor Magazine's Feb 2001 article on LED displays

LED Manufacturers

LumiLeds Maker of the Luxeon high-output LED. Look for the Luxeon Star technical data sheet here

Nichia Manufacturer of the most of the green, blue, and white LEDs common today

Flashlight Links

CandlePowerForums A bulletin board forum dedicated to "flash-o-holics." Mainly discusses flashlights and how to get them really bright. A place to get any of your LED related questions answered quickly.

Brock's Page Moderator of above forum, with lots of links to manufacturers and distributors, as well as brief flashlight reviews

The LED Museum Craig Johnson's site with very detailed reviews of many many LED flashlights, a timeline of LEDs, as well as information on many discrete LEDs including the Luxeon.

Arc Flashlight Manufacturer of small, bright LED flashlights that use a DC regulator circuit

Surefire Manufacturer of the brightest (incandescent) flashlights available, but at a price. These flashlights put Mag Lites to shame. Not really an LED link...yet

Other LED links

Lighting Research Center A group at RPI that thinks about lighting. The government has given them some money to think really hard about traffic lights. They recently put together an institute on LED lighting (they offer a 2 day hands-on course)

Don Kilpstein's Light Page A lot of information on lighting sources with a focus on efficiency

Luxeon vs Nichia A comparison between an array of 24 Nichia white LEDs and one Luxeon Star

back	Back to the Beginning

Ideas for future Research Projects related to this topic

Here are some experiments I would have liked to have done. Unfortunately, most of my time was taken doing background legwork and getting up to speed to what was already out there. Since I have provided all of that background information to you in this (hopefully) well organized site, you have no excuse to do some real research:

• Capture the brightness, power usage, and color temperature for an LED flashlight vs. a regular flashlight at regular time intervals. Also take pictures of the beam shots at regular intervals for a nice graphical presentation. Creating a rig that just takes the LED array module or flashlight bulb may reduce the runtime needed for this experiment (you can substitute a smaller battery size). If possible, also get data from the Luxeon high-output LED. Note: LEDs can be expensive and hard to obtain ($50+ for an array vs. $1.99 for an incandescent at RadioShack).

• Calculate the CRI of an LED light and the CRI of a regular small light bulb. A possible shortcut is to just get the SPD of the light and simulate the CRI data by using the reflectances of the approximate Munsell color swatches (Download the reflectance data of the approximate Munsell colors under a standard D65 light and divide to get the general reflectance function). Is the CRI a good measure of the quality of the light? What would be a better measure?