Residential Lighting with LEDs: Retrofitting the Pink Ranch

Relax in southern comfort on the east bank of the Mississippi. You're just around the corner from Beale Street and Sun Records. Watch the ducks, throw back a few and tell us what's on your mind.
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JR.
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Re: Residential Lighting with LEDs: Retrofitting the Pink Ra

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One of my many ideas I never finished was an outside porch/driveway lamp that would turn on when it sensed headlights in the driveway, turn on and stay on for maybe a half hour then turn off... I actually spent some time back in the early '70s messing with photo transistors to gate on a triac etc... I never finished mine, and years later I saw one in a store. I bought it then never bothered to install it. I probably still have it laying around somewhere :o

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mediatechnology
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LED Lighting Doesn't Attract Bugs

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"Another advantage of LED lights: They don’t attract bugs, and here’s why," EDN.
Gary Trott, a product development innovator for Cree LED Lighting, noticed that the LR6 down lights installed at the entrance to Cree four years ago had no bugs in them.
Color sensitivity in the UV spectrum plays an important role in foraging, navigation, and mate selection in both flying and terrestrial invertebrate animals. This attraction to UV light has made insects a useful model for understanding visual sensitivity to UV light.
http://edn.com/electronics-blogs/powers ... ere-is-why

Image

That's been my experience as well using 3000 deg K color temp LED PAR floods and a GE62180.
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Re: Residential Lighting with LEDs: Retrofitting the Pink Ra

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Strange, I would have logically expected a bias toward infra red, to find warm body food sources (mammals). While I guess there is lots of high frequency light going on with flowers and that is a more basic source of food for insects. They also pattern their colorings sometimes to mimic flowers.

Are mosquitoes IR or UV?

Hmm interesting,, they use heat (IR?) to find us, but use UV to find water to lay eggs. Apparently (according to the WWW) UV light that is reflected off standing water becomes polarized, mosquitoes zone in on this polarized UV to find standing water. It seems like perhaps a polarized UV source would make an ideal mosquito trap? Or just use real water. :lol:

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Re: Residential Lighting with LEDs: Retrofitting the Pink Ra

Post by mediatechnology »

JR - There are a few restaurants we visit with outdoor patios that have ZipLoc bags full of water stapled up on the patio covers. I don't know if it has lemon in it or is just water but they say its for mosquitos.

Bug lights/zappers are UV so I suppose mosquitos would be. I've always wondered if they just found us by smell rather than IR. Around here - maybe later today it will be >100 degrees - I'm cooler than the background but they still find me.
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Re: Residential Lighting with LEDs: Retrofitting the Pink Ra

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That is interesting, I've seen the bags of water hung to keep flies away or something like that but figured it was old wives tale with no substance. I think there was also some nonsense about putting a penny in the bag.

Mosquitoes being attracted to polarized UV, and standing water acting to polarize the UV light it reflects, is the first plausible connection between bugs and bags of water I've heard. The problem is it should attract not repel the bugs. Of course if they are attracted to the bags of water they are not buzzing the humans.

Several websites debunked the fly repelling by reporting an increase of fly evidence in their tests, but that is consistent with polarized UV light attracting them... except flies don't drop their eggs in water (AFAIK), but prefer to lay eggs in flesh, animal or fruit.

There is often a grain of truth behind old myths, maybe this is the grain of truth behind the water bags...

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Re: Residential Lighting with LEDs: Retrofitting the Pink Ra

Post by mediatechnology »

Well, at the Trios Grill where we almost always see the bags of water I don't recall being eaten by mosquitos. They're always up high.
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Re: Residential Lighting with LEDs: Retrofitting the Pink Ra

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A couple of updates:

My favorite all-around A19 LED lamp, the GE62180 has apparently been discontinued by Lowes. I was able to pickup three today for $15 each.
I suppose that's the good news and the bad.
But, Lowes is now apparently selling an identical lamp known as the GE 64215: http://www.lowes.com/ProductDisplay?par ... &cId=PDIO1

I'm finding that many of the small table lamps we want to use that were in storage used clip-on shades.
Clip-on shades don't work with CFLs or LEDs and I'm having to add harps and change shades.

On the bug-related front:

Apparently there's a news story circulating that Dallas County is encouraging residents to switch to outdoor LED lighting to reduce mosquito attraction and the spread of west Nile virus.
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Re: Residential Lighting with LEDs: Retrofitting the Pink Ra

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GE's website now has several new A19 LED offerings including dimmables:

http://www.waynekirkwood.com/images/pdf ... 162012.pdf

There's now an 800 lumen 13W dimmable the 65386 in the same form-factor as the 62180.

GE has also announced a 1600+ lumen 27W "100W replacement" using active cooling: http://www.nuventix.com/uncategorized/g ... andescent/
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Re: Residential Lighting with LEDs: Retrofitting the Pink Ra

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cool... I don't care about dimming, but I need my lumens...

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Re: Residential Lighting with LEDs: Retrofitting the Pink Ra

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Speaking of lumens, I just had another CFL retire early. It was in an open fixture over my bathroom sink so not overheated, a modest 10W lamp. I was surprised to see a visible difference in brightness between the replacement and other three lamps in the fixture. It is not a newer build lamp, I probably bought it the same time as the others, just fresher with less hours and less on/off cycles.

Yesterday I thought I perceived a color difference, today it just looks like the brightness is slightly different. maybe less different than yesterday. Maybe my mains voltage is slightly different than yesterday.

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