The collected works of guardian452 - Page 20

Posting travel photos, lol...

Last week I went on a trip for work. Fly to LAX, drive all over California, and then Phoenix, and fly home from there.

CVG->LAX on Sunday afternoon started with a delayed flight. The ground crew took 5 hours to change out some tires. Pizzas may or may not have been delivered to the tarmac. Every time I travel there is a delay because of a mechanical problem. Last time it was the plane's cabin lights. What can I say, I have a knack for breaking things!

Good news is, plenty of room when we took off as most of the passengers were shuffled to meet new connections. I had the whole row of 3 seats to myself. (737-800)

By the time I found my tool bag, got the car, and got out of LA it was about 1:30 in the morning. Me and Sid stopped at a Jack in the box across from a truck stop.

0800 Monday. First van. They said the AC wasn't working but left out that they wrecked the condenser... I said I could fix it while I was there. Since the bumper cover was intact it must have been a well-placed debris strike.

Another unexpected surprise on one of *****'s delivery vans. Something hit a battery strap sending it into the pack. Now these things are tough, but not as tough as a concrete curb. I used a $6.99 toob o' goo (the really good stuff!) to seal it back up again after a quick inspection to make sure there was no water inside and the film heater, which is the bottom-most layer of the battery pack, was intact. And a new bracket delivered, because I didn't feel like straightening out the old one.

City of Shafter now. Admiring their charge station installation.

And their garage.

The reason I'm here, for private customer's van. (Not the city) In addition to fixing little stuff, I was actually sent out to replace a motor sub frame which had somehow cracked...
I can get the front clip off of a promaster/ducato in about 20 minutes now. Not counting recovering the freon and draining coolant. Without power tools. Assuming the lights and sides stay on. Otherwise.... maybe 30 minutes.

Lots of almond groves. And some pistachios. But the almond trees are in bloom.

The San Joaquin valley is an interesting landscape. It's as flat as holland, but surrounded by mountains in the distance.

Tuesday I went for a morning run in Bakersfield and found some MLP-FIM inspired road names.

Excellent signage for Bakersfield Chrysler/Jeep where I went for the new condenser. I only drove past once...

Perfect weather the whole trip.

Shafter city center.

Thanks to Shafter Transmission and Smog for allowing me the use of their shop and tools. We send all of our customers in the Bakersfield area there, because quality of the work is not something I have to worry about. Nice to finally meet him in person and help out!

Good morning Phoenix, from my hotel room. The night drive was uneventful. Stopped at a nice Italian place in Pasadena for dinner after missing my exit. (Apple maps does have a reputation to keep up got in around 3:00 in the morning.

I'm glad I visited. This van has been neglected for a few years, with some botched mods. At some point the AC compressor was replaced (this was an early van, back when we were still using the fusion/escape compressor) The person installing it decided to use wire nuts instead of the adapter harness we had sent. You can see exposed conductors, but don't freak, it's only the shielding. It could have been worse. He could have used scotchlocks. Seriously, it's only 360VDC, what could go wrong?!

A botched attempt at probing the power input for the 12V converter. It's shielded exrad, anyway. The issue was the output ground was loose. But why check the simple stuff when there is shiny high voltage to play with! This van has had a lot of issues over the years, and with people like this working on it, it is easy to see why.

The wire was repaired. The harness is now 2.5 inches shorter (bit tight but perhaps too much slack before!) and the connector terminals have been replaced

Flames add an easy 20 BHP...

A 22 gauge wire had been munched off the tiny sumitomo connector for the AC connector signal cable. Right at the back of the connector, with about 1/4 inch sticking out the terminal. So it was this guy, and not the wire nuts, that was causing the AC to not work.

But without a replacement terminal, we were SOL. I couldn't splice it, because the break was right at the seal. I carry a lot of spare connectors and terminals, but not this one. I can't just bring a whole spare van with me! I could have one shipped from our shop but it wouldn't show up until tomorrow morning!

Next time I am bringing my own soldering iron...

The botched probing of the shielded power input also meant the main junction box had to come out to replace the fuse. Note the harbor freight heat gun box. I travel light and carry tools that I need and assume that a shop will not have. They will have sockets, wrenches, transmission jack, and (hopefully!) an AC machine. Etc. Anything electrical, or connector tooling, I bring. Inevitably, I usually have to buy some little thing. I'm not above using a cigarette lighter to seal heat shrink and soldering with propane, but with over two dozen splices to repair, a 10 minute errand saves an hour of frustration.

Boba has the right idea to combat the Phoenix heat (91°F). This photo sums up the scene nicely. Nothing better than working below a van on a car lift that can only go up 3' because of the van's high roof, and above a dirt floor. It's much nicer than the midwestern heat (aka... 85°F temp and 85°F dewpoint) I'm used to. In the desert heat I didn't have even one drop of sweat dripped on the sheetmetal

My hero at Import Auto who allowed me use of their facility and tools. If you need your motor fixed in Phoenix, Moe's your man.

A creative AC hose faucet. Markie likey! Available next season at overpriced home-design outlets everywhere!

Bag packed ready to come home

dexter1 wrote: Very cool pictures, at least someone is getting sunshine on this planet.

Shiny Fluke bag! With matching colors and all that. My multimeter is a 112, still going strong after all these years. What's yours?

117.

Also have an 8845A, and a 1507 insulation tester, and a bunch of smaller tools. Some of their probes are surprisingly crappy but generally I don't have a problem with the yellow stuff.

fu wrote: are the security checks sane now? some time ago every time i had to do the jfk<—>lax dance i had to go through rows of batteries being detached from laptops. "what’s that sir? is it a bomb sir? is it a terrorist device sir?" i once answered “yes, yes, yes i’m the fucking easter bunny” and they almost didn’t get the joke.

I almost never have a problem. Take your laptop out of the bag, take your shoes off, get zapped by the same machine they use in Halo to test their armour-suits, and go on your merry way... International travel tends to be a bigger problem, at least coming home. US border patrol doesn't like anybody without an American passport, so I don't think I'm getting a special treatment there.

That double kick

I want to like the rpi, I really do, but I have yet to purchase one. For most of the recommended use cases I am old-school and cling to a trusty AVR or similar mcu. If there's something that can't be done with an 8-bit chip, may as well haul out a real computer. (E.g. For routing, why not buy a real router. Media streaming, an apple tv or chromestick or embedded plex box or games console. Etc)

It's squeezed on both sides (MCU and PC) for me, both sides which already have an overlap.

If they made a rpi with built in gsm modem, I would be all over it. But even then, it couldn't possibly compete with a lumia 635 or an even cheaper android. As it is, I see the newest models have finally added wifi/ble

Linux isn't my favorite but put me in the slackware+DWM camp. That combination tends to annoy me the least.

For making a usb install disk I have used https://launchpad.net/win32-image-writer/ with success.

Achievement unlocked: using apple pay at an apple store.

Watch 42mm sport space grey, white sport band, black link bracelet.
I was going to buy the space black steel, with the link bracelet, but the grey aluminum is actually darker and looks better, IMO. It even does a better job of matching the black link bracelet.

My Wenger of over 15 years finally stopped ticking for the last time (it had been loosing time for months).

Neat toy. I didn't want another cheap Wenger but don't think I'm ready for a Rolex or Tag, etc. I couldn't find an e.g. Oakley, Hamilton, etc, that I actually liked, so I made my inner 13 year old happy and got the dick tracy special.

From mouser ... Reordered the same part that I purchaed in 2014, the USB vendor ID doesn't match the old one and it doesn't work with the IDE.

(I know how to use AVRdude and all of the low level stuff, down to the opcodes. Thanks.)

Apprently there is arduino.cc and a doppelganger/faux arduino.org, and mouser has been part of the scam.

I wouldn't have thought mouser was in the business of selling counterfeits but apparently I was wrong. We have a small account, maybe a couple grand a month, but I'll be moving away after this.

japes wrote: I'm not sure you can quite call arduino.org a counterfeit. Also not sure I'd call an Arduino board an ISP but...technicalities.

Not an arduino board like an uno, but the actual ArduinoISP board. It is/was a USBtinyISP clone. I think it's been discontinued now. I purchased one from mouser in 2014, built an assembly/test rig with zif sockets that used it, and any old fogie in the shop could use, and when the USB plug got sheared off, I ordered a new one. Much to my surprise it wasn't recognized, despite having the same manufacturer, part number, and mouser stock number online, it has different firmware on it and is definitely NOT a drop in replacement requiring different software to use.

Anyways, I put the .cc firmware on the new board. Just annoying. I had no idea there was a .org/.cc difference nor do I know or care about the politics behind it**. I've learned from arduino.cc's support and forums about the issue, since I've been using the .cc guys since ~2007 or so, I'll assume they are the originals.

Yes, it is used in a commercial product. 3 chips in each vehicle. Yes, I understand the low level and build our own boards with automotive qualified components.

This is not the first time mouser has pulled a bait-and-switch on us. Order a part, reorder the exact same stock number a year or two later, and it is from a completely different manufacturer. It's more of an issue with their attitude when I call them out on it over the phone.

**: Obviously I care somewhat, or I wouldn't have bothered posting this. I literally had no idea TWO groups existed. The way it was explained to me is, the .org guys were producing boards under license, and basically stopped paying for their license and started making their own products, but with identical artwork and hardware designs. Since they were the contract manufacturer, they were able to keep most of the existing distribution channels. It seems like the .cc guys got the raw end of that deal.

Less is more, more is more, more is less, and less is less. It's all a perspective thing. I don't chase salaries. I chase dreams After living in 'the city' a few times, I couldn't afford it even with all the money in the world. Too much stress, too much drama. Fresh air is better, more sky is better.

I put my lumia and iphone in a drawer together and made Cortana and Siri fight it out. Turns out they go way back and are good friends. :/

skywriter wrote: The only thing I find scary about AI, is that given the opportunity to re-write itself we would actually finally see how programming should be done.

Which raises the question: can you even have 'real' AI without the ability to self-modify it's own code? If so, our protection architectures are severely broken platforms to develop AI upon. We need something as broken and half-assed as our own childhood to make it all work

I wonder why this conversation isn't more popular. I saw a TV show, this was way back, perhaps almost 20 years ago, but they were working on it, I think a student group at maybe Stanford or MIT? The code would iterate once or twice and then crash. They made it seem like "real" AI was really just around the corner, for once.

The people don't want AI, they want the illusion of AI. A search engine with a voice interface. Maybe if we iterate in reverse, we'll reach the same goal. Rather than trying to stuff an encyclopedia into an infant's mind, we teach the encyclopedia to walk and talk like a human. Which is probably the way to go, it's certainly the path of least resistance and seems to be the most popular. It would be neat if thankless work if somebody approached the issue from the opposite end like we were doing up through the 90s, again.


We'll know we are in the future when our neural implants start developing rampancy... I feel like I've been living in the future since I was old enough to think about it. I can see things for what they are, but I try hard to not be jaded by anything. Because then you will have no fun at all.

I don't even know what I was talking about. I was tired, worse than being drunk

I'm sure such a gadget exists, but I know nothing about the inner workings of vxworks and have nothing to complain about with my current router, so I'd do well enough to leave it alone

Sounds intersting, tho. If you muck around with it let me know how you get on.


Back to the OT, Mouser dropped the product in question. I'm not going to get into the politics of which 'arduino' is legitamite, it really doesn't matter now that I've educated myself on the issue, I guess. But it sure does peeve me off that they never changed the MPN or manufacturers code when they switched.

Basically, the manufacturer never changed. They stopped paying for the arduino license, and slightly modified their packaging and T&C's, then changed the firmware so it wouldn't work with the original software. So maybe mouser was right to not change the manfacturer ID, so I could use the same reorder number.

What a wierd situation. We had a similar issue when Deutsch was first bought by TE. Connectors would mate together but not seal, terminal locks would be loose and fall out or too tight and couldn't seat, etc. Our sales rep (the old guy from Ladd) blamed TE, TE blamed the distributor for shipping us counterfeit parts. We made them (TE) replace a couple $K worth of inventory and all was well in the end.

The automotive industry and supply chain, AFAICT, is worms all the way down. If you think a used car lot is scummy, wait until you get some schmuck from Idaho in your office trying to sell miniature relays or IGBTs or windshield wipers. God forbid they get your real phone number "I was in Cincinnati visiting my client <large local company> and <former coworker or friend from university> said you could really use some <part I can get for 1/10 his price on alibaba, or otherwise have zero use for> and I see what you guys are doing here is very interesting and would you like some <product samples, useless swag, catalogs>. If you give me one of your cards I will call you every night at 7:15PM for the next 3 days until you block my number."

God bless Alibaba, and all of the Chinese vendors that live and die in it

Soldering iron, Weller WX1011

Washing El Car-O

We put them in the back instead. I guess because people tend to pull into parking spots nose-first here?

I wish! Maybe then car drivers would stop aiming at us pedestrians (I still run every morning) like it's an arcade if we could see their license number *before* they ran us over!

KY has no front plate but I still have the bracket for it from when I lived in Ontario and Ohio...

I am running it on 10.10(.4?) using vpn, time machine, smb, and I want to say update caching but we only have 3 macs at the office and the rest are PC-heads. It is our main server and seems to be working well. Our mechanical engineer hits the SMB hard but other than that it has an easy life... I also use the box as a git host and itunes server. The only thing I can take issue with is that OSX UPS support is broken.

I haven't had to log into the thing in months, so I'd say it's working pretty well!

If you want to set it and forget it for basic tasks you will like it. If you need to do fancy stuff you should probably look elsewhere. But there isn't really an easy way otherwise to get a VPN server on a mac. It's possible but, kind of beyond my skills without the server app I mean, for twenty bucks you don't have much to lose just trying it out...

Ran 6.5 miles in and around long beach CA today. Was a good time

I only ever browse the web on my mobile device, and I think we (desktop-avoiding users) are fast becoming the majority. I have a mac for work-stuff but work-stuff rarely involves web browsing.

I would rather use a desktop version of a site on my phone than a poorly designed mobile site. So, yes, they should be putting effort into this area. As somebody who makes the vast majoirty of his purchases over the internet (incl. clothes, groceries, various sundries for the shop, airline, hotels, cars, etc). It all works on a mobile device.

If I want to buy something and your site does not work on my phone or even ipad I will gleefully go to a competitor. I just purchased a Kemper fume extractor (smartmaster) because they had a site that worked well on mobile, far better than their competitors. The video sold me. http://kemperamerica.com/filtration-units/smartmaster/ Although technically, I purchased over the phone, they actually answered and were very friendly. (what is better than not having a phone number listed is having one where nobody answers or calls back)


I disagree about apps being where it's at, tho. There are enough good mobile sites out there to prove that a native app is not necessary. (Looking at you, Freshdesk! )

Trippynet wrote: Well, I flew back from a training course the other day. The plane was a small 30 seater JetStream plane, and as you can see from the picture, there was a grand total of 1 passenger (ie, me).

Quite nice having your own personal jet and stewardess for a flight (who kindly took this picture). Also had a nice chat with the pilot too before we took off - he said it seemed rather daft to use the tannoy for one person, so just came and spoke to me direct. Definitely one of the more memorable and enjoyable flights I've had

20160309_175016.jpg

I can never compete with a whole airliner to myself, but empty seats are happening more often lately. Either it's a location thing or a seasonal thing? I had an empty seat (the best seat buddy is no seat buddy!!) last week (LAX to IAH) and then another whole row to myself (IAH to CLT) Both flights were on time.

pentium wrote: I pulled all the digital guts out of a Guitar Hero drum set and replaced it with an Arduino Pro Mini microcontroller.
Now the $10 second hand drum set is a MIDI enabled drum instrument.

There's a video on how to do this, by the way.

That is pure titties, I love it!

A friend of mine made a little tetris game back when we were in school (many years ago), uses ncurses so I don't think it would be too difficult...
https://github.com/lainproliant/ntetris

1. always assume that there might at one point or another be 5-6 20lb boxes of dog food stacked on top of your delicate o2.
2. always pack things so that a 150 pound desk set decelerating from a 35 degree angle off a roller line won't really damage anything in your package.
3. insure packages in small boxes would survive being thrown a good 4-5 ft to the top, and against, a steel trailer.
4. anything packed in a flimsy thin rectangle box with a single layer of bubble wrap will invariably have 20+ pounds of random automotive parts stacked on them. I see this everyday.
5. Your heavy over-sized onyx systems in large boxes? expect a 1/2 chance of them being dropped 5 ft onto the innards of a steel container. Every heavy thing loaded into the under-section of a trailer is dropped recklessly. no exceptions.

As somebody who ships heavy failed (for return) auto parts regularly, yes, we do just wrap 200# transmissions in plastic and send them through fedex. Your delicate flower is not my problem.

Aw man, I feel bad for missing it this time around.. maybe you should spam our emails

Full size van like a promaster or sprinter. You want something you can stand up in and a low floor for loading. Or box truck with liftgate.

Oh and lots of pads and straps.

You do not want an SUV or pickup truck unless you are only using it to pull a trailer. Better off with a minivan at least.

Raion-Fox wrote: And sold for 2,551.99 to s***X with 138 ebay transactions. I would imagine this guy will leak the source lol.

Hmmm, I wonder if said copyright holder could somehow get a court to subpeona AJ (or ebay?) into releasing the identity of the buyer if that happens... just kicking the can further down the road.

More practically, they probably won't care. If they did care, they would have bought the machines to regain control of their IP.

Any fans?

I have some collection of Engineer hand tools (screwdrivers, pliers, tweezers, etc) but that's about it.

Recently my trusty "canadian tire" ratchet handle broke after 25+ years of service (3/8 drive, swivel handle). Pawl jammed and then snapped putting a driveshaft back in an electric bus. I don't think it was meant to be serviced. The handle was starting to crack at the hinge.

To replace it, I ordered a Koken 3774NL. (did not want to give the tool truck guy the big bucks for snap, matco, etc), don't want any more cheap crap from HD/Lowes/Sears. (gearwrench, craftsman, husky, etc).

The distributor I ordered from has a large selection of koken, KTC, etc. frankstools.com

Seems like generally 1/2 price of snap on, but just as good and not having to deal with their shark-like 'dealers' is a huge win.

Raion-Fox wrote: I'd not be surprised if a dual 600 Octane outclasses a dual G4 MDD.

You're comparing a $30,000 machine to a $3,000 machine of the same vintage.

SiliconClassics wrote: He concluded that they were still quite usable for everyday tasks in 2010.

2010 was a long time ago in the computer industry. Those machines are twice as old now.

Went to one of them paint-your-own ceramics places with the missus and did an octopus (she did a mug). Forgot how much fun stuff like this is.

hamei wrote: I guess your after-hours job is doing cfd for Hyundai's shipbuilding division, down there in mum's basement. Right after you finish that free-energy magno-hepadynetic clostromotron that will power the planet on a single cup of peanut butter.

This entire website's M.O.
Or at least, it used to be. Those Good Old Days...

Raion-Fox wrote: I find Harbor Freight is a decent deal especially with the exchange if it breaks policy.

I've heard of them!!

I have a Unitron apple II clone (Taiwanese, not Brazilian) and unsuccessfully tried to unload it for a fair amount of time. I decided I'd rather hold onto it than trash it, but as the value of *real* Apple ]['s are fairly low... kind of a shame as I'm sure period clones are very rare now. I also don't have an original apple][ but a 2e, so it's neat to have an original even if it's a clone.

I also have just the board for my Unitron. You might have better luck with a complete machine.

Maybe we can start an apple2-clone fan club?

I tried ubuntu warty, breezy, etc. It always seemed promising but I used to be hardcore gentoo user so never took it seriously. (You should have seen my make.conf!! Custom cflags etc for my cpu which was an early p4 with RDRAM ) I never saw the advantage over "real debian" unless you wanted commercial support. I stopped using ubuntu around 07/08 or so and did a hackintosh on my thinkpad x40 (when leopard first came out) which led to a real mac purchase couple months later.

Eventually I needed a simple linux for an embedded project couple years ago and was turned on to slackware, never looked back. I soon tried it with graphics on a PC and wish I had found it 15 years earlier.

Dodoid wrote: Their twitter is the same. Lots of fun retro stuff there. One time they posted a horrible timeline from Wikipedia which forgot what the Onyx was and claimed that the Crimson succeeded the Indigo and was apparently the same thing as an Onyx and Onyx 2. I replied, and they replied to me. Also, Tezros were apparently generally available until 2007, who knew

Because in mid 2007 (right after Irix EOL) they had a great clearance sale, you could get an Octane 2 brand new for well under a thousand bucks.

w520 vs. w530.

The machines are *very* similar but the w530 is over a year (and another intel cycle) newer. Not to mention the graphics improvement (Kepler vs. Fermi).

I like my w520 and it would be a foolish upgrade to go from 520 to 530 (neither one is close to cutting edge anymore). But there ARE differences.

Just tell it that it's on a metered connection. Which is ironic because my cell phone has unlimited data.

I mean, I have a problem but it does what it is supposed to.It constantly updates by design, it's not a bug.

Whatever 'ownership' you think you maintain of windows 7 is merely an illusion. With the free upgade debacle MS proved that they really want people on 10 and they are willing to play dirty to get you there. I wouldn't trust the older systems anymore.

You basically have two options, follow MS rules and keep everything updated, or never update at all and roll your own security. I would think if you are interested in the latter you'd be better off with some foss system. But, I never understood what made 7 so great, anyways. Its the snow leopard effect all over again

jan-jaap wrote:

guardian452 wrote: You basically have two options, follow MS rules and keep everything updated, or never update at all and roll your own security.

I don't mind to keep my computers uptodate, but an unscheduled (by me) reboot is every bit as bad a a blue screen.

A while ago, I used my PC to transcode stacks of blurays overnight with Handbrake, about a dozen or so every night. After completing the queue it should have shut down, but regularly I would find it in the morning, powered up at the login screen, and the work only partially done.

Windows updates.

That's just stupid and inexcusable. I don't care about the defaults they chose, but they should have put an override in somewhere, even if you bury it in the "I'm an advanced user and I know what I'm doing section" a.k.a. gpedit.msc

Updates won't download on a metered connection. And you can disable updates on "pro" windows (which I dont have). You used to have much more granular options on all levels of windows, so from that pov it is a regression, but IMO there is no real alternative except for using older versions which will eventually be unsupported.

I like windows about as much as mac or linux (which is to say, not much). Honestly my biggest compaint is cosmetic: there are a number of different UI styles in use at any given time, much like Tiger back in the day (brushed metal, aqua, cocoa, etc...) but they have been improving in this department and apparently Neon is going to be a big upgrade here.

scottE wrote: I'd sooner switch to ink, oils, and gouache for good (but I fantasize about doing that anyway)

My wife has a glass pen for her sketches, it's really nice to use. You can write a couple sentences at least with one load of ink. And you can get some really beautiful ones. If you are into line art or just doodling like me it's a neat alternative to a fountain pen.

If you are scanning in paper, the machine becomes much less important

I changed out a bunch of t8s with leds from hyperikon both at home and work. Low cost and some tubes have been running since 2014 with no issue. So you have both huge inefficiencies and mercury hazards which could be avoided, not to mention cri and flicker would be drastically improved. Plus you can keep the vintage luminare. The tubes are really cheap now. I found them couple years ago when they were the same price as a replacement ballast.

We're starting to replace our 400w xenon hibays with 100 or 150w leds at work. I did 4 fixtures so far but I want to rent a real man lift before we do any more.

I still think those old trackers are sooo cool, btw


Of course for a hackerspace I would assume only RGB leds would do?

Elf wrote:

guardian452 wrote: So you have both huge inefficiencies and mercury hazards which could be avoided, not to mention cri and flicker would be drastically improved.

Modern T8 tubes and ballasts can actually be more efficient than off the shelf 120VAC driven LED bulbs, if not at least usually on par: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_efficacy#Examples_2

Additionally LEDs typically don't have good color rendition, although they do cheat on their CRI measurements to get higher index numbers. A somewhat lengthy explanation here (from cinema, where they spend lots of money on LEDs but don't always get the results they want vs. tungsten or kino flos, etc.): http://www.screenlightandgrip.com/html/LED_Lights.html

Generally speaking, if you do have good color rendition, you trade off for it in terms of efficiency. For example, low pressure sodium lamps (practically speaking, in terms of available products) beat LEDs by miles for luminous efficiency. But they're only giving you one wavelength. Tungsten gives the best color rendition as the closest to a true blackbody radiator, but of course isn't very efficient.

Of course if you have old fluorescents with old ballasts, and old phosphors, a modern LED bulb will probably be better. Certainly the sickly green lights of the 90s were nothing to write about. However, after moving to all LED lighting at home, I am in the process of getting rid of it all and going back to T8 tubes. Between poor light quality (color rendition and point light sources) and dying bulbs from manufacturers (mostly in the shoddy "power supply" sections rather than the actual LEDs), it really just didn't live up to the hype.

Sounds like you tried some cheap bulbs and got burned by faulty power supplies. I've had good luck with Hyperikon (IMO they are the best), CREE, Samsung, and Luxeon/Lumileds (for automotive). I would avoid Philips, TCP, Feit, or anything with the word "smart" in the product name. Although I do have one of the original philips (pre L-prize) bulbs from 2011 in my bedroom overhead fixture and it's still working fine. It was also $80 and weighs 3 pounds. They don't make them like that anymore... I got it as a product sample from when I worked at a firm that did commercial (retail and office space) lighting studies tho we did a bunch of outdoor projects as well (I did all the lighting drawings for a bunch of OCTranspo stops in Ottawa in 2010, and the transitway, lol)

The lighting needs for Photography/Studio use are quite a bit different from parking lot (or indeed, our workshop/office space like I am retrofitting in my spare time at work). CRI is much better than what we are taking out, energy consumption is way down, buzzing noise is gone, flicker is gone, maintenance is (hopefully) gone, I get a bunch of extra capacity in my panel to install more EVSEs (We had 6 circuits for lighting, now we have two, and the contactors are no longer melting all the time because of overloading). You can buy HO or SHO FLs with better lm/w than LED but the hours are not there and if you are installing in a high bay and have to rent a scissor lift... well, there are always tradeoffs.


That said, I like that style of fixture. It reminds me of something from Simon Stalenhag especially when they are mounted on a pole as intended. The sickly green 90's bulbs may be appropriate here if you can find some...

robespierre wrote:

Elf wrote: A somewhat lengthy explanation here (from cinema, where they spend lots of money on LEDs but don't always get the results they want vs. tungsten or kino flos, etc.): http://www.screenlightandgrip.com/html/LED_Lights.html

Interesting link! I started to get a little bit disturbed by the universal mis-spelling of the word luminaires—over-zealous spellcheck?

The luminary thing may be industry slang? Like saying "mike" for microphone in the music biz when outsiders abbreviate it to "mic"... or non-computer-nerds actually spelling out the word SCSI. Or he uses speech-to-text...

He lost me at the fresnel lenses... He claims that a 650W tungesten bulb outputs 9750lm. Sure! But then putting bulb in a reflector doubles the luminous flux of the bulb to 19500 lm... I don't think that's how luminous flux works

He also confuses power factor with efficiency on multiple occasions.

But overall it is a very good writing if dated. Industry insiders are always ahead of the curve, and deal with the newest technology that doesn't have much polish on it yet. Last time I checked the "blue bump, aqua dip" is still very prevalent in phosphor LEDs but the problem is smaller than it used to be a few years ago (better phosphors). I wonder why they don't combine a typical LED with UV led hitting a different phosphor to fill the gap... understanding that such arrangements tend to not work well for point sources. Regardless, they are still getting better... but for some in photo and cinema industry LED may never be acceptable just like there are still those who only shoot film, only drive stick shift, only listen to vinyl, etc. Sometimes when you need a tungsten bulb nothing else will do. I can't imagine an easy-bake oven working too well with an LED (I know they have built in elements now but you get the point)...

I have also found my 580lm petzl headlight to be much, much, brighter than crappy chinese brands like streamlight and energizer that claim many thousands of lumens out of a battery flashlight. Truth in marketing is almost completely absent in that industry...