cyberlocc
Chameleon Enthusiast
I was alerted to a really neat newish LED the other day.
A TRULY Full spectrum LED, yes please
.
It would seem someone has finally provided an actual Full Spectrum LED. We have lots of lights, and even LEDs, that claim full spectrum, and as much as we wish that were true they have never really hit the mark.
Here is a good graph to illustrate, the why.
We can see here the glaring issue. Halogen, and Incans, very much provide red spectra, but lack blues. This is by the nature of the light source, and the way it works. This is why we only see them in warm colors (3k).
LEDs were a start, they were boosting our Blues, due to the way LEDs work, our reds were still pretty lacking however. So lets look at that, and why it happens.
This is how our Cool White LEDs work. They use a Blue Light Diode, and then using different colored Phosphors they alter the color.
As you can see we are creating the Yellow and the Red, via Phospors. Its hard to turn red into blue, and trying to recreate green from yellow and blue, and still creating yellow also poses difficulty.
The end result of such a task is this.
The orange (Decor) is the Bridgelux LEDs I use. While we see the reds boosted, and the blues boosted, giving us a good CRI. We are still very lacking in the Green and Yellow spectras, with a Dive. Another area of issue is our Violets. This has been largely okay, as our plants are said not to use as much of that spectra, so it can be cut out. Doing so allowed us to push Lumens Per Watt, and have an acceptable plant growth. However its still far and away vastly different from sunlight.
Toshiba has sought to change this, with their Tri R LED. They felt there could be a market, and a real use for a Sunlike Spectrum (Pun intended, in a minute). The developed the Tri R LED, that works like this instead.
As you can see, design has changed. We have dropped the Blue Diode, for a 400nm version instead. Purple being a mixture of both blue and red, should provide both colors phosphor much better right? The idea makes sense, but DOES IT WORK. Yes, yes it does.
Now here is our whole picture, with the tech example and the spectrum's that are provided.
The red dotted lines are representative of actual Sunlight.
If we look back to the first graph, we have just got closer to sunlight then ever before. Its still not perfect, for our needs. We still need the IRA the LEDs lack, our herps can still see the UVA (down to 350nm) that is lacking, and we still need UVB.
However, if we were to mix this, with halogens and UVB bulbs we could somewhat bridge that gap, and be much much closer to natural sunlight.
I aim to replace all my COBs of current with these, and test and see the results. There not cheap, but I think they may show promise in our reptiles reaction to the light.
The Tri Rs depicted, can be found under the Name "Sunlike" COBs here, "Quantum Boards" here and Strips here (UK based, may ship to US)
My gripe with the Sunlikes as of today, is the low wattage. The highest we have available is 1455ma (weird max), I would like brighter cobs, which do exist (newest line) but are not yet on Digikey. If you would like to read more about the "Sunlikes" you can here. http://www.seoulsemicon.com/en/technology/Sunlike/
So in efforts to find me a brighter higher wattage COB. I found these, they claim bridgelux leds, so not sure how they are pulling this off. However, it does seem to work. They cost a little more though, but here are LCFocus FS5s.
I think as the LEDs makers, are telling us with this advent. The Time is come, that we push to better recreating the sun for our Herps.
A TRULY Full spectrum LED, yes please
.It would seem someone has finally provided an actual Full Spectrum LED. We have lots of lights, and even LEDs, that claim full spectrum, and as much as we wish that were true they have never really hit the mark.
Here is a good graph to illustrate, the why.
We can see here the glaring issue. Halogen, and Incans, very much provide red spectra, but lack blues. This is by the nature of the light source, and the way it works. This is why we only see them in warm colors (3k).
LEDs were a start, they were boosting our Blues, due to the way LEDs work, our reds were still pretty lacking however. So lets look at that, and why it happens.
This is how our Cool White LEDs work. They use a Blue Light Diode, and then using different colored Phosphors they alter the color.
As you can see we are creating the Yellow and the Red, via Phospors. Its hard to turn red into blue, and trying to recreate green from yellow and blue, and still creating yellow also poses difficulty.
The end result of such a task is this.
The orange (Decor) is the Bridgelux LEDs I use. While we see the reds boosted, and the blues boosted, giving us a good CRI. We are still very lacking in the Green and Yellow spectras, with a Dive. Another area of issue is our Violets. This has been largely okay, as our plants are said not to use as much of that spectra, so it can be cut out. Doing so allowed us to push Lumens Per Watt, and have an acceptable plant growth. However its still far and away vastly different from sunlight.
Toshiba has sought to change this, with their Tri R LED. They felt there could be a market, and a real use for a Sunlike Spectrum (Pun intended, in a minute). The developed the Tri R LED, that works like this instead.
As you can see, design has changed. We have dropped the Blue Diode, for a 400nm version instead. Purple being a mixture of both blue and red, should provide both colors phosphor much better right? The idea makes sense, but DOES IT WORK. Yes, yes it does
.Now here is our whole picture, with the tech example and the spectrum's that are provided.
The red dotted lines are representative of actual Sunlight.
If we look back to the first graph, we have just got closer to sunlight then ever before. Its still not perfect, for our needs. We still need the IRA the LEDs lack, our herps can still see the UVA (down to 350nm) that is lacking, and we still need UVB.
However, if we were to mix this, with halogens and UVB bulbs we could somewhat bridge that gap, and be much much closer to natural sunlight.
I aim to replace all my COBs of current with these, and test and see the results. There not cheap, but I think they may show promise in our reptiles reaction to the light.
The Tri Rs depicted, can be found under the Name "Sunlike" COBs here, "Quantum Boards" here and Strips here (UK based, may ship to US)
My gripe with the Sunlikes as of today, is the low wattage. The highest we have available is 1455ma (weird max), I would like brighter cobs, which do exist (newest line) but are not yet on Digikey. If you would like to read more about the "Sunlikes" you can here. http://www.seoulsemicon.com/en/technology/Sunlike/
So in efforts to find me a brighter higher wattage COB. I found these, they claim bridgelux leds, so not sure how they are pulling this off. However, it does seem to work. They cost a little more though, but here are LCFocus FS5s.
I think as the LEDs makers, are telling us with this advent. The Time is come, that we push to better recreating the sun for our Herps.
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