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Laser-lit home
Like that central heating and A/C? Get central lighting! | |
In the basement of your home, place a trio of relatively powerful solid-state lasers. Each one fires into a bundle of fiber-optic cables running throughout the walls of your home (naturally, these are jacketed and coated with cayenne pepper or something similar to deter rodents). Just above every room,
a few strands from each laser's bundle veer off, go through a servo-controlled iris diaphragm, then mix (producing white light). The resultant beam travels into a diffusing globe on the ceiling of the room and illuminates it.
Advantages: No more replacing lightbulbs, lighting color can be changed by manipulating the amount of each color of light, lasers are more efficient than incandescent bulbs, fiber-optic cabling is cool.
Disadvantages: Expensive, diode life may be limited, intensity of light dubious.
Alternately (if you don't care about multiple lighting colors), you could use a single UV laser and a globe coated with (a) a substance that blocks UV light and (b) a fluorescent material.
I just like the idea of central lighting. Central anything in your house is cool.
Sulphur Lighting
http://fins.actwin.....9611/msg00176.html
Possibly cheaper than lasers [Condiment, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]
Laser lighting products
http://www.del-lighting.com/fixtures.html
[phoenix, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]
FiberStars EFO
http://www.fiberstars.com/
[phoenix, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]
Band Inc.
http://bandinc.net/...chives/rotunda.html
"View the full spherical 360 degree panorama of the United States National Archives' rotunda which is entirely illuminated by a fiber optic lighting system designed by BAND, Inc." [phoenix, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]
Poly Optics
http://www.fiberopt...owfaq.asp?fldAuto=7
More archetectural FO fixtures. [phoenix, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]
[link]
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We've done the fiber optic cable central lighting thing before, but I think it was using sunlight, not lasers. |
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Ah, but this one can have multicolored light. And a different color in each room. I'd take a cool blue personally. |
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Instead of lasers, you could use sulpher lighting... It's fairly loud, but that doesn't matter because it's in your basement. (link) |
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[phx] Thanks for the great link. Stood in the archives and looked straight up and spun around. Felt like a kid again. |
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[+] just so I don't have to go to room to room replacing light bulbs and fumbling with those stupid light fixtures that cover the bulbs. E-Z-detach my ass |
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When a light in a room goes out, follow the smell of burnt flesh (or fur) ... |
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No, these lasers are fairly weak - a
few watts. You need a MW or more
to do some serious damage. |
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[Klaatu] Yes, well the point was that laser-fed archetectural lights exist, so this idea shouldn't. |
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Ah well. I wan't aware of that. No
matter. |
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I like this idea [+]. However, wouldn't something like this mean that you are always using the same amount of electricity to generate light, regardless of how many rooms are occupied at the time? |
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Yes, indeed. That is a bit of a
problem. But perhaps the lasers
could be wired to a switch in each
room, which increased or
decreased the power as required. |
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