Fiber Optics Bring the Sun Indoors 377
Sterling D. Allan writes "Fiber optics transmit light, so why not take the light from outside and transmit it inside? According to an exclusive story at PESN, that is what Tennessee company, Sunlight Direct, is now doing. Their 4-foot-diameter solar dish will light 1000 square feet inside -- minus the harmful UV rays -- rendering a more natural lighting feel, which can be hybridized with florescent and possibly LED lighting to provide a constant light level, though the tone changes with the level of light outside. The GPS-based sun-tracking mechanism uses very little energy. Now you can save electricity, cut on heat emissions by incandescent, and improve the feel of your work environment. Beta testing began in June. Product expected in the market in 2007."
Sounds like advertisement to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that anything wrong with that...
step in the right direction (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Filter the UV rays (Score:4, Insightful)
Incidentally, the most efficiency you can hope to acheive with a solar panel is around 10% or so, and even that's an optimistic estimate I believe.
I'll keep my windows thanks. (Score:5, Insightful)
Errr, wait a minute, something's not right here. First we build a structure- wind, quake, water, sun, (and even fire)-proof, then we build another gadget to bring the sun into our buildings. I'm no architect, but the buildings we can see all around us are convincing proof that we can ensure natural sunlight reaches most parts of the interior of our buildings - we have sun roofs, open areas, North facing buildings (in the Southern hemisphere), even simple windows.
This gadget is just a bunch of boys' toy, and will be forgotten in a few years. I suggest we pay more attention to the architects who are building our environments to ensure we never need such devices in the first place. A bit of design in the beginning saves plenty of effort later. For example, you won't need to crack your brains figuring out safety regulations, building codes and installation hassles for a fibre optics light and heat guide...
Re:Old News (Score:5, Insightful)
Ultra low tech (no fibers) but it produces very nicely colored light in an interior room. I thought they were too pricey, though. Then I saw this article, where they want $8000! Wow.
Better get to work (Score:3, Insightful)
At 1.98892 × 10^30 kilograms these "fiber optic" dudes better get started now!
GPS Tracking? (Score:5, Insightful)
Window into the house? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Old News (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Save Money? (Score:3, Insightful)
Because it replaces the use of ceiling lights during the day you use just put a 1,000 Watt spotlight into the reflector at night. If you had 100 x 10W tubes to replace it may even be cheaper in the long run due to tube replacement and lighting fixtures...
I dunno if this is correct but I would be glad if someone could tell me.
Re:I'll keep my windows thanks. (Score:3, Insightful)
Serious question: Why GPS? (Score:3, Insightful)
Three or four photosensors and a PIC 12 could do the same thing at a cost of about a dollar. Hell, you could skip the micro and do it all in hardware for probably 50 cents. If you must assume the person installing it is too bloody stupid to adjust the angle of the device to allow for one-axis tracking (see Equatorial Mount [wikipedia.org]), then it would be more like 9 or 16 sensors in a dome pattern. STILL about a hundred times cheaper than the cheapest GPS-on-a-chip system (plus the code one would have to write to make it work).
Personally, I avoid buying things that make me seriously question the sanity of those who are selling it.
And: WHY THE HELL WAS THIS POSTED!? Come on, this is so not new anything.
Windows bring sunlight indoors (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Skylights are nice (Score:2, Insightful)
Our eyes are adapted for changing light conditions. You barely even notice whether the sun is bright or dim, within reason. Certainly on a bright day, I'm not always flipping the lights on and off as the clouds pass overhead; on dim days, even overcast light is enough to make a substantial difference.
In my opinion, a pretty simple photodiode would be enough. A binary check of "Is the light level above xxxx lumens?" would be simple and easy, assuming you did it every ten minutes or so to prevent oscillation.
Although, as others have said, I tend to think that we should stick to skylighting and/or mirroring. It depends a great deal on what sort of climate you live in, however.
Re:Sounds like advertisement to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny how this question didn't come up while Slashdot was ooo'ing and aaah'ing over the Serenity teaser.
Isn't this just a little TOO high-tech? (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't a GPS overkill for this? How about an array of three photocells aimed slightly differently on the X and Y axis to tell the dish to move towards the greater amount of light?
Btw, it's not (just) the UV I'd want to filter. While indoor all-over tanning in complete privacy might be nice, I'd be more interested in filtering out heat in the summer, and allowing it in during the Winter.
It's better to use windows (Score:3, Insightful)
Even when I just had a view of the company generator and a few pigeons, it was better than any diffuse piped light source could ever be. The problem being "solved" here is a fault of US corporate culture that will eventually go away of its own accord when gigantic buildings with dark interiors go out of fashion.
Re:Geomagnetic reversal happens, but aliens don't (Score:5, Insightful)
This reminds me of what we were taught in middle school and high school (I graduated in 1993). That the entire lifecycle of many plants were dependant on the honey bee to polenate and continue to breed in a diverse enough fashion to live. If they died off then the plants couldn't breed, plants would die, oxygen would not be produced, and we would all die, or at least become a desert as the plants couldn't breed. Now, since we still had honey bees I couldn't say this was wrong, though I figured that if the entire ecosystem depended on a single species we wouldn't have made it to now and was quite sceptical.
Well, in about 2000 there was a mutation in some type of bacteria that pretty much eliminated the honey bee in a large part of the south east US (just now recovering from it somewhat, since 2000 I've seen less than 10 honey bees, 6 of them this year - typically we would not really want to walk barefoot for fear of stepping on them). Now, since I am still sitting here typing this I can assure you that all of our plants didn't die. Since I still see plenty of clover and flowers I can figure that the whole world didn't depend on the life of the honey bee. Seems we were either lied too or thier research was vastly flawed.
I highly suspect (but because it hasn't occured I can't say for sure) that an event that has happened thousands upon thousands of times will not cause the total collapse of the entire ecosytem and mass destruction (unless, of course, you can show it did everytime this occured).
Personally I wouldn't worry about it too much even were it to happen in our lifetime, but what ever floats your boat I guess. Maybe I'm wrong and this time the timid ant-mouse (or whatever species, genus, or family is key) will die off and that is the key to our entire ecosystem and we will all die. I can't say you are wrong until that event happens, until then I will look to the past and be reassured.
GPS? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Let's do some maths. (Score:3, Insightful)
There are some VERY stringint guidelines for the amount of light each and every workspace must have (this is required by law). This means that if you have two desks in one office, each of those desks much be lit at least as well as specified.
Something like 400 to 800 Lumens seems to come into my mind as the lumination for workspaces. I don't think you'll want to do that with a single bulb.
These must be kept at all times, and I think that covers night time as well, so you can't just settle for natural lighting. Sure, if you're lucky, you'll save a bundle on electricity, but not on the fixtures themselves. And you'll save on cooling, as any kind of electric system gives off heat. And as many people have said, you get more productive employees when they have natural light and not just artificial light.
Of course, your milage may vary with the laws in your area, and they'll definately vary from the lighting numbers I specified.
Re:Skylights are nice (Score:2, Insightful)
Any relation to Jabba the Hut Thatcher?