This a kind of an upward facing LED based pot light intended for low level lighting applications. The plastic pipe end cap medium was still working for me here. There are 2 end caps used in this design. The white LEDs are embedded in the flat end of a smaller end cap. The cap was cut off at an angle to produce the shade/reflector that prevents light from hitting the wall. The larger cap was cut to produce the shade that prevents people in the room from directly seeing the LEDs. The white inner surface of the cap reflected light back to the wall so I covered it with matte surface black tape.
This is a shot of the light in action. The smaller shade has effectively kept the light away from the wall. The black tape on the larger shade is reflecting a small amount of light but the intensity of the resulting spot was low enough that I did not bother looking for something blacker. ...and yes, there is a mysterious hole in the ceiling of my bathroom.
This light was fairly successful. It was in service for 10 months. It more or less eliminated the need to turn on the main light at night. The power drawn was probably around 0.1W. This works out to a cost of $0.05CAN per year using the local electricity rate. It would only have had to prevent me from using the 60W incandescent light for a bit over 2 minutes a day to break even.
It is no longer in service. The reasons for this are:
- I never came to like the bluish light produced by the white LEDs.
- I felt it was inefficient. A significant portion of the light was being absorbed by the black tape.
- I heard rumours that some white LEDs would lose a significant amount of brightness even over the course of a year when run continuously.
- I was bored.
posted at: 20:47 | path: /ledlight | permanent link to this entry