Thoughts & Ideas

light bulb indicators

27 August, 2005 (20:42) | Thoughts & Ideas

My flatmate, Jordan, was just telling me how he replaced his headlight on his car today, went home, and then his mom noticed that the other light had burned out. There should be a way to tell how long your lights have left. not just in car head lights, but in household lights as well. He pointed out that it could have been dangerous if they both went out at the same time.

I am not sure of the physics of it though. lights can burn forever if they are never turned off, or so i hear. I think the longest lasting lightbulb is burning in some firehouse in the middle of the country, and has been for the past 100 years or so. but i digress. Since lights burn out from the degradation of the filament connection, you’d have to develop a tiny sensor to measure that connection’s strength, and determine how much longer it had. If such a sensor could be developed, perhaps have the light flash 3 times every few hours to let the person know it’s going out. or a dashboard light turns on in a car.

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Comments

Comment from Runering
Time August 29, 2005 at 8:21 am

but then surely you would need a sensor for the light on the sensor that was doing the sensing on the main lightbulb and so on. probably be better that the sensor was fitted with a buzzer rather than another light, which would require sensing itself.
i’m also pretty sure that such sensors already exist using lasers to detect degradation, although it is not used in such applications as car lights and what not, but rather support cables in structures and other large scale stuff like that.

Comment from Runering
Time August 29, 2005 at 8:21 am

but then surely you would need a sensor for the light on the sensor that was doing the sensing on the main lightbulb and so on. probably be better that the sensor was fitted with a buzzer rather than another light, which would require sensing itself.
i’m also pretty sure that such sensors already exist using lasers to detect degradation, although it is not used in such applications as car lights and what not, but rather support cables in structures and other large scale stuff like that.

Comment from Mozilla
Time August 30, 2005 at 8:38 am

word. but rune thats why we don’t trust people like you to get that stuff. mericans as a whole are a lazy group. we only want one sensor

Comment from Mozilla
Time August 30, 2005 at 8:38 am

word. but rune thats why we don’t trust people like you to get that stuff. mericans as a whole are a lazy group. we only want one sensor

Comment from DaveS
Time September 2, 2005 at 9:34 am

Well, i’m not up for paying 3 times more for my car lights.

But what happened to those test strips on batteries that were so trendy a while ago?

Comment from DaveS
Time September 2, 2005 at 9:34 am

Well, i’m not up for paying 3 times more for my car lights.

But what happened to those test strips on batteries that were so trendy a while ago?

Comment from Runering
Time September 2, 2005 at 3:09 pm

they sucked, probably caused the huge increase in the cost of batteries. they then got rid of the strips but kept the price the same, god damn sneaky marketing people!

Comment from Runering
Time September 2, 2005 at 3:09 pm

they sucked, probably caused the huge increase in the cost of batteries. they then got rid of the strips but kept the price the same, god damn sneaky marketing people!