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I'm ordering the regulators today since they'll probably take ~10 days to get here from China. I'll order 20 for now. Later this week, or early next, I'll order the emitters and other parts. The number will depend upon how much interest there is in having me build these beyond what me and Dave...

Not sure much can go wrong here. I've already dealt with the power levels these things will use from years of playing with thermoelectrics. Heat output and heat sinking requirements are similar. As for the light output, it's certainly not intense enough to start fires, at least not unless I'm...

For anyone who might be on the fence about having me make one for them, remember the design is modular. We can have as few modules as you want and the cost and size will be proportionately less (maybe ~$100 per module plus batteries). For example, a 1 module light might comfortably fit on a...

I thought that might be in Russia. I don't think there's much snow where Dave lives, much less 34" in late November.

I have no plans to aim it at anything in the sky. In NYC especially that's likely to bring a SWAT team to my door in short order.

From my observation of the light this project was inspired by in this thread: In concept this reminds me of the former Soviet Union's Tsar Bomba. It worked, but in the end it was far too powerful to be of any practical use. Same thing here. As to the purpose, for me anyway it'll be if I need...

My guess is when the prices get close. The only reason CFL still exists at this point is because it costs less than LED. I'd say within 2 or 3 years that advantage will be lost. I've noted now when I buy emitters they're less costly than even 6 months ago. As efficiency continues to rise, the...

My bank gives out the Experian score each month. Mine was 824 last month. Highest I've had since they've been doing this has been 828.

I've always had a bit of trouble understanding people who like to sleep in a cold room. I like cold weather when I'm awake, especially when I'm active. When I sleep however, I like the immediate area around me to be warm. I've been known to keep windows open for fresh air, but at the same time...

Probably about 90%, or 90 watts. Here's a good read on the subject. They give numbers from 2% to 13% efficient, depending upon the type and wattage of the bulb. 100 watt bulbs are about 10% efficient, 40 and 60 watt bulbs closer to 7.5%. Of course, these numbers are miserable compared to any...

Yes, because small differences in efficiency can translate to large differences in heat output. A 100 watt equivalent CFL might use about 24 watts to put out 1600 lumens. 1600 lumens with a CFL spectrum is maybe 5 watts of light energy. Therefore, the CFL puts out about 19 watts of heat. I've...

Yes but not all LEDs are made equal. A high bin Cree running at 350 mA will probably put out 60% light, and only 40% heat. The LEDs used in this project were only about 90 lm/W at the current he was driving them at. A rough rule of thumb I use is efficiency = lumens per watt / 300. You might use...

You could probably make it a lot more compact with a fan-forced heat sink. In fact, if you do the math you have 1000 watts input, about 700 watts waste heat. If you want to keep the temperature under maybe 60°C and the ambient is 25°C, you need a heat sink with a thermal impedance of...

I've heard of hub motors for EVs. I know they already exist for electric bicycles. Technically speaking, such cars wouldn't have either a transmission or gearing.

I didn't even know 200GB microSD cards existed until I read this thread.

Same here. Between my latest consulting gig, plus having to do most of the chores associated with running the house since my mom can't, I'm not left with a whole lot of free time. I did get these on eBay recently, and spent a few hours playing with them. Might be useful for making a small...

Here's a copy and paste of the entire post. The pictures are from 2004. I've since added white LED interior lighting (which is made with early 2000s LEDs which I will eventually update). Overview of the entire chamber: Here's the chamber part in case anyone is curious (inside measures...

Unless you want to tinker just for the sake of tinkering, it's probably more cost effective to just buy a Peltier fridge. Maybe about 20 years ago I spent a serious amount of time building a Peltier-based temperature chamber for electronic testing. Now of course I could downsize the electronics...

I was thinking the same thing. $10 or less about the most I would spend on an LED bulb. I will however spend a lot more than that if the situation calls for something besides a standard screw-base bulb. I spent ~$150 for 6 high-CRI LED tubes in my workroom. I've also made a number of custom jobs.

I'm sure they will for quite some time. It's not like SATA is going anywhere anytime soon. The funny thing years ago on storagereview I predicted once non-volatile RAM became cheap enough to make solid state drives, storage would end up taking the same route as RAM, where you basically have...

My understanding is quite a few LED bulbs work well with old-style dimmers. You just need to get something which says on the package it will work with a triac dimmer.

I read all the posts here but I'm still trying to square away what you're seeing with my experience, namely that the LED bulbs I've tried don't seem much brighter than an equivalent CFL. Anyway, some of my theories: 1) An LED spectrum is far less spiky than a CFL spectrum, even if the CRI...

Probably already tried the finger in the fan thing. It hurt, so she won't be trying it again any time soon.

Same here. Only job where I had insurance was as a taximeter technician for 2 years. What was offered was next to worthless. Basically, it was catastrophic coverage. If you landed in a hospital you had decent coverage. Otherwise, it was pretty much out of pocket. Since then I've been an...

Most insurance plans don't give you much money for teeth. At best they cover annual cleanings and maybe a few cavities. Anything more extensive than that, you're on your own. The good thing is dental work is still relatively affordable. Even a lot of dental work still only costs single digit...

Well, at least one automaker besides Tesla realizes this. However reprehensible VW's conduct here is, the fact remains emissions standards will be increasingly hard to meet. At some point it makes more sense to just say, screw it, we're done with internal combustion engines, than to spend...

Mom had the treatment. It didn't last. My sister had it, too. The verdict is still out there but the doctors billed the insurance company for something like $50K. I pretty much know what I need to do to keep it from getting worse. So far I'm still functional. Thankfully most of my work these...

You're right about catastrophic coverage. The thought of getting hit by a car while walking or biking has crossed my mind. I'll have to look into it. On the subsidized health insurance, I'm aware of that, and may apply once my present consulting gig ends. Right now I'm making six figures and...

I appreciate the concern here but my rationale is most of the things a physical might catch are either untreatable and/or too costly to treat. Cancer comes to mind. Yes, you can catch some types of cancer early, but the treatments these days are mostly still hit or miss, the cancer usually comes...

Haven't been to one in about four years but I'm not feeling any problems in my mouth like chipped teeth or pain. I should probably go soon, if for no other reason than to get a cleaning. The doctor is another story. Last time I had a checkup was when DD was born. I don't trust that doctors will...

I think the issue is advocating driving your car to its physical limits on public roads, as opposed to just appreciating the extra margin of safety having more cornering ability allows in case of an emergency. Or to make a good analogy, what you do is more like carrying a gun for protection. You...

I want to say for me personally I can't see pixelation above around 300 dpi. Perfect 8K monitor for me then might be about 25" to 27" (also the size which would physically fit on my desk). That said, I can easily live with the same size 4K monitor. I barely notice any pixelation.

I'm pretty sure remote reading won't work in a car despite the glass. Five people (with 5 licenses?) would make reading even more difficult. There are uses for RFID but I don't think a driver's license is a good application.

This is even more stupid when you consider the only time the government might need to read someone's license remotely is when they're driving, but RFID won't work when you're surrounded by a metal car!

Maybe because the NAND will cost about half as much per GB when they move from 2nd to 3rd generation? If not that would leave the flagship 4GB model at around $1500. There won't be too many takers for that price.

My guess is the price of the flagship 4TB model will be more or less the same as what the 2TB model costs now, and the prices of the other capacities will be proportionately less. That should hopefully mean 500GB SSDs will drop under the $100 mark. The entire point of going from 2nd to 3rd...

+1 on that. I don't have a trainer but I use my mom's Schwinn 240 for indoor workouts when it's not feasible to ride outside. Even when the basement is 55°F in winter and I'm riding in my underwear the amount of sweat is unreal. This is with a fan blowing on me. Amazing how much cooling power...

I don't know if you followed the weather in the northeast last winter but we were getting piled on with snow on a practically weekly basis. No sooner had I cleared the sidewalks then another storm put the snow back. Cumulatively, this had to have been a bigger workout than helping someone move...

I've shoveled my next door neighbor's snow many times for the exact same reason. I figured with snow on the ground I wasn't riding, so might as well do something aerobic. After an hour shoveling snow, I felt like I had a better work out than riding.

It's hard to say what the cause of these insane housing prices are. NYC only has about half a million more people than it did when my parents were young. In terms of percentage, that's maybe 6% more. Real estate speculators are responsible for a lot of the price inflation. They buy a few houses...

It all depends upon how much you pay to rent versus what it would cost to buy. In NYC renting seems to be a losing proposition. Most decent apartments rent for upwards of $2,000 a month. For the same money once you include the mortgage interest deduction you can carry enough mortgage to buy a...

I tend to agree. There are loads of reasons '98 was replaced. There are better options now if someone has an older machine.

I had Windows '98 using 1 GB. I think all I had to do was put MaxFileCache=393216 in the system.ini file. Or maybe it was 524288. Don't really remember at this point. It definitely used the RAM. I recall seeing MS Train Simulator alone using over 512MB. That said, memory management in '98 sucks...

Sorry to hear about this. Cancer sucks. I really hope we find a vaccine for it in my lifetime.

This was all a nice walk down memory lane. It also makes me appreciate today's systems where we won't face another hard drive barrier until drives reach at least 144 petabytes. If we use 4K sectors then the next barrier would be at 2.3 exabytes instead. Pretty safe to say it's highly unlikely...

If I recall correctly Windows '98 will work with drives up to 128GB, provided your BIOS supports them. That's a hard limit though because Win '98 only supports 28-bit LBA. I remember having a 100GB drive in a Windows '98 system which worked just fine. Don't remember what I used to partition and...

Tubeless tires require a rim which have the spoke holes sealed to prevent air leaks. They also require adding a valve to the rim. Here's a good read on the subject. They sell sealant to seal the rim, and also valves to install on the rim. So basically the answer here is you can use tubeless...

Same here. I have yet to see a compelling reason to go with Windows 10 but lots of reasons not to.

Not sure about that. Back when I started with PCs in the late 1990s I remember drive sizes being somewhat limiting. My first machine had a 1.2GB HDD. Eventually I was at the point where I would have started needing to make decisions about what to keep and what to get rid of. Then I bought an...

STR is more or less proportional to the square root of bit density. If we managed to make 100TB hard disks, probably the STR would be in the 500 to 750 MB/s range. Still, your point remains. At those speeds it would take 1.5 to over 2 days to get the data in or out of the drive. In fact, I think...