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Anyone noticed that the majority of domestic floodlights have crap/inappropriate optics? It's a bit of a gripe with me- In this day and age it should be cheap and easy to make a good floodlight but nobody does.
I remember (1980's) when your average cheap and nasty flood light had a asymmetric reflector designed to point downwards so when angled as such was a full-cut off beam design with a forward light projection- so if installed right it lit your drive /garden and not all your neighbours, not the sky and not wasting half the light output illuminating the side of the building it's attached/and or sky.
Nowadays almost all domestic floodlight have a symmetric reflector which really shouldn't be mounted to a wall (needs to be offset away from the wall with a pole bracket). The result is much light is lost either illuminating the neighbours garden and the sky with lots of glare or lighting the side of the building/wall it's mounted on - depending on angle. Why does nobody notice/realise this?? (In particular my neighbours which have floods that light my bedrooms better than they light their garden LOL).
You'd think with the advent of LED flood lights they'd make them with better optics. Nope they are even worse. I've recently tried the usual fare which are all identical with the symmetric reflector design with a led chip(s) in the middle and they all have the same design fault as Symmetric Halogen floods apart from the glare is even worse unless angled directly down (which wastes light illuminating the wall it's fixed to). Also the beam uniformity is crap; When looking at the light projected onto the ground, there is a "hot spot" in the middle of the beam pattern coming directly from the LED itself, and a much dimmer area around it which is from the reflector...the thing is, the dim area is what would be as bright as the centre "spot" if lit by a halogen fitting.
In short; we're being sold s**t! Add to that shoddy led drivers and labelling 80watt fittings as 100watts and lieing about lumen output and you are left with a light that chucks out glare, unevenly lights the area and may fail prematurely. Be it branded or not.
Now I've looked at the optics on a LED car headlamp etc. the problem is clear- The LED must not point outwards. But should point at the reflector to shape and project the beam. Or streetlights that have led arrays that point directly downwards. Both methods produce a cut-off beam onto the ground with reduced glare and scatter.
I've trawled the net in trying find a LED flood that has decent "correct" optics and for the retail consumer and they do not exist. I can only something close through trade sources listed as being suited for commercial/industrial use with list prices of over £400. Yikes....puts that £50 LED flood into perspective!
I reckon that if I had a 3D printer I could make a flood lamp better than what the majority of China produce.
Just need to come with a pitch for Dragon's den LOL.
I've got this in my porch and it's absolutely brilliant. Cost around £70 but so much better than the ones you can get from B&Q. It's got a junction box which makes wiring it in easy if you're replacing an existing light.
Ah well, some people like the "flood" of light. My mum lives in the countryside, no neighbours etc and I've attached a couple of LEDs to the side of the house which now light up the whole courtyard area and the trees opposite. Not only can she now see where she is walking (important at 87 & fragile old bones), it looks pretty too
Anyone noticed that the majority of domestic floodlights have crap/inappropriate optics? It's a bit of a gripe with me- In this day and age it should be cheap and easy to make a good floodlight but nobody does.
I remember (1980's) when your average cheap and nasty flood light had a asymmetric reflector designed to point downwards so when angled as such was a full-cut off beam design with a forward light projection- so if installed right it lit your drive /garden and not all your neighbours, not the sky and not wasting half the light output illuminating the side of the building it's attached/and or sky.
Nowadays almost all domestic floodlight have a symmetric reflector which really shouldn't be mounted to a wall (needs to be offset away from the wall with a pole bracket). The result is much light is lost either illuminating the neighbours garden and the sky with lots of glare or lighting the side of the building/wall it's mounted on - depending on angle. Why does nobody notice/realise this?? (In particular my neighbours which have floods that light my bedrooms better than they light their garden LOL).
You'd think with the advent of LED flood lights they'd make them with better optics. Nope they are even worse. I've recently tried the usual fare which are all identical with the symmetric reflector design with a led chip(s) in the middle and they all have the same design fault as Symmetric Halogen floods apart from the glare is even worse unless angled directly down (which wastes light illuminating the wall it's fixed to). Also the beam uniformity is crap; When looking at the light projected onto the ground, there is a "hot spot" in the middle of the beam pattern coming directly from the LED itself, and a much dimmer area around it which is from the reflector...the thing is, the dim area is what would be as bright as the centre "spot" if lit by a halogen fitting.
In short; we're being sold s**t! Add to that shoddy led drivers and labelling 80watt fittings as 100watts and lieing about lumen output and you are left with a light that chucks out glare, unevenly lights the area and may fail prematurely. Be it branded or not.
Now I've looked at the optics on a LED car headlamp etc. the problem is clear- The LED must not point outwards. But should point at the reflector to shape and project the beam. Or streetlights that have led arrays that point directly downwards. Both methods produce a cut-off beam onto the ground with reduced glare and scatter.
I've trawled the net in trying find a LED flood that has decent "correct" optics and for the retail consumer and they do not exist. I can only something close through trade sources listed as being suited for commercial/industrial use with list prices of over £400. Yikes....puts that £50 LED flood into perspective!
I reckon that if I had a 3D printer I could make a flood lamp better than what the majority of China produce.
Just need to come with a pitch for Dragon's den LOL.
< /Rant>
You are right there is a flood (pun intended) of cheap, poorly designed LED products on the market that have little or no consideration for optical design, let along thermal management and other factors that are needed to ensure optimal performance of lifetime.
The product that LSheratt refers to is a perfect example, a typical LED chip will have a light distribution of around 120° so that reflector will be doing nothing at all, the optical design needs to be much more sophisticated to have any affect, via either indirect reflectors or direct mounted lenses/optics.
I work for the largest independent LED manufacturer in the UK, we make about 4,000 light fittings a day in our factory in the South West, we manufacture asymmetrical floodlights but do not manufacture for the domestic market I am afraid.
One of my functions is running product design, let me know when you get that 3D printer and will have a look at your floodlight for you
Ah well, some people like the "flood" of light. My mum lives in the countryside, no neighbours etc and I've attached a couple of LEDs to the side of the house which now light up the whole courtyard area and the trees opposite. Not only can she now see where she is walking (important at 87 & fragile old bones), it looks pretty too
Yeah, we have a couple to light the rear patio and lawn garden area
The "flood" effect is welcome
I can see Ali's point in certain scenarios - a looming project of mine is to "under" light our willow tree, where I imagine the need for a more directed light we be needed
Aha! Nice to find someone who knows what I'm getting at... I previously looked at Dextra's Opus LED model, but with it being a commercial model there's no online retailers to even find what price they sell for.
Currently thinking about buying the Philips Coreline tempo which has a choice of reflectors. Not cheap but it's reasonable if it's a high quality product.
Problem arose when fitting the CCTV, the floodlights are operated by Pir and the current ASD Smartflood takes 30secs to reach full brightness and even then its not quite bright enough. So I need something brighter, preferably efficient (LED), and doesn't blind me when I pull onto the drive.
After trying some LED fittings I quickly realised there is nothing on the domestic market.
Now I work on cars, so naturally LED headlamps are starting to trickle in...the design that intrigued me most is the the reflectors used on the current Seat Leon...you do not have a direct line of sight of the LEDs (incidentally it's the same theory with a dipped beam halogen) the LEDs point inwards into the headlamp, so all the light emitted only comes via the reflectors. Contrast that to domestic LED floods and it's obvious which has been carefully designed and engineered and which has just been thrown together with little or no regard to the a effectiveness of the design...to me it's a "that'll do" design criteria.
I honestly do think it's possible to make something that's better, and it shouldn't really cost that much more; The costs of the the housing, led and driver are going to be similar (unless using higher grade parts) it's just the reflector, which if mass produced wouldn't be a major cost. I wondering if there is any market potential...I'm guessing from this, probably not LOL. The biggest cost I guess is trying to prevent the Chinese producing copies.
Sadly the 3D printer is a just dream at the moment
Aha! Nice to find someone who knows what I'm getting at... I previously looked at Dextra's Opus LED model, but with it being a commercial model there's no online retailers to even find what price they sell for.
Currently thinking about buying the Philips Coreline tempo which has a choice of reflectors. Not cheap but it's reasonable if it's a high quality product.
Problem arose when fitting the CCTV, the floodlights are operated by Pir and the current ASD Smartflood takes 30secs to reach full brightness and even then its not quite bright enough. So I need something brighter, preferably efficient (LED), and doesn't blind me when I pull onto the drive.
After trying some LED fittings I quickly realised there is nothing on the domestic market.
Now I work on cars, so naturally LED headlamps are starting to trickle in...the design that intrigued me most is the the reflectors used on the current Seat Leon...you do not have a direct line of sight of the LEDs (incidentally it's the same theory with a dipped beam halogen) the LEDs point inwards into the headlamp, so all the light emitted only comes via the reflectors. Contrast that to domestic LED floods and it's obvious which has been carefully designed and engineered and which has just been thrown together with little or no regard to the a effectiveness of the design...to me it's a "that'll do" design criteria.
I honestly do think it's possible to make something that's better, and it shouldn't really cost that much more; The costs of the the housing, led and driver are going to be similar (unless using higher grade parts) it's just the reflector, which if mass produced wouldn't be a major cost. I wondering if there is any market potential...I'm guessing from this, probably not LOL. The biggest cost I guess is trying to prevent the Chinese producing copies.
Sadly the 3D printer is a just dream at the moment
Should be easy, as you say. There are some design considerations though;
It is a small form factor for the amount of lumens that you are looking to push out, a typical 600x600mm recessed office light will be producing something like 4,000 lumens where floods with a smaller optical surface can be producing anything from 3,000 to 30,000 lumens so thermal design is paramount.
Most interior products use mid power chips where exterior would use high power chips, this is pretty much as it sounds, the chip runs at a higher wattage producing more light, now LED's don't produce any heat in the light beam but they throw a hell of a lot backwards, and that needs to be got rid of else the LED just destroys itself.
Floods are sealed units, IP65 as a minimum, so not a lot of air flow, so you mount the LED's directly onto the back of the aluminium body, using it as a heat sink, hence a lot of the high power floods having fins on the back to increase the surface area and thus the heat dissipation.
So if you move the LED to the front and make it 'look back' at an optic such as a reflector you lose contact with the heat sink, so that needs to be resolved and you also need to mount it so that you can get power to it. We do this with some interior products but the surface area is much larger and we can have up to 1,000 low power LED chips in the product so the thermal load per chip is so low getting rid of the heat is easy.
The Philips Coreline product is the same as our Opus in that is uses lenses mounted directly to each LED chip, so the LED is looking forward and you use the lens to create different shaped distributions.
Don't know the LEON, bu know the principle, LED's are harsh to look at as they produce a lot of light from a small space, the idea of using a back reflector is you get some shape to the distribution but you also increase the surface area of the light emitting surface reducing glare.
The BMW i8 (which my bosses son had delivered today!) also uses laser for it's far field high beams, but that is a different technology altogether.
Hope that makes sense, wanted to keep it simple, without being patronising. If you wanted to try an Opus PM me and will see what I can do depending on your location. Smallest asymmetrical one we do is the 6,000 lumen
I fitted an LED light to replace an old halogen flood above our kitchen window. I 'flood' of the light is silly, the flood angle of light must be 170 degrees . I have it angled to light up to the top of our back fence, but the light from the bottom creates glare on the window and then you can't see out . I ended up making a shield to fit on the bottom of the light to stop the glare.
An adequate flood angle would be 90 degree from the fitting, enough to light up a garden and not waste light lighting up the wall it's mounted on.
One gripe of mine with lights is on police interceptors or similar programmes. They go looking for someone hiding in the woods and they have a spotlight torch . It only illuminates an area the size of a CD, why not have a flood light torch and light up the area, theres a lot better chance of seeing someone or something moving with the area lit up
Should be easy, as you say. There are some design considerations though;
It is a small form factor for the amount of lumens that you are looking to push out, a typical 600x600mm recessed office light will be producing something like 4,000 lumens where floods with a smaller optical surface can be producing anything from 3,000 to 30,000 lumens so thermal design is paramount.
Most interior products use mid power chips where exterior would use high power chips, this is pretty much as it sounds, the chip runs at a higher wattage producing more light, now LED's don't produce any heat in the light beam but they throw a hell of a lot backwards, and that needs to be got rid of else the LED just destroys itself.
Floods are sealed units, IP65 as a minimum, so not a lot of air flow, so you mount the LED's directly onto the back of the aluminium body, using it as a heat sink, hence a lot of the high power floods having fins on the back to increase the surface area and thus the heat dissipation.
So if you move the LED to the front and make it 'look back' at an optic such as a reflector you lose contact with the heat sink, so that needs to be resolved and you also need to mount it so that you can get power to it. We do this with some interior products but the surface area is much larger and we can have up to 1,000 low power LED chips in the product so the thermal load per chip is so low getting rid of the heat is easy.
The Philips Coreline product is the same as our Opus in that is uses lenses mounted directly to each LED chip, so the LED is looking forward and you use the lens to create different shaped distributions.
Don't know the LEON, bu know the principle, LED's are harsh to look at as they produce a lot of light from a small space, the idea of using a back reflector is you get some shape to the distribution but you also increase the surface area of the light emitting surface reducing glare.
The BMW i8 (which my bosses son had delivered today!) also uses laser for it's far field high beams, but that is a different technology altogether.
Hope that makes sense, wanted to keep it simple, without being patronising. If you wanted to try an Opus PM me and will see what I can do depending on your location. Smallest asymmetrical one we do is the 6,000 lumen
It all sounds sensible enough. Obviously myself not having any true theoretical knowledge of light optics does mean if I try making something from cannibalising various light fitting I would have to experiment and work via trial and error. I know the basic theory and have some practical experience, for example by getting dipped headlamps working correctly - on some headlamps by having the filament positioned a few millimetres off can result in pretty much no beam pattern (just a blob) - just by having a badly made/faulty bulb, so I do know there are some critical aspects with getting the geometry correct.
The problems I had with most LEDs be it torches, mains or low voltage is power supply/driver failure. I have JCC LED downlights in the kitchen and I think I'm up to ten that have failed so far (ten year guarantee though, think JCC will go out of business before ten years at this rate ); They die and flicker every ten seconds. The one exception was a LED candle bulb from Aldi out of the clearance basket which clearly suffered a heat-related overload as some of the SMD LED chips had de-soldered from the PCB, again I think that may have been the driver passing too much current through them. So IMO a good driver is the key component to reliability. Heat management of both driver and LED will require some thought too though.
This would have to be a rainy day project too see if I can make a reflector shape that could work. In the mean time I do need a few new floodlamps though to improve the CCTV at night.
If you can give me a supplier where I can buy an Opus LED fitting from (as there doesn't appear to be any selling online) and what they sell for (PM if you want), that would be great. I'm not after freebies, I just want to know what they go for. I'm looking at a fitting with around 10,000 lumens -real world (give or take a few). And would they be ok for being switched on/off by a PIR system?
I have thought about infrared; Long-term I will install them, mainly so I can disable the ones inside the cameras so they don't attract as many bugs (or the giant white spider of doom as I like to call it ) but it requires more wiring, and futher considerations on positioning etc. as they will need to be in addition to the existing floodlighting.
Rainy day project resumed...after a hectic year, lack of shed/man cave and parts resources...
Last week's fruition at work gave me the reminants of a LED headlamp off a Audi A7...these cost the best part of £1500 without the drivers or cooling fan. For what is just some tiny SMD LEDs a few linear actuators, a load of heavy plastics and handful of screws.
Will probably take another year to make them into something useful, owing to the lack of s work bench or suitable bench supply to test-power it.
Ultimate goal is to retrofit two of the small reflectors (the two small black things in the pics) into a standard halogen Floodlight housing.
Idle thumbs; Better than going into landfill
Last edited by ALi-B; 21 January 2018 at 04:11 PM.
06 April 2016, 07:41 PM
Domestic Floodlight Optics moan
. I ended up making a shield to fit on the bottom of the light to stop the glare.
); They die and flicker every ten seconds. The one exception was a LED candle bulb from Aldi out of the clearance basket which clearly suffered a heat-related overload as some of the SMD LED chips had de-soldered from the PCB, again I think that may have been the driver passing too much current through them. So IMO a good driver is the key component to reliability. Heat management of both driver and LED will require some thought too though. 
) but it requires more wiring, and futher considerations on positioning etc. as they will need to be in addition to the existing floodlighting.
