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groingo
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# Posted: 27 Mar 2012 11:07am
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I have a Caframo Thermo Electric wood stove fan and it works great, so I saw they also make a Thermo-Electic light so I decided to give it a shot.
First, the light is called a Joi light, it uses a small flat candle to heat the Thermo-Electric unit to run the LED lights for up to five hours...and the candles are dirt cheap at five bucks for 100 of them.
I used the light only to find that the LED light was the wrong kind, it was pure white when it should have been soft white....which makes things easier to see for me.
The other rub was the candle house (for lack of a better word) was enclosed and got very hot and thirdly the cost which was over $150.00.
The bottom line was it just wasn't cut out for the job I wanted it to do which was as a backup light....but I did find a better solution.
The candles... with a good reflector put out more usable light for a fraction of the cost....it's all in the reflector...I always say, look to the past for the answers you need today!
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TomChum
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# Posted: 27 Mar 2012 12:56pm - Edited by: TomChum
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Wow, $150, you could be pretty far along, with a solar panel, controller and batteries for that.
Speaking of candle-light, there is a little $2 LED you can get that is about 2 or 3x as bright as a candle, that runs on 1/5watt. A basic 40Ah 12v car battery could run this little LED for (40Ah/(.2w/12v) = 2400 hours = 100 days! Another way to look at it, with one 5 hour day of sunlight, a tiny 5watt solar panel can replenish 5 evenings of light.
Part#: LD1-WW (warm white color) $1.99 http://www.superbrightleds.com
You could simply hook it up to your car. But you would need more than 1 tiny LED in your cabin. In my experience, the correct 6Watt LEDs bulb will light up a cabin about twice as bright as 4 (normal wick) oil lamps. Your car battery can tolerate 6Watts for 4 hours/evening easily. You would have to run your car engine (90A?) for about 2 minutes in the morning, to replenish for 4 hours of 6w LED light. Basically 6w is not worth even starting the engine for one evening.
AR111-WW36SMD If you want to try ONE 12v LED, start with this one. Note it's "warm white".
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Anonymous
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# Posted: 28 Mar 2012 08:03am
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Does this LED light give a spot type light?
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groingo
Member
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# Posted: 28 Mar 2012 10:24am
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Here is the site for the light. http://www.thermologi.com/
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TomChum
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# Posted: 28 Mar 2012 01:43pm - Edited by: TomChum
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That's a cool looking light, cool idea. Too bad about the LED color. I like the color of candle-light, and could not live with that ultra-white LED color.
 
"Thermologi" candle-powered LED area light.
It probably took a couple years to get the project to the market, and back when Termologi designed it, likely the 'blueish-white' LEDs were the only ones bright enough. Now that 'warm-white' LEDs are available, it makes sense they would change to an LED that's similar color to candle-light. But I bet they have already built and warehoused a thousand of those, that they have to sell first. YIKES.
Quoting: Anonymous Does this LED light give a spot type light?
The little 1/5w and the 6W LEDs from superbrightLEDS are "flood" or 120deg. In my opinion, the AR111-WW36SMD ($19.95) from SuperBright LEDS is the best light to buy, today, if you want to save watts and light your cabin nicely. There are others, but these are the only ones I have experience with.
For a direct comparison, it's 6w and I think its brighter, and gives much nicer light (color) than an 11w compactFluorescent. And it runs directly on 12vDC, using tiny wires. Speaker wire is "huge" for this light, you could run these lights with tiny telephone cable (if you run wires in your cabin, especially if you choose tiny wires, be sure to put a tiny 2A or maybe 5A fuse at the SOURCE!). And while you're at it, order some of the "Little Dot" LEDs "LD1-WW" ($1.99) to fill in some shadows or light your woodpile. This is my advice to someone who wants low-cost but very nice small cabin LED lighting.
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