Every year in North America, families come together to celebrate Thanksgiving. Bringing together long-lost relatives who meet only once a year may be a joyous occasion, but it often results in petty arguments. Faced with such an outcome, my son and I set off with a 20-lb turkey to spend the holiday with friends.
After entering their well-decorated home, I happened to comment on how the lady of the house had used incandescent light bulbs in each room. Being a helpful chap, I mentioned that she could save a lot of money in electricity if these bulbs were replaced with more energy-efficient compact fluorescent lights (CFLs).
This resulted in a heated debate on how lower-power lamps could produce the same amount of illumination as those she had currently deployed. My host was not convinced, so the next day, I decided to purchase a 15-W CFL to prove my point. After returning, I replaced one of the incandescent lamps in a wonderful stained-glass antique lamp with the CFL and powered it up. You see, I said, this consumes less than half the power of yours and produces even more light!
Although convinced of the physics of my argument, my host was not amused. Rather than the charming glow of the original incandescent bulb, the lamp emitted an eerie radiance. My host asked for her original bulb to be replaced immediately.
Rather than pursue a longer discussion on the effect of the CFL's increased color temperature, I informed her that starting next month, the US Government would phase out incandescent lamps under the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. Upon reflection, it may have been better for me to have said nothing rather than watch the poor woman panic at the thought of having to go and purchase hoards of incandescent bulbs before January.
As any machine-vision system designer will tell you, lighting choices play an important role in the development of their systems. Choosing the correct type, frequency, and placement of such lighting is critical to obtain the proper contrast from the object being illuminated. While many systems have migrated to high-performance LED lighting because of their longer lifetimes, fluorescent, metal halide, and xenon lamps are still used in applications that require products to be illuminated at different color temperatures.
I have yet to see a machine-vision system developed with off-the-shelf consumer light bulbs. However, I'm sure that somewhere in the world such systems do exist and those who have been unfortunate enough to design their systems with these products will have to rethink future designs.
Legislation such as the Energy Act begs the question of whether the government should play a role in the types of illumination that can be deployed or to what future Acts may portend.
Personally, I am a fan of new technology and do not mind paying more for longer-lasting light bulbs despite illumination differences. But there are those, such as my friend, who think that this kind of government intervention is not required. For her, the needs of the many do not outweigh the needs of the few.
Andy Wilson, Editor in Chief
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