Texas_Ace BLF Calibrated Lumen tube / Sphere No math skills needed - Several spheres still available

I’d like to sign up, thanks. 3.5”

Make sure you say what size you want.

Thank you!

How accurate is this compared to a professional calibrated integration sphere?
Also afaik nobody has tested the HS1010A against a real high quality luxmeter, so it’s hard to know if the numbers it’s giving are correct, especially with different colour temperatures.

PM sent with payment details.

Yep, include all the requested information with your payment, that is how the list is being populated and how orders will ship.

I have interchanged it with my LX1330B meter several times when I was setting up the sphere and the readings were always within a few percent.

I just did it again now to confirm my earlier tests and just holding the meter in the hole without a good seal it was reading about 5% low from 13 lumens up to the 1100 lumens of the test light, which is expected since it was not sealed into the PVC like the hs1010A. Confirming my earlier results, the HS1010A is a perfectly acceptable meter.

I stuck with the HS1010A because it was much much easier to mount to the PVC and it was simpler to use.

I have both but I have used the HS1010A in my own sphere since I finished it. I do not regret that decision at all.

Far as accuracy vs a $10,000 ANSI sphere, no idea, I don’t have one.

If you have a real ANSI calibrated sphere I would gladly send you a sphere to professionally calibrate it so we can find out.

What do you expect at 1/100th of the price?

Yes. Totally agree… why should we buy a professional sphere for $10000. We are not in flashlight business… all we are doing is testing out lumen even if they are off by a few hundred.

I see 29 people bought your lumen tube… it say your product is very good.

I agree it’s a bit silly to compare to ANSI sphere but I am curious how much better this is than my shoe box and cell phone rig.

RE:accuracy.
The way I see it is more important for these to match up to TA’s #s and be consistent from one sphere to the rest.

My main goal, and many others I would guess, is to have a way to compare my builds to others here.

As well as before-after on my own to see if changes had the desired/expected change. Also to have measurable numbers for my builds, rather than guess which of mine are brighter.

Just my $.02.

So these buyers are going to have their own unit of measure? Better reference it as such so your peers will know :smiley: 1,500 TAlm

I would guess a pretty significant jump depending on the phone. Most phone lux sensors are crude at best.

The old shoebox setup also tends to be susceptible to beam shape changing the numbers, that is what I spent a lot of time trying to get rid of with this setup be using the diffusing sheets.

That said, if you have a good standard to calibrate a sphere, a lot of things will work. It took me hundreds of tests and over 6 months to get a good enough “standard” to trust it.

The thing that really makes these better then home made setups is they will all be calibrated the same way and use the same setups, thus allowing them to be comparable to each other. The calibration is a big part of the selling point if you ask anyone that has made a DIY setup.

Also over time my numbers have shown to be inline with many others here, generally leaning towards the low side compared to others.

I know I would of happily and gladly paid twice this price in retrospect to get a pre-calibrated sphere but I am selling these so take that with a grain of salt.

I would suggest all who buy these Units measure a few lights they own—-write these measurements down as calibrating reference—this will tell you if things get off in time—mainly when the meter batteries get weak—meters tend to do crazy things with weak batteries—-even high dollar Spheres have a calibrating bulb—my old hickok tube testers have an included calibrating tube——Just my 2 cents—-LOL

Yep, this is a very wise idea. I did this same thing and I have 2 lights I use to double check my sphere on a regular basis and a bunch more written down for more in depth tests.

The biggest issue I have had with readings changing over time is dust, it will collect and lower the readings naturally.

I clean off the top and it is back to normal.

5% difference between meters is pretty reasonable.
I assume you calibrated your spheres and tubes using the manufacturer values of flashlight lumens?

Some time this summer I’ll ask the optics department at my university if I can use their integration spheres, they have a 1m and 3m.

Ok, I am sorry to report that I made a mistake in the order and it will take a week or so to get the correct parts.

Long story short, they do not have a 4” to 1.5” reducer so I had to use a 4” to 2” and then a 2” to 1.5”.

I had 2” on the brain and ended up having to place the order over the phone due to some website issues at the time and I mistakenly ordered 3” to 2” reducers for the 3” spheres instead of 3” to 1.5”.

I also totally forgot to order the 2” to 1.5” reducers.

So I am placing an order for the missing parts this weekend and I expect them to ship on Monday. Last time they arrived on Friday so I expect the same this time.

In the mean time I am preparing all the other parts and using some pieces I got from home depot to do an initial calibration of the spheres.

This should make it fairly quick once the missing parts show up. I am hoping to make my 4 week deadline I set for myself.

Today I got the family involved and we got a fair amount done in preparation for the real work. Hoping to start really digging into them tomorrow.

I will keep ya’ll updated.

I can say that I will NOT be selling any more of these for this price again.

Just got the order placed for the missing parts, they say delivery is expected Friday.

I got a payment earlier today for a sphere but there was no user name on the payment. Could whoever sent the payment please reply to the PM I sent you so I know who it is from? Thanks.

Ok, almost a week and countless hours of work later and I officially have the first sphere calibrated and put together!

It has been way more work then I planned on to get these sorted out. I went through a dozen different options to get these sorted out but in the end it is just a matter of trial and error on each sphere.

All the parts are here now.

So the next several days are me putting together a bunch of spheres and calibrating them.

On the plus side they are matching mine very nicely once calibrated. Looking like I will be able to be well within the 5% tolerance range I was hoping for, I am aiming for 3% between spheres. Getting closer then that is very difficult as even details like how hard the pvc is pressed together comes into play at that point.

I’m def in…

PM sent.

Also just so everyone knows, I had to raise the prices on the spheres for new orders, after calculating all the costs involved both monetary and time, the existing prices were just not worth it.

For example I just had to spend $60 to buy boxes to ship these in, on top of the shipping costs being a lot higher then planned. The little things add up quick.

Not to mention the time involved, it is taking around ~2-3 man hours per sphere start to finish to get these ready, that is of course if you don’t factor in the 6 months I spent setting up my own sphere to get the design and calibration.

The new prices are:

3.5” - $135 + $17 S&H in cont US

4.5” - $200 + $25 S&H in cont US

I will be putting up any that are left over on ebay for $150 + shipping and $225 + shipping respectively to cover the ebay fees.

Now since I did not give any warning on the price increase, anyone that wants one today I will honor the old price.