Thanks!
-Michael
I agree, when I made the statement about heat not being a problem, I was speaking about actually shining through the opening, not directly against and through the styrofoam, I’m not sure that’s a good idea for a couple of reasons. One, getting a reasonably priced light meter that’s actually capable with an accurate V-Lambda curve is going to be difficult enough. Two, I’m not sure it’s going to be accurate reading through the styro, attenuation is going a problem, both with simple diffusion/dispersion and with attenuation of different light wavelengths. Third would be heat, direct heat against the sphere, depending on the temperature, could cause a whole host of other problems.
-Michael
Criminy guys. You are so sure it’s going to melt but you aren’t even discussing the right material. It’s NOT styrofoam. It’s high density expanded polystyrene. My hot BLF A6 does not even phase it when pressed firmly against it. And why would you press any light against the sphere?
LOL, I wasn’t saying it would or wouldn’t, I was only expressing CONCERN. Because I’ve melted things with my lights before. And not even the big hoss lights at that. We just have to use common sense and pay attention, that’s all. 
Edit: FWIW, “Styrofoam is a trademarked brand of closed-cell extruded polystyrene foam” Polystyrene melts under intense heat. And don’t spill gas on it while de-doming… just saying. And I think the talk about shining larger lights through the wall of the sphere conjured images of pressing the flashlight bezel against the wall, hence the concerns.
I trust that you are checking all the details and will create whatever means is necessary to make this work. You’re researching it to no end and seem to be of the mindset to make it as good as it can be. That works for me.
Don’t worry Dale, it was the Texlite post that was frustrating. He’s shoveling shit he can’t back up.
I’m not worried, I’m excited about it! 
I’ve had so many say my numbers are off, it’ll be nice to have a cross reference. Even though I’ve seen my numbers track with top name ANSI ratings repeatedly.
Nobody believes what my Meteor is doing, but then, they haven’t seen it do it. I don’t do any of this with something to prove, I’m excited about what I see, want to share it. Nobody has to believe any of it, no skin off my back. I just like seeing new folks get stoked and start building their own for that kind of gratification, that’s really what does it for me, that you or I or anybody took a product and improved on it to their own satisfaction. Love it that folks take initiative that way.
Like this thread, giving people a chance to get on the same page, test some of the hard work for a knowledgeable database to go from, making it easy to see if the work is paying off or maybe something was missed. I have done all the tweaks on a light before, expected nice results, and the light box told me I was missing something. One light in particular had a filthy dirty retaining ring on the switch, bad contact, cleaned it up and gained over 2A. Voila! So the light box pays off.
Alright. Here’s the meter FACTS.
They are a ALL zeroed perfectly. Right down to the tenth of a lux. That’s impressive.
I setup a controlled experiment to test the meters at higher output. Every newegg meter read either 550 lux or 555 lux during the experiment. I ran the test again, and the meters that got 550 often got 555 the second time, and vice versa. I continued the experiment until I was completely sure there was no one meter that was consistently high or low. This is impressive too. But hey, that;s why we bought them all at once. There is no calibration needed there.
HOWEVER, I had 1 meter from ebay. That meter was a different story. It read 560 to 568 every time I tested it. So yes, I was totally right to warn against meters from different production runs. It was clearly the odd man out even though it was the identical equipment.
Wait til you see 58,000 on the meter.
Lol.
I don’t recall posting any shit, just trying to point some things out and give some pointers from someone who’s done what you’re attempting to do. After all, the title of the thread is …BLF Integrating Sphere…, so I assumed being a forum member I’d be allowed to participate, but from this post, previous posts where you seem to be annoyed about having posters request changes, and the above one about “scaring people off”, it seems more like you’re wanting to build your own design without outside input from everyone, and sell them. That’s certainly your right, I just misread the whole situation and assumed this was a group effort, my apologies.
As far as the my previous post, I thought the discussion was about illuminating the interior of the sphere by shining a light source from the outside through the wall. I assumed you be pressing the light up to the exterior of the sphere. I’ve never heard of anyone attempting to get readings that way, it didn’t make sense, hence my confusion.
I don’t understand the hostility, and I’m not quite sure why you were offended of upset by my posts. I even attempted to offer encouragement with my first posts. This is one reason I lurked for so long, the proliferation of sandy ’ginas.
With that said, I’ll refrain from further posting in your thread.
Thanks for the warm welcome BTW.
-Michael
Michael,
The sphere and the meter were both selected directly from member input, so yea SOLUTIONS are extremely welcome. But someone has to be the leader.
The problem is when someone crawls in and starts throwing around words that terrorize supporters like
I’m not sure that’s a good idea.
V-Lambda curve is going to be difficult.
attenuation is going a problem.
attenuation of different light wavelengths.
heat.
a whole host of other problems.
There was NO positive input in that post. So what did you expect? I don’t use the troll label often, but what does that list right there look like? That’s just from one of your posts. Not to mention your latest.
Joshk, from what I have learned from measuring light over the past two years (the information is still available via the link in my signature), Michael raised real and legitimate concerns in a friendly way. He hoped to help making your sphere a better one. You do not seem to wamt to inform yourself about how to measure light in the best possible way, and on top of that are not open to others trying to help you with that. I tried to help several times with information you should actually have gathered yourself if your goal is making a properly working measuring device that helps to get the light measurements of BLF-members in the same ballpark, measurements that you can rely on instead of sort of believe in.
Here my input stops as well…
Is it a full moon or something? Why is everybody so edgy?
Some of this stuff get’s frustrating, we all know it does, sometimes there’s a lot of information that seems to be at odds and it’s just really difficult to figure out what the best approach is.
Pretty sure we all want the same thing here, problem is figuring out the best way to go about it that’s economical enough to please the masses.
Michael, seems like you jumped in with some really important data and we appreciate that. Jos has done quite a lot of testing and seems to echo your thought process, which is also a good thing. Now Josh just has to figure out how to go about it all and not pull out any hair doing it. Pretty sure it’ll all work out in the end.
Either way, we’ll have big balls to play with.
Sorry for being edgy guys. It’s been over 2 weeks and 292 posts. I guess I just felt like the goal was getting forgotten and the Sphere was getting nerded-to-death. I feel like I could have proposed sliced bread and everyone would be telling me how impractical it is to consistently slice all the bread in America. And how unreliable a machine like that would be with all those thin wires that would break so often it’s never going to get anything done.
Integrating spheres are pretty nerdy things and BLF is full of smart people, so I’m not at all surprised to see lots of good discussion on this topic, and personally I do think it’s been very good, constructive discussion. Emotions are running higher than I expected but I’m still glad to be a part of it. I’m looking forward to the finished product and expect good things, but it’s all the little nerdy details that’ll make it great… Thanks to everyone who has contributed and I hope to see you all still around this project as it progresses.
EDIT: After a bit more reflection, I believe the “emotion” we’ve seen over the past couple of pages is really better described as passion. We’re passionate about this stuff. If we weren’t we’d be doing something else with our free time, cause as far as I know none of us are making a living on blf. So from that perspective I think what we’ve seen makes a lot more sense, or at least is more easily understood. So with that said, I hope we can all pull together as a passionate team and get something awesome done here.
See? I knew it! We’re passionate about having big balls! To be expected, no doubt. hahahahaha
Lol, somebody had to say it. Somehow I’m not surprised it was you Dale… 
It’s that dang song! It’s stuck in my head. “….we’ve got the biggest, balls of them all!”
Thanks for the levity!
I’ve typed a dozen or more responses for this thread recently and never posted them, partly because my thoughts weren’t original and had already been said, but mostly because I hate the taste of my foot.
At any given point in time everybody is dealing with some kind of problem (including me) which we should think about before hitting that little “save” button at the bottom. If anyone wants some extra frustration I have plenty and I’m more than happy to share- somehow I don’t think I’ll get any offers on that deal.
Phil
I’ll trade whatever problems you’re having with mine (a 13-year old son who thinks believes he knows everything). :person_facepalming:
Ok, here’s a light I’ll benchmark for comparison purposes.
With a brand new UCLp lens as the floor plate in my PVC “P” trap light box, and with the 4 Samsung 30Q cells fresh off my 8 bay Enova charger, I’m seeing a meter reading from the Meteor of 31,800. I have a multiplier of 0.345. So this shows 10,971 lumens out the front at start. As you can imagine, in direct drive this number is dropping fast right off the starting line and the head get’s pretty dang hot in a big hurry.
Meteor with FET driver, XP-L HI V6 2B emitters (this is not a typo, they were available for a short time)
4 30Q fresh off Enova
Meter reads 31,800 at start
10,971 lumens
I don’t know the current draw, but the 3000mAh cells pull down crazy fast. This is a fist sized light, really much smaller than you would think, those that have it can verify what I’m saying. In person, it’s just stupid intense, ridiculous to see so much light coming from such a small device. It’s easy to doubt my box’s numbers, but if you could see it in action, you’d believe.
Edit: Took this beamshot back in June when I modified the Meteor…
