[QUESTION] High lumen / lux for daylight visibility

[jrecasens]

I recently acquired a BlinkStick Square and a ThingM Blink(1), and they've been performing excellently with the busylight package. However, I've encountered an issue: neither device is visible in direct sunlight during the day.

Does anyone have suggestions for a solution or an alternative product that could address this visibility issue in daylight?

Thanks, Javier

[JnyJny]

Hi Javier, unfortunately I don't have any hard data about device luminosity. Looking at all the supported devices on hand, they all have some sort of translucent diffuser to smooth out LED source hot spots, decreasing their output but producing a more even lighting effect. Removing the diffuser from my BlinkStick Square reveals eight of the large multi-color LEDs which are pretty harsh when lit but should be more visible in direct daylight. Some of the lights have dim/normal settings (BlyncLight family) but still only have 255 intensity steps per color channel (same as all the other lights). The fit-StatUSB light is the smallest light I am aware of and has the clearest diffuser, but it only has one small LED.

Lights with easily removable diffusers:

• BusyLight
• BusyLight Plus
• BlinkStick Square

You could reach out to the BlinkStick or ThingM folks to see if they have any thoughts about daylight visible devices (@todbot)

You might also consider LED products found at Ada Fruit or Spark Fun but you'll likely need to be comfortable with a little soldering and firmware style programming to get a device similar to the commercial examples.

Sorry I don't have better options for you :( I'm curious to see where your quest takes you.

[jrecasens]

Thank you for the swift response, @JnyJny . I removed the translucent diffuser from both the BlinkStick and Blink(1), but unfortunately, it didn't improve visibility in direct sunlight from 5-7 meters away. I also experimented with theTri-Color USB Controlled Tower Light from Adafruit, which I modified by removing the translucent diffuser. It almost met the requirements, but not enough.

Considering the limitations of USB 2.0, the Adafruit tower light has for each color, 6 leds. If leds from a specific color are turned on (red, yellow or green) they can produce a maximum of 0.3W with an approximate luminosity of 30 lumens in total per color. While connecting several units in parallel could enhance the luminosity, it would also enlarge the system and potentially increase the failure rate.

I believe the optimal solution might be to utilize an indicator light with its own power source. I've come across the K50 programmable multicolor LED indicator light from Banner Engineering, which operates with an independent power source and employs a PICK-IQ (Modbus RTU) interface. Upon reviewing the documentation, it appears to utilize an RS-485 serial connection:

Although I'm not an expert, I think I could manage to program it using pyserial with commands like:

cmd = bytes.fromhex('<REGISTER COMMANDS?>')
status = serial_port.write(cmd)

I will share my findings after I buy a K50, I would appreciate any guidance!

EDIT: I found the documentation and luminocity is not that promising for the Banner K50 as the Default Indicator Characteristics only provides: Green - 23 lumen, Red - 7.2 lumen, Yellow - 18 lumen

[JnyJny]

Now I am curious about your application and design constraints! I took a quick look at the K50 family of products, and I'm encouraged by the beacon version. While not being the top-performer WRT lumens per color, I like that the light is upward firing into a reflector which enhances directionality. If your power envelope is forgiving enough, that may be a "close enough" solution. Looking at more of the Banner Engineering products, the K90 daylight series lights are interesting but seem to lack the programmability of the K50 series.

I'm sorry I haven't been very helpful, but it is very interesting to hear about the types of problems people are trying to solve with BusyLight.