Jonathan Clark

Karma: 1

Jonathan Clark 22 Jul 2020 21:09 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Raemon’s comment on: Could someone please start a bright home lighting company?
yes! We published Abuse on DOS, Mac, and Linux (Redhat). When the company shutdown we released the code to the public domain so you can find it on many other platforms today including Windows or directly inside a browser ( https://playclassic.games/games/run-and-gun-dos-games-online/play-abuse-online/ ), and on iPhone/Android—though I find it hard to play on a mobile phone :)

Jonathan Clark 21 Jul 2020 18:42 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Blake’s comment on: Could someone please start a bright home lighting company?
The guy in the video is using inaccurate vocabulary, there are no fresnel lenses in a flat panel LCD/TV. This page shows the typical layers you’ll find in a modern display:
https://pid.samsungdisplay.com/en/learning-center/blog/lcd-structure
In the video when he shows a film, you can tell it is bending light not focusing it—so it is likely a fresnel prism sheet that he is holding (not a fresnel lens as he states).
You can use a fresnel lens to make a light source appear to be further away as he suggest, but that requires more depth as the light source needs to be at the focal point of the lens. The other problem is that you can only have 1 LED at the focal point for the whole sheet, so you won’t get that much light coming out even if you use a high powered LED.
You are likely to get better results buying a $50 LED light panel on Amazon compared to trying to recycle parts from an old LCD (though perhaps not as much fun). LED sources for LCDs often have poor CRI so the light quality you’ll get from this approach is likely to be bad in person. I suggest searching for 90+ CRI with CCT >6000K LED Light panels.

Jonathan Clark 21 Jul 2020 18:20 UTC
1 point
in reply to: lincolnquirk’s comment on: Could someone please start a bright home lighting company?
regarding crack.com, funny you connected the dots! I was a co-founder of that company which made the video game “Abuse” back in the 90s. The story behind the name… originally we called the company Chameleon Software but found someone else was using that name and had to change it. At the time the internet was just starting out and we thought it would be cool to use a domain name to name the company. We went through the dictionary and decided to call it “Crack Dot Com”, in those days we spelled out the whole thing. This is in part because at the time, there was a popular model for selling games called “Crack ware” because the first one is free, you get addicted and want to buy more :) We aspired to make addictive games and it was a bit edgy so I think it served us well. We didn’t realize it then, but crack was one of the top 100 search terms on the internet because people were looking for software cracks so we got some free traffic (though ended up getting a lot of piracy!!) haha. My second company, which turned into Thinstall (now Vmware ThinApp) started out looking at how to stop software piracy by making desktop software have a small SAS component that was required.
Anyway, I wanted to get back to my computer graphics roots so I started Innerscene to research how to make 3D displays that look like windows (VR without a headset). Turned out to be a much harder problem that I expected but we have something really amazing now.

Jonathan Clark 21 Jul 2020 18:10 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Lukas Finnveden’s comment on: Could someone please start a bright home lighting company?
As a rough guide, you can install 5-6 Innerscene A7 units in a project for the same price as one Coelux LC45 when you consider shipping and install cost.
Although understandably frustrating, we don’t have public pricing for a few reasons.
1. Our product is generally integrated into a construction project where the purchasing process can be more complex. In such a project, you might have a General Contractor who subcontracts out the electrical work to an electrician who purchases from a electrical distributor—and each party has a mark-up they charge for the value they are providing to the price to an end-user can vary. In addition, for larger projects there can be lighting designer or lighting sales agency involved that help with design, code compliance issues, etc. Often these guys will work for free but charge a mark-up on the products they specify. For these, reasons you find most companies that sell lighting into commercial or larger residential projects don’t have public pricing. Products you find at home depot or on amazon are usually commodity products where everyone has pretty much the same thing and companies compete mainly on price.
2. We work with partners who are allowed to set their own prices above our wholesale price to them. The amount of markup they charge will depend on how much of the above legwork mentioned above they take on, the size of the project, liability/warranty/service they take for the products they provide, etc. Depending on which country you are in, there could be import duties, shipping charges, etc. That being said, we do sell directly to customers for most of the world and happy to provide a quick price by email using info@innerscene.com
3. As we work on optimizing our products for higher volume and less expensive parts, we pass on cost savings to our customers—so our prices continue to come down year by year—for example A7 is >30% more affordable compared with A6 and it’s a better product. However, many places on the internet are permanent and we risk of people seeing a price from 3 years ago and not looking any further because it’s out of their budget.