My name is Pete Wehner, Melbourne Florida.
I am a retired Electronics Engineer with a long career in material science,
failure mode analysis, optical physics/displays, and application engineering for
a major aerospace company on the Space Coast. Their products are flying in
commercial aircraft around the world.
I am the designer/builder of the first generation spiral fluorescent Lil’Greenie underwater fish and shrimp
light. I built the prototype light a year ago in a quest to build a better/more
efficient light after using many commercial and self-built halogen and
fluorescent lights for over a 5 year period. This evolution over the last year has led to manufacturing this light in LED to give the light a less fragile state and eliminate bulb breakage and replacements.
Many of the commercial lights suffered from one or more major faults:
- They consumed too much battery power; at least 3 times more than the
LED Greenie
- They required immersion before turning on, or the bulb burned out;The bulb system was fragile
- They were difficult/clumsy to handle and deploy from a small boat; and hard
to store or transport
- They required heavy lead weights to sink
- They were tiring on the eyes with prolonged use
- They sometimes leaked water into the interior
- Too short and flimsy cords
The LED Greenie deep water contains between 51 LED's, 13 watts and is a 12 volt light. The shallow water LED Greenie has 33 lights, 8 watts, 12 volt light. Its light output is
equal to the light output of a household 75 & 60 watt incandescent light bulb.
Why a green light? The human eye is more sensitive to green light than any
other light color. Additionally, green light has less eye strain at night, while
most of your natural night vision is still preserved. This is due to using
mostly the green color light receptors of the human eye, while leaving the other
2 (red and blue) receptors nearly non stimulated. Finally, seawater itself is a
natural light blue color, but greenish tint is present due to suspended minerals
and biological material, mostly green algae.
The result is a sharp contrast for most of the fish, shrimp, and crabs
illuminated by green light, more so than by other color light.
The LED Greenie design takes advantage of the best materials currently
available, while being easy to use with minimal underwater weight. The
LED Greenie floats upright in the water, and this design characteristic allows
all of the light possible out of the housing to light up a circle approximately 20+ feet in diameter.
Enjoy the LED Greenie as much as I have. I carry 3 lights
and weights in a 5 gallon bucket when I go out to shrimp on my
boat.
Bridge dippers only need one light and a small 12 volt battery for a night of shrimping.
Email Pete/NiteOwl at ledgreenie AT CFL.RR.COM [remove spaces] or ledgreenie AT gmail.com, we did this with spaces here so the bots do not collect this email and send spam for the next 20 years.
Pete's cell phone is 321- FIVE-ZERO-SIX ---7948
