Ahead of its time...Th

This is the only surviving prototype of a LED based lighting system I designed when I was 15.

This particular item, I found in my room. It was the first prototype of a LED based household lighting system I designed aged 15, for the BT Young Scientist (2008). It sucked in 2 watts of electricity (a later one only sucked up 1.5W) and lit a room better than the previous 100W incandescent light. The only downside was I had to use a diffuser over it as the light was rather harsh.

The exact same design idea (transformer in bulb) as my alpha model is now being touted by Phillips and such. My second model used one central transformer that would provide 1.5W to each light-unit. The light-units would not have to be replaced, and the only part that heated up was the resistors. Correct heatsinking would mean you would never have to replace a damn lightbulb, ever.

EDIT (04/01/2014):
It would appear my insistence on separating the transformer and bulb in my final design is somewhat vindicated - during a conversation on twitter, it was learned that certain models which contain the transformer/driver within the bulb assembly do not have the ability to correctly heatsink the transformer/driver.

As anyone with a laptop knows, transformers release a LOT of heat. The laptop charger brick you have, that doubtlessly overheats regularly, is a transformer. If they are not able to disperse heat well, they have a peculiar habit of failing - sometimes catastrophically with sparks and popping noises.

The idea with the external transformer would be that on the lighting branch of your mains circuit in your home, you would install an inline AC/DC transformer to supply the light-sockets with DC current at a safe/low voltage. I would suggest using 12V and using high powered LED clusters with a diffuser/lens assembly to give the "warm glow" appearance of an incandescant light, as opposed to the harsh glare of unfiltered ultra-bright white light.

The prototype model pictured used 6VDC to drive that small cluster, which I now use for close up photography on occasion.