My journey with CPF started as a professional interest 2003-2004. I was working for a manufacturer backlighting a static graphics display with failure-prone florescent lights whose heat would literally melt the solder off of other electronics in the same housing. I happened across CPF researching the then kind-of-new concept of LED backlighting. Never did implement a LED backlight for that product and left the company in late 2004, but CPF has remained.
The early days were indeed exciting as the original power LED - the Lumileds Luxeon - had been released to the world at multiple
tens of dollars a pop. Previously, LED flashlights had required showerhead arrangements with their 3mm and 5mm LEDs to spit out the ~30 lumens that the Luxeon managed. Early on, you had to DIY it, haggle with a modder, or (usually) pre-order something from one of the small outfits that was messing with these exotic beasts. The pinnacle of those days for me was the Cree XR-E, which reliably put out >100 lumens on a single die without the kind of borderline-dangerous currents that Luxeons required. I still have - and marvel - at one of the short-run Alephs I bought from the 'Shoppe that's ~140 lumens on a single 123A - it's been outclassed for many years but still seems like a lot of light for something so small.
Insofar as the lack of enthusiasm, the
technology adoption lifecycle is at work here, more concisely explained by the
adoption curve. I started somewhere between the
Innnovator and
Early-Adopters phase when the technology was new and it took some effort to use it. Community knowledge was the way to go then - it was difficult-at-best to learn this stuff via more conventional sources.
I'd guesstimate that sometime in the vicinity of 2007 the early majority phase was underway. That's when you started seeing LED flashlights eating into the market share of more staid, established players. Companies like Ray-O-Vac adapted to the onslaught by releasing LED flashlights. Other companies like Maglite had to lose a lot of shelf space before being forced into innovation. Trailing this trend by about 2 years was LED lighting for general illumination (read: light bulbs). The not-so-loved CFL started migrating to the discount section of any lighting section while LED bulbs started taking over the more prime shelf space.
Seems like about 5 years ago that we entered the late majority phase. Incandescent flashlights are legitimately hard to find outside of specialty retailers and closeout shelves. I can't recall the last time I saw an incandescent mag-lite. Even the local Bass Pro Shops seems to no longer stock high-margin incandescent flashlights like the Surefire G2 / 6P.
So ... the lost off excitement seems to come with the
commodotization of the technology. When you can buy it off of store shelves from every corner store, it's difficult to be as excited about the pedestrian reality of it as opposed to when it was an exotic possibility to anticipate and maybe - just maybe - experience in person someday.
Coincident with the adoption curve, the evolution of the technology seems to have reached an inflection point several years ago. First it was efficiency parity with inandescents at ~30 lumens per watt. Then it was a series of performance benchmarks - 50, 75, 100, 150, 200 lumens per watt in the lab ... all of which took some time to make it to production parts. Then it was more real-world performance benchmarks (85C binning as opposed to the laughable 35C). Then it was thermal ruggedness. But now that many of these achievements have been made in the lab and - mostly - made it to production pieces the pace of change has slowed. Theoretical maximum efficiency of any electrical lighting source is something like 300 lumens per watt; I suspect that pinnacle will never be reached outside of the lab and 250 lumens/watt
wall-plug efficiency is apt to be the unicorn the industry gets close to but never realizes. More important will likely be thermal ruggedness and consistent output over a wide temperature range. And cost - always cost - since LED is still a tad more expensive than its forerunners.
