Paul Kedrosky Talks about LEDS
Exerpt..
(Business 2.0 Magazine) — Technology revolutions have touched every aspect of daily life, except one: light.
The two main methods by which we light our homes, offices, cars, and the like are fluorescent and incandescent technologies. The former hasn’t changed much in 50 years, and the latter hasn’t changed appreciably in more than a century.
It’s time to flip the switch. Bright and cost-effective technologies are arriving, and they’re finally beginning to supplant old lighting sources.
Most of these new lights are variants on light-emitting diodes, or LEDs. But these are not the LEDs of your youth – simple red or yellow lights that turn on and off. Instead they’re power-efficient, bright, small, and long-lasting, and can produce a spectrum of colors.
The market beyond cell phonesIn 2005 high-brightness LEDs were a $4 billion industry, one that until recently had been growing an average of 42 percent a year, thanks largely to cell phones. Phonemakers have been snapping up LEDs at a furious pace for years. Today that market is more or less saturated, with industry analysts expecting single-digit growth in 2006.
Solar Power gets even cooler!
Found this over on TreeHugger, who inturn found it on TheGreenGuy, who got the information from a factory tour of Sharp. What a lucky guy.
I can’t wait until we see a few more customers with The New Light so we can start outfitting our home with Solar and other forms of Green Energy. I heard the other day on CBC radio that the Government is giving back something like 46 cents per kilowatt hour that you inject back into the grid for the next 5 years for new Solar panel installs. This is alright though it usually takes 20 years to recoup the cost. I for one am hoping that with more and more people seeing the benefit to greener energy and getting away from our petrol controlled world that the purchasing power of the consumer on solar panels will increase, thus decreasing the price on units for the not so rich person such as myself 
Anyway, check out the cool Sharp LumiWall LED panels.
Imagine a conservatory roof that looks like shaded glass by day, but by evening is transformed into a patchwork quilt of gentle white LED lights. Well, it – Sharp’s LumiWall (far left) – is coming your way, and it’s powered entirely by thin-film solar panels inside the glass. So you could even use the stuff for glass in an off-grid geodisic dome in the middle of your garden. If that pushes your buttons.
The LumiWall glass was just one of the cool things I got to poke and prod at a trip to Sharp’s solar factory last Thursday. It’s up in Wrexham – home, surprise, surprise, to Wrexham lager – and churns out an incredible 2,4000 solar panels every day.
LED Tiles from Steuler Fliesen
Found this over at Gizmodo, which got it from TreeHugger, which originally found it from Trendir.
These lights are awesome. Whether you want to have a straight line effect for your backsplash, little lights on the steps up to your tub or otherwise LEDs are going to take over the future. These lights could also have other uses such as outdoor hot tubs, tent and trailer contraptions, and a plethora of other uses in wet areas that need lighting.
When designing your next tile project consider decorating with LED Tiles with luminous glass borders, the innovative tiles from Steuler Fliesen. Whether you use LED Tiles for indirect lighting, illuminating a back-splash, guide on steps or just as design elements, you can choose from single colored LED’s or slowly alternating colours. LED Tiles can be used on walls, floors, and even on ceiling. The straight luminous glass borders are supplied in 5.5 x 40 cm size, in blue, yellow and white, and are designed to match Steuler 30 x 40 cm and 40 x 70 cm tile mosaics. Steuler FliesenFor a more subtle statement or as guides use the single LED lights.
Incredible Student Design : LED Light Up Shelf
Found this over at techEBlog today… I think it’s really interesting, and I hope that someone hires this guy up to make cool lighting devices. If I had the capital, I’d hire him Props to .
Design student Chris Owens created “Illume” — “a shelf with pressure sensitive plates and embedded LEDs that light up objects that are placed on the shelf” — for his final project.
Flexgrid – Bendable LED Display
I found this over on TechEBlog. It seems that James Clar has developed this cool bendable LED Display. I must say, this could be really cool for the techno community, or just geeks in general who like to show off their nerd abilities at parties or other social gatherings.
If you guys at James Clar happen to be reading this (like google does), I’d love a free sample of this to play with and tell all my friends about. Cough Cough.
Embedded into a suit, this interactive display would allow for users to talk to the clothing, having it react in different ways depending on how you talked to it. This would give the clothing a ‘personality’ of its own.
Cool Proof of Concept – LED Pong Hat!
That’s right, it seems someone has actually made a LED Hat, capable of playing pong.
Pretty cool stuff. I found this over at lushprojects incase you were wondering…
This project is inspired by drunken chats during summer music festivals. A personal light-show to wear after dark. Overall more than 6 months from start to finish. No comment on whether this was time well spent.
Leah Buechley has done some great wearable electronics. Compared to her work I wanted to push the dot density up to do text and graphics as well as patterns. This meant using normal LED matrix displays which don’t integrate so well in fabric. My machine is industrial rather than pretty.
For the display I used 5×7 LED modules from HP. They were cheap on eBay!
New LED Streetlamps from Phillips
Found this news release over at cocolico today.. pretty neat..
however, I must agree with their point, why aren’t companies making self sustainable products. Something like this would be awesome to have some little solar panels on the top, so they charged during the day, and shine at night. This would create the ultimate environmental light. Could be used for pools, street lights, and all sorts of interesting ideas.
LEDs are taking our current luminaries by storm. They discretely hide in our office lamp, and have replaced our kitchen and bathroom light bulbs. But there’ve always been spotted inside homes; now, they stand out in public streetlights.
The LEDs of the Equinox Pedestrian Floodlight should last for approximately 50,000 hours, almost 6 years, and three times as long as lamps currently used in similar situations. Philips got an IF award for it, but insists on the need of its design as “a welcoming ambiance in the urban environment.”
LED Stair Illumination Project – Phase 1
TheNewLight has been working on a set of stair lights for it’s parent company Flewid Productions Incorporated, a local design and communications firm here in Ottawa.
Here are some photos from the first phase of the project. The stairs are currently in the process of being redone by some contractors, more photos will be published as the stairs are nearing more final completion. TheNewLight always likes to keep abreast of new ideas and keep the technology of LEDs influencing our daily lives. We hope you like the project, comments are open for posting.
The eventual goal is to add some light sensors so they turn off and on automatically, and maybe even some pressure sensors so they’ll follow you up and down possibly playing a tune along with it.. but that’s a ways away for now we work on completing this and making them look finished. Then we can work on the backend control and beautifying the control panel and everything. Stay tuned for updates.
* update * One of our roomates friends walked in and immediately exclaimed – “Whoa, Those are cool Lights!!”
|
The little black switch. |
Unfastened Lights |
|
Lights ON! |
Lights on – Another Angle |
|
Closeup of the light while on |
The control panel before putting the cover on. |
|
The cover fashioned out of plastic and two holes drilled into it. |
