Philips LED Technology
LED technology is often heralded as the future of lighting - and for good reason. LEDs are easy to produce, generate very little heat, and are super energy efficient, using only one-eighth of the power of traditional bulbs and less than half that of fluorescent lights. Now our favorite avant-electronics company, Philips, has come out with some stunning new designs for interactive LED lightbulbs.
Inspired by the thought “Why couldn’t changing a room’s ambience be as simple as switching on the TV?’” Philips has come up with a variety of ways to adjust the color, brightness and tone of a bulb with simple, intuitive hand gestures, such as touching or twisting. The “Simplicty” LED bulbs are so nicely designed (with a wide variety of interesting shapes to choose from) that it eliminates the need for any sort of lamp covering.
These LED bulb designs are part of the larger Philips Sense & Simplicty design project, which the company haas been working on for the past year to demonstrate the power of simplicity-led design in driving innovation.
Originaly from Inhabitat.
Photos from ShinyShiny.
The ultimate diggbait: Digg the Physical
The Digg button is a very simple beginner electronics that teaches how to solder and program microcontroller. Once made, this basic electronic project mimics the popular Digg.com website: each time you push the button, the button flashes “Dug” and increments the counter up to 999 “diggs”. The project is completely open source, and documented here including parts list, schematics and code. For those who don’t want to try to chase down the electronic components, we have a full kit ready to go in the Adafruit webshop.
Digg.com is a site that allows people all over the globe to discuss and vote on (”digg”) stories. The most popular and talked about stories rise to the top of the page where millions of viewers will see them. Likewise, this button is a simple project that we hope the collective power of Digg will use as a basis for new hacks, mods and projects.
The Digg kit was created when Phillip Torrone (Makezine.com), Kevin Rose (Digg.com) and Ladyada met up for a drink. They thought it might be interesting to inspire the next generation of technologists and hobbyists who frequent Digg with a fun and easy project that not only teaches but is a lot of fun.
project page
Ocean Breeze Motion Dolphin
Ocean Breeze is an undulating segmented worm-like light that’s shaped like a dolphin, is lit up with blue LEDs, and makes strange undersea noises complete with dolphin squeaks. Yes, it actually moves and flaps its tail up and down like a dolphin. Or something.
It’s marketed as some sort of romantic talisman, but we wouldn’t fire this baby up the next time Flipper gets a backache. It just looks weird, and it sounds like a faucet’s leaking in the bathroom next door. We’ve heard similar sound efffects in morgue scenes. Don’t miss the video of this $79 wave motion dolphin in action. You may be as unimpressed as we are. – Charlie White
Take a look at project page…
via Gizmodo and Paralighting
Yelo Chair, Dream Body Treatments
Yelo is an upscale New York spa that offers body treatments designed to heal and alleviate specific conditions or ailments so that you can emerge balanced and energized. The concept airs on the techie side because the treatment takes place in a Yelocab, a “patented treatment cabin” and on a YeloChair, a custom-designed luxury chair that’s thickly-cushioned and surrounded by LED lights and special angle settings. The chair reclines deeply to keep your legs elevated above your heart, so that your pulse slows down. Apparently, this prompts a feeling of weightlessness, which encourages full relaxation and sleep within minutes. Inside the YeloCab you get purified air, chromatherapy, aromatherapy, a diverse music selection and of course the technologically-advanced, luxurious YeloChair to help you get your nap on.
Read more about Yelo Chair at Geeksugar
Poker Dome Challenge
Show Partners, the company responsible for engineering and operations in collaboration with its lighting vendor, CYM Lighting, of Palm Springs, CA, chose to use Element Labs’ Versa TUBEs. Both Artistic Director Chris Runnells and Assistant Artistic Director Justin Garrone thought that the Versa TUBES would work well as one of the main design elements of the new shows set. They then passed the idea on to scenic designer Tim Saunders of Broadcast Design International, who incorporated the TUBEs into the design concept.
Over 500 Versa® TUBEs are built in a semicircular array in 13 bays with the TUBEs stacked horizontally. “Twelve of the bays work together as one large video wall,” Garrone explains. “It serves as a background during play to help anchor each round using color as well as texture to heighten the dramatic intensity of game play.”
For example, when a player chooses to bet all their money, they are said to have gone ‘All In.’ “When that happens, we’ve designed red textured moving content for the wall that swoops into the wall to punctuate the tension of that moment,” Garrone explains. “The thirteenth bay stands alone, so we use it to backlight a large Mansion logoed column in the upstage right center.” read more at project page
Field under:game led lighting effect lighting scenography poker poker dome poker table scenography
Modular Extensible Reconfigurable Dress
Day-for-Night, an hommage to Paco Rabanne as well as a celebration of the beauty of electronics, is a modular, reconfigurable dress comprised of 444 white circuit boards (although the number changes as the dress can get longer or shorter). Each tile is designed in such a way as to accommodate a solar cell, a RGB LED, or a photocell, and jumper connectors (in the form of 0 Ohm resistors). A control board provides power, communicates with the tiles, and links to a computer via RF. The dress is completely modular both in terms of software and hardware.
A USB board provides virtual serial port to Windows, Macs and Linux while an on board microcontroller relays data to and from the dress via a 2.4 GHz RF link. This allows for programmability (and status monitoring) from the computer side in the form of simple commands and responses via the virtual serial port. Currently a Max program has been developed that provides a graphical user interface for programming the tiles, while a Flash and Java program are part of future developments.
project page
Asian Games Ceremony LED Display
Element Labs, Inc., an industry leader in LED video technology, was contracted by Doha Asian Games Organising Committee (DAGOC) to created the largest custom LED screen ever used for a live event. Especially designed for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 15th Asian Games in Doha, Qatar, the exterior Versa® RAY screen made its debut during the Opening Ceremony on December 1, 2006 at Khalifa Stadium.
The massive size of the display—covering over 4,500 square meters, or 45,000 square feet—allowed it to be used in ways previously unachievable. It was both an integral element of the show on the field as well as an informative display during the Parade of Athletes. Hours of rich, beautiful content were created specifically for the Ceremonies to dazzle the audience and make the event unlike anything seen before.
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