20 most recent innovations in lighting

LED Emits and Detects Light

Mon, 13 Feb 2017 00:00:00 Z

An innovative new LED able to both emit and detect light could open the door to contact-free phones powered by ambient light.

The team from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign created the LED from nanorods made up of three different kinds of semiconductor materials: one that emits and absorbs light, and two that control the electron flow. The LEDs can shift from absorbing light to detecting light three times faster than the standard LED refresh rate, which causes the display to appear as if it is always on, even as it performs different functions.

Reflective Camera Bag Improves Photography on the Go

Thu, 06 Oct 2016 00:00:00 Z

Many photographers carry their gear in a camera bag, and often bring along a reflector to help better illuminate their subjects. Now they can carry just one item that serves both purposes. Betabrand’s Flash Bag makes things easier. It is a messenger-style camera bag with built-in reflective panels for adding indirect light to your photos.

The bag has a large area of reflective foil under its flap. Just unhook the buckles and lift the flap for some extra light. It will bounce and concentrate light from the Sun, your flash, and any other lighting source.

Flashlight Adjusts Its Beam Automatically

Mon, 02 Nov 2015 00:00:00 Z

The Luxor 2 Adaptive Digital Focusing Flashlight will automatically adjust its beam based on where the light is being directed.

The flashlight is equipped with seven Cree LEDs controlled by proprietary circuitry and powered by a rechargeable 5000 mAh lithium-polymer battery with up to 65 hours of battery life. To achieve its adaptive focus, the Luxor 2 also features a 3-axis accelerometer able to detect the motion and orientation of the flashlight.

If the Luxor 2 is pointed at the ground, for example, the beam will widen for greater illumination, while pointing it at an object in the distance will cause the beam to narrow. And if the flashlight is set vertically on a surface, it will adjust its beam to illuminate the area like a lantern.

Laser Light Headphones Pulse To Music And Heartbeats

Thu, 29 Jan 2015 00:00:00 Z

The ‘glow headphones‘ from the self-named company, combine state-of the art sound technology with laser lights and an integrated heart rate sensor, to create a vivid and dynamic user experience. Enhancing the flexible, laser-driven corning fibrance material, the cords pulsates to the beat of either the tracks or the wearer’s cardiac pulse. This not only reflects the powerful expression of the listener’s music but also showcases and lets them stay in tune with their inner-fitness.

The product which is being funded via a kickstarter campaign, has ergonomically-designed earbuds that follow the natural contour of the ear in order to fit perfectly and securely, as well as comfortably and easily for everyday activities. The smart headphones feature a negative profile that recesses to provide comfort even when the wearer is laying down or sleeping. The lightweight device uses a intuitive five-way controller that governs the music, makes calls, reads texts, activates a phone’s camera and opens apps with ease.

Led Light Bulb That Extends Your Wifi

Thu, 08 Jan 2015 00:00:00 Z

It doesn’t matter how much money you spend on your wireless router or access point, you’re going to end up with a few dead zones. Unless you have a really tiny home, office or apartment, you’re probably going to need more than just one device to make sure you have access to the Internet whenever and wherever you have some “down time.”

You could throw up a bunch more access points, range extenders or wireless networks, or you could just screw in the new Boost LED light bulb from Sengled.

On the illumination side of things, you get 470 lumens of warm white LED light. On the Wi-Fi side of things, you get two network modes (client and access point), two antennas for maximum 300Mbps rate and the 802.11b/g/n standard at 2.4GHz.

Then, there’s the app. The Sengled app lets you add new bulbs, customize your connections and control any of the bulbs.

Cheaper LED Bulbs Due To Convection Cooling

Wed, 29 Oct 2014 00:00:00 Z

Cree has already gone a long way towards making incandescent light bulbs obsolete, by introducing its relatively normal-looking, inexpensive LED bulbs. Today, however, the company announced that those bulbs will soon be ... well, even more normal-looking and inexpensive, thanks to the elimination of the heat sink.

On the current generation of Cree LED bulbs, the heat sink takes the form of a sort of multi-finned collar that goes around the base of the bulb. This gives the bulb additional surface area, allowing it to better dissipate the heat that it generates while running.

The new bulbs, however, incorporate a convection-based technology that Cree calls 4Flow Filament Design. This incorporates slots both in the base of the bulb, and at the top. As heat generated by the bulb rises and exits out the slots on top, it continuously draws cooler ambient air in through the slots on the bottom. This eliminates the need for the heat sink, resulting in a cheaper-to-manufacture, lighter bulb.

Collapsible Flashlight

Thu, 31 Jul 2014 00:00:00 Z

"lil torch" by antonio serrano is a portable device that can be compressed into a small lamp or extended into an LED flashlight. Finding its origins in fire torches used for the olympic games, religious ceremonies, and other momentous occasions, the designer has translated the concept into a small, portable fixture rechargeable via micro USB.

Its tapering form has the ability to compress down to 42mm lamp. when users need to handle the light for more rigorous activities and direct its 70mm diameter glossed face towards a specific scene, its body expands to measure 163mm-long. made of rugged plastic, the shock-resistant and water-resistant gadget is available in black, green, and white.

Glow-In-The-Dark Bike

Thu, 20 Mar 2014 00:00:00 Z

As a cyclist, you're always only a blind spot away from being maimed or killed. As such, making yourself as visible as possible (especially at night) is your first line of defense against being reduced to a gelatinous smear in some automobile axle rod. Making your bike as bright and shiny as possible, then, is of tantamount importance, yet unfortunately, many of the accessories that make a bike more visible to drivers also make it more visible to thieves.

Enter Mission Bicycle. The San Francisco-based bicycle maker has just launched the Lumen, a bicycle that looks sleek and black during the daytime but lights up at night. The secret sauce is retro-reflective paint, just like the kind that illuminates the stripes on the highway when your headlights hit it. But painting a bike to be as reflective as a street sign wasn't easy. As it turns out, the process used to make street signs and line markings on the road isn't made for 3-D.

To make their vision of a sleek black bicycle that glows white at night a reality, Mission Bicycle turned to Halo Coatings to create an entirely new painting process to give the Lumen the same effect as retro-reflective paint on a stop sign. The coating contains hundreds of thousands of transparent spheres, which are applied with an electrostatic charge to bind them to the rims and frame. When light enters each sphere, it boomerangs right back to the source, just like a cat's eye.

The result is a bicycle that is dark charcoal, almost black, during the day, but at night, looks as white as the moon when hit by ambient light, at a distance of up to 1,000 feet. Even better? Since the process is invisible, it doesn't make your bike a target for thieves the way an expensive LED or electrical lighting solution would.

UV Light sanitizing cutting board system

Tue, 08 Oct 2013 00:00:00 Z

Your kitchen can be a dangerous place- and not just because of the sharp knives and hot stoves and ovens. We're talking about germs. Most cutting boards are full of them. Every time you cut something on your cutting board you make a tiny slice in the surface that is ripe for holding bacteria.

PureLiving purifying cutting board system takes care of that problem with a set of Ultraviolet-C lights on either side. Slip the folder-like cutting boards in and out and let the UV light kill 99 percent of viruses, bacteria, and germs without any chemicals in just 20 minutes. For further food safety, the cutting boards are each labeled for fish, meat, fruit, or vegetables to prevent cross contamination. Be food safe out there.

Revolutionary Revolights now available in Europe | road.cc

Fri, 17 May 2013 00:00:00 Z

The City Revolight v1.0 features twin LED rings attached to the wheel rim with lightweight alloy rings, controlled by a system of sensors and a fork-mounted magnet, and an integrated accelerometer to assess speed and direction so that the lights, in the case of the front wheel, only fire when they're in the forward facing position. The LEDs provide 35 lumens each.

The slim batteries, 350g per wheel, can be charged via USB ports. Battery life is a claimed 4-hours. The system is fully water resistant and apparently theft resistant as well, which is good to know here in London.

Changes since the Kickstarter campaign include support for deeper section rims, up to 40mm, and compliance with international electronics regulations. They’re designed for 700c rims and up to 37mm tyres and any style of brakes.

Started by Kent Frankovich and Adam Pettler in 2011, they’re entirely funded by Kickstarter supporters, which allows for crowd funding through the company’s website. We’re seeing a lot of cycling products, like Full Windsor, reach the market with the help of investors around the world pledging their support.

Seesaw lamp

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 00:00:00 Z

German designer Leoni Werle has created a bell-shaped lamp that can seesaw between upright and inclined.The solid oak base of the Pilu lamp is v-shaped so it can be stood vertical or rocked forward so the stem becomes angled.

A one-directional joint connects the bar to the the bell-shaped spun aluminium shade so it always points down regardless of the lamp's position.

Lumio, a cordless LED light disguised as a book

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 00:00:00 Z

Lumio is a multi-purpose modern lamp that can be used almost anywhere... You can transform Lumio into multiple shapes for many different functions. From your living room to the outdoors, Lumio is adaptable to your lighting needs as it changes throughout the day. The product is cordless and folds into a compact and lightweight book. You can easily take it with you wherever you go. It provides high output light equal to many large permanent light fixtures and lasts 8 hours on a full-charge. Super strong magnets are built into its cover making it easy to mount Lumio on metal surfaces in many different configurations.

New material gives LEDs a warm glow

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 00:00:00 Z

Having spent over a half-century living under the warm glow of incandescent light bulbs, it's understandable that consumers haven't been keen on adopting the cold bluish light emitted by energy-efficient CFL and LED bulbs. But researchers at the University of Georgia have developed a new single phosphor coating that finally lets LEDs produce that warm nostalgic glow we all know and love.

Past efforts to tweak the color of light emitted from a blue LED have involved coating it with a mixture of different phosphors to shift its hue towards the warmer end of the color spectrum. But as the LED heats and cools, its color can vary over time as the different chemicals respond to the temperature changes. So taking a slightly different approach, the University of Georgia researchers have managed to create a single phospor that does the same thing, by combining europium oxide, aluminum oxide, barium oxide, and graphite powders in a vacuum furnace heated to 2,642 degrees Fahrenheit.

The resulting material is able to produce a warm glow when encapsulated around a blue LED, but unfortunately it's not quite ready for primetime just yet. The current manufacturing process is complex and finicky, and the resulting LED bulbs are actually not quite as efficient as what's currently available in stores. But the research certainly has the potential to finally cast LEDs in a better light for consumers.

Fireflies inspire modification to LEDs that makes them 55 percent more efficient

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 00:00:00 Z

By mimicking the jagged structure of a lightning bug’s “lantern” in a layer on top of existing LEDs, or light-emitting diodes, a team of researchers in Belgium, France, and Canada increased the amount of light from the semiconductor device by up to 55 percent.

Much of the light produced by LEDs gets reflected back into the device due to large differences between how light travels through the LED materials compared to air. This reduces “drastically the efficiency of LEDs,” says Annick Bay, a doctoral student at the University of Namur in Belgium and first author on the studies. The bioluminescent light produced by a firefly faces a similar challenge when traveling out of the insect’s abdomen.

The authors examined the microscopic structure of the abdomen of a firefly found in Panama and discovered that the insect’s exoskeleton in this region of the body had jagged, misfit scales. Computer simulations and bench experiments confirmed that the sharp edges of these scales let out more light, the team reported in Optics Express.

In a second report, also in Optics Express, Bay and colleagues at the University of Sherbrooke in Canada describe how a layer of similarly jagged material that they added to a standard gallium-nitride LED increased the amount of light that shone from the device by up to 55 percent. Adding such a feature to existing LEDs could save energy, says Bay, because the craggy coating makes LEDs glow brighter.

A group of Korean researchers reported recently that nanostructures in the exoskeleton of another species of firefly act as an anti-reflective layer, which helps more light shine out of the insect’s lantern. The team built LEDs with unique lenses inspired by these nanostructures that transmitted 3 percent more light.

Unlike the nanostructure-inspired modifications, however, the jagged-scale modification can be made post-production on conventional LEDs. “One advantage of our technique is that it can be coated on nearly every commercially available LED,” says Bay.

Emergency flashlight accepts whatever batteries you've got

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 00:00:00 Z

After the disastrous earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan last year, local companies have been working hard to create products that will be useful in an emergency. Including big corporations like Panasonic, which has created a brilliant LED flashlight that will run on almost any battery you've got on hand.

AAA, AA, C, or D-sized batteries can all be accommodated at the same time, and while the flashlight's LED bulb won't be blinding when relying on a single AAA, it will still provide ample light to get around.

To keep the Any Battery Light cheap—just $24 when it goes on sale in January—the flashlight's lacking the requisite hardware to use the different-sized batteries all at the same time. Instead, a rotating power switch lets you choose which battery you want to use. But with every battery slot filled, Panasonic claims the flashlight will run for up to 86 hours straight, making it a must-have for any emergency kit.

GravityLight, a gravity powered LED light

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 00:00:00 Z

The GravityLight is an LED lamp that works by harnessing the gravitational force exerted on a weight hanging from the lamp. One lift of a 9 kg weight, which is formed by filling the fabric bag the light is delivered in with rocks or sand, generates enough power to provide 30 minutes of light with no need for rechargeable batteries or fuel, which means no running costs.

The unit has also been designed so that it can be used to power other devices, such as a radio, or recharge batteries, which can be connected to terminals on the front of the unit. The brightness of the GravityLight can also be adjusted based on the task at hand or to increase light running time.

The team hopes to get the cost to villagers of the GravityLight down to less than US$5, which would see them saving money after switching from kerosene lamps after a period of around three months.

DARK Coolfin

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 00:00:00 Z

Coolfin takes an ingenious approach to the problem of cooling for any LED spot, in which the temperature control determines the lifespan of the LED.

"This lamp is a piece of pure craftsmanship combined with beauty. A technical feature has become a fabulous object. Perfectly styled. The repetition of the cooling fins give shape to a unique, energy-friendly spot without losing sight of aesthetics."

Coolfin is available as a pendant lamp and as a recessed or surface-mounted ceiling lamp in round and square shape. The luxurious Coolfin comes into its own in stylish homes, executive offices and showrooms.

Wrappie lamp

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 00:00:00 Z

Wrappie is a lamp whose height can be freely adjusted thanks to a long cable wrapped around a ceramic tube. Materials used in the lamp have been used to the fullest – multi-functional cable supports the lamp, adjusts its height and, combined with noble ceramics, serves an aesthetic function by creating an interesting structure around the shade. Cable is in one of four colours: white, black, green and orange. Other colours will be available in the future.

The lamp is characterised by the frankness of the material used and a rough form, which are directly related to its function. It fits into various kinds of premises. Warm and subtle light would be perfect over the table, night table, in the living room or in the bathroom. It is also a good solution for bars .

“Wrappie is the result of my creative searches for a lamp, whose height could be easily adjusted” says Tomasz Pydo, the designer. “I have decided to completely subordinate its looks to the function and I was curious what would follow. At the beginning it looked more like a gadget from a spaceship then like a minimalist lamp. Very ofter the simplest ideas come at the latest”.

Scientists Create 230-Percent Efficient LED Bulbs

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 00:00:00 Z

Light bulbs have always required more electricity than they need to produce light because the energy conversion process—changing electricity to light—was inefficient. But an MIT research team has just shown that an LED can actually give off more light than what it consumes in electricity.

Incandescent bulbs are the poster child of inefficient energy conversion. The devices heated a filament with an electrical current which not only produced light, but a lot of waste heat as well. Fluorescent bulbs, CFL's, and even conventional LED's all generate the same waste heat to varying (albeit much smaller) degrees but none has ever reached 100-percent efficiency—a mark known as "unity efficiency."

The team from MIT posited that while the bulbs energy requirements decrease at an exponential rate (halving the voltage reduces the input power by a factor of four), the lumen output would decrease linearly (halve the voltage and the lumens drop by half as well). This means that at some point, the amount of lumens the bulb is emitting would be more than the amount of energy spent—essentially "free" light.

Granted, this point occurs only when using minuscule amounts of electricity to power incredibly dim bulbs. In their experiments, the team was able to generate 69 picowatts of light from just 30 picowatts of energy. They did so by harnessing waste heat, which is caused by vibrations in the bulb's atomic lattice, to compensate for the losses in electrical power. The device also reacts to ambient heat in the room to increase its efficiency and power the bulb.

This process cools the bulb slightly and could eventually be employed to manufacture "cold" bulbs that don't generate any heat, only light. And, since the same physical mechanism from these tiny bulbs can be applied to any LED, they likely will be. [Physics via Physorg]

Self-Adjusting Headlamp

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:00:00 Z

When you're trekking through the great outdoors in the middle of the night, you need your hands free for reading maps, clearing obstacles, and fighting off bears. So Petzl's new Nao headlamp makes all the brightness and focus adjustments for you.

Billed as one of the first intelligent headlamps, the Nao (pronounced now) features a set of LED lights—one with a wide beam and one with a spot—that are automatically controlled by a large light sensor located above the two. While you're hiking the reactive lighting system—as they call it—measures the ambient lighting and continually adjusts the beam for optimal visibility, and prolonged battery life.

So when you look down at a map, the headlamp's wide beam takes over as the LEDs are dimmed to as low as 7 lumens so they're only illuminating what you're focused on. And then when you look back up at the trail, the spot beam takes over, with the light increasing to a maximum brightness of 355 lumens so you can see off into the distance.

While the reactive lighting system is touted as being particularly beneficial when it comes to stretching out the headlamp's battery life, the rechargeable battery it uses ranges from just 4 hours and 40 minutes to up to 8 hours depending on how it's used.