LED

You can pack an entire kitchen and garage into your car for a camping trip, but the one thing you forgot will cripple you the entire time. And that's one of the reasons why multifunctional gear is such a godsend to campers. One of the latest multifunctional camping tools, the Bosavi headlamp, gives you a several different types of lighting in one versatile package.  Read More

London has got quite a summer of celebrations coming up, this week sees the Queen's Jubilee, and it's not long until the London 2012 Olympics. As such there are countless festivities planned across the city … and even the historic landmarks are getting in on the act. Tower Bridge has been kitted out with a new state-of-the-art lighting system to help mark the occasions.  Read More

The LED-meisters at macetech LLC seized upon this week's Maker Faire to unveil an eye-catching pair of prototype "LED matrix shades" that light up in a variety of dynamic patterns. When the shades hit the market in six to eight weeks, users will be able to program patterns of their own, thanks to the Arduino-compatible electronics from which they're made. macetech's Garrett Mace gave Gizmag an exclusive insight into the development of the shades, which look like they've fallen through a portal from some future urban dystopia.  Read More

Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, whose body of work is mostly based on light installations, last week presented a small solar powered light during the World Economic Forum in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Olafur collaborated with engineer Frederik Ottesen to create Little Sun, which they hope can help bring indoor lighting to those people who lack access in developing countries.  Read More

Designed by Mieke Meijer, this lamp, simply called Balance, is a wooden LED floor or table lamp that only illuminates when perfectly balanced.  Read More

If you were using a smartphone projector to shine an image onto an uneven surface, or onto a flat surface but at a diagonal angle, parts of the image would end up out of focus ... unless, that is, your phone featured a new prototype LED projector developed by Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering. Inspired by the compound eyes of insects, the device can reportedly display crisp, bright, distortion-free visuals onto irregular surfaces, and at non-perpendicular angles. Additionally, users can manipulate that display by reaching in and touching the projection surface.  Read More

Following Gizmag's coverage of GE Lighting's 27 W Energy Smart and Switch Lighting's 100 W-replacement LED light bulbs, Osram Sylvania has been in touch to tell us about its 100 W-replacement LED light bulb, joining its Sylvania Ultra series: a 20 W, 1600 lumen light bulb with a warm, "incandescenty" color appearance of 2700 K. With Philips also to release a 100-W equivalent this means the big three manufacturers of light sources are joining Switch Lighting in offering high-output LED light bulbs for the home, but all things considered, Osram Sylvania's may prove the pick of the bunch.  Read More

GE Lighting has announced that it is getting in on the 100 W-equivalent LED replacement act. The 27 W Energy Smart LED bulb joins its range of incandescent bulb replacements that already includes 40 W and 60 W equivalents. And like an incandescent bulb, GE claims its LED bulb emits light evenly in all directions. But how does the 100 W equivalent stack up performance-wise?  Read More

Grid-powered street lighting is something that many of us take for granted, but there are parts of the world where electricity is a scarce resource and when the sun goes down, local pedestrian traffic in areas where public lighting is not abundant can all-but cease due to safety concerns. In searching for an inexpensive off-grid solution for places like the Colombian city of Cartagena, designer Alberto Vasquez looked to the wind for help. His Flow concept makes use of readily-available bamboo for the construction of a vertical wind turbine in a similar vein to the Power Flowers concept, but with LED light modules at the end of each blade. As the wind catches the blades, the LEDs light up the walkway beneath.  Read More