LED

Smart lighting systems allow homeowners to control any bulb in their house, set timers, and dim lights—all from a single control panel. The systems aren’t perfect: They’re pricey, and setup often requires wiring fixtures, which also means professional installation. Philips’s Hue LED bulbs do away with physical networks. Each one has its own radio chip, allowing the bulbs to create a wireless network in mere minutes.

There will come a time when our homes are completely automated, just like in several horror movies in which a house slowly murders its unsuspecting occupant. The Insteon is a pretty good step towards that inevitable murder--it's the first LED lightbulb that you can control with a smartphone app.

Eventually, practically every conceivable pair of disparate technologies gets combined into a single package—cameras and cellphones, game consoles and e-readers, chocolate and peanut butter. The combination of speakers and lightbulbs seems like it would be one of the last ideas we'd see, but, well, the future is now. GiiNii’s on-the-nose-named AudioBulb brings these strange bedfellows together for the first time.

Nintendo's Mario has long been beloved by geeks and scientists everywhere, as evidenced by a fluorescent bacterial version (seizure warning!) and a Mario "multiverse" that acts as a better guide to parallel universes than "Lost." Now a Carnegie Mellon University student has concocted a playable pixel tribute on an 8x8 LED matrix.

The cool thing about economies of scale, and especially about cutting-edge gadgetry, is that generally the price goes down over time (remember the $500 iPhone?). But that may not be the case for ever-more-popular LED-backlit LCD TVs this year, or for LED light bulbs for that matter. Accompanying the surge of LED use in electronics, a shortage of light emitting diodes could put upward pressure on prices as device makers cut deals to get their hands on the essential little components.

The promise of OLED technology is that, unlike its inorganic counterpart, it can be used to create flexible and nearly transparent ultra-thin screens, opening up myriad possibilities for what we can do with displays and lighting.

As far as urban bike concepts go, the Pulse from Teague (the designers behind the original Xbox among other things) looks exciting both from a fashion standpoint and a practical one. Sleek, functional and with a frame that glows with an ethereal blue light -- what more could you want?

Rejoice, all ye haters of a fluorescent future. The same legislation that sparked widespread adoption of CFL lighting in favor of the comparatively inefficient incandescent bulb may have had an unexpected result: the first significant efficiency improvements in century-old incandescents in decades.

Many predicted extinction for Edison's light bulb after Congress passed an energy law two years ago which set a 2012 deadline for increased lighting efficiency standards. But a number of companies are rushing to bring the turn-of-the-century technology up to the tougher regulations.

I first mentioned Dale Wheat’s tinyCylon kit during a post regarding the “new” SN76477 complex sound generator IC. In case you missed it, tinyCylon is a small kit that creates 10 different LED flashing patterns with 5 red LEDs, an Atmel ATtiny13 microcontroller, and a 4.5VDC battery pack. In other words it’s an LED blinky PCB—easy to assemble and easy to operate.

Ambient technology is the current rage for presenting information in a unobtrusive and, sometimes, sublime manner. Information suited for an ambient format ranges from complex number-laden data streams to simple one- or two-digit numbers. The idea here is that you can glean the same information by simply looking at the color of a cube, rather than consulting a sensor's text output.

Bye-bye, NoDoz.

Ah, the alluring glow of the LED light. Whether you're looking to create a bit of romantic (albeit extremely geeky) ambiance, or you just want to have some extra emergency lighting around the house, a set of mini LED candles is a great thing to have. They also happen to be quick, easy, and cheap to make yourself. In this video, executive editor Mike Haney demonstrates how to do it.

Cost: $5,000
Time: 1 Week
Easy | | | | |
Hard