Greener Gadgets Design Competition: What’s Your Favorite Gadget?

Core77 has partnered with Greener Gadgets again to produce a design competition aimed at generating outstanding design innovations for greener electronics. They published the top 50 for online voting, and then the Top 10 will be judged live Friday, February 27, at the Greener Gadgets Conference in New York City.

Click here to see the top 50 green gadgets.

There are several lighting products included in the competition, including Venetian blinds that collect and store solar energy, a flexible solar panel that folds up into a flashlight, a highly aesthetic new twist on the CFL, and a smart switch.

My favorite lighting gadget is Lightimus, a decorative luminaire shaped like an hourglass. One side contains a solar panel while the other contains LEDs. During the day, the panels soak up the sun, storing enough energy to light the LEDs for up to eight hours. At night, the user rotates the luminaire so the LED side is up, triggering a photoresistor (on the solar panel side) and turning the LEDs on for achieve nighttime illumination. The LED light fades gradually, passing time like an hourglass.

The most interesting product to me overall, however, is so elegant and useful you’ll smack yourself in the head wondering why somebody hasn’t thought of it before. It’s called the Sun Station, a line of public furniture made of concrete, teak wood and stainless steel and with a solar panel attached three meters above the ground to collect electric power so that the furniture’s users can charge and use electronics using renewable energy.

Craig DiLouie

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