LED + SSL

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 [...]

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has published the workshop presentations and materials from its sixth annual DOE Solid-State Lighting R&D Workshop in San Francisco, held February 3-5, 2009. A complete workshop report will be posted later in March. Click here for conference highlights. Click here to download the presentations.

Friend, colleague and fellow blogger Kevin Willmorth, principal of Lumenique, performed an interesting experiment recently to produce an LED PAR lamp with a light pattern somewhere between an R20 spot and a PAR20 flood, with an R20 flood’s light output. He produced his own LED lamp using spare parts from a halogen PAR20, CFL, 4W [...]

Jason Bruges Studio, a UK-based studio producing interactive light sculpture and environments, was commissioned to create a lighting art feature for a 10-story atrium in Allen & Overy’s new headquarters at 1 Bishop’s Square, London. The Studio produced an eight-story 3D chandelier comprised entirely of individually addressable LED light globes developed with manufacturer Ledon, controlled [...]

DOE’s main solid-state lighting proponent, Jim Brodrick, recently reported in from the DOE SSL workshop, just held in San Francisco, for those who couldn’t make it with one of his best letters (“Postings: From the Desk of Jim Brodrick”) to date. The conference presentations, by the way, should be published on the DOE SSL website [...]

Studies show that commercial buildings produce about half of greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change—making these buildings the top emitter of human-caused greenhouse gases, ahead of cars and trucks—while consuming nearly three-fourths of electricity produced at power plants. The Commercial Buildings Initiative (CBI) is a public-private partnership formed to achieve an ambitious goal: By [...]

Material Beliefs has designed a prototype of a lampshade that functions similarly to a Venus Flytrap–capturing flies and turning them into energy. When the floor lamp is turned on, flies and moths become naturally attracted to the light, entering through holes in the lampshade but unable to then escape. Over time, the insects die and [...]

Inspired by photosynthesis in plants, Studio Loop.ph Ltd. set out to build architectural structures with energy-harvesting canopies that absorb solar energy during the day and emit light at night. “A modular photovoltaic membrane was prototyped for the installation that can be clad to our geotextile architecture to provide both shelter and shade from the sun [...]

One possible future wireless technology is interesting not because of its potential for lighting control, but its potential to use visible white light as a communication medium for control of computers, phones and appliances. In October 2008, Boston University’s College of Engineering announced that it had received a National Science Foundation grant to develop wireless [...]