Products + Technology

  Reclaimed Blinds Illuminate Circular Design Potential Designer Reza Raeisifar has transformed discarded aluminum Venetian blinds into a modular family of luminaires that reframes an everyday shading material as a tool for directing, diffusing and sculpting artificial light. The Keker Collection uses reclaimed blind slats—components conventionally intended to block or regulate daylight—to create cylindrical lighting [...]

  Loxone is positioning its smart home and building platform as an integrated automation environment in which lighting operates alongside shading, HVAC, energy management, access control, security and audio—not as a standalone connected-lighting application. The company’s central proposition is a building that anticipates occupant needs and manages routine functions automatically through one coordinated system. For [...]

  The national controversy surrounding Flock Safety’s automated license plate recognition (ALPR) cameras is reshaping the conversation about public-safety technology. It is no longer limited to whether police should deploy roadside cameras. The larger question is how ordinary municipal infrastructure—particularly streetlights—can become part of an always-connected vehicle surveillance network. That issue is directly relevant to [...]

  Lighting is not a peripheral consideration in robotic machine vision—it is a core determinant of inspection accuracy, object-recognition reliability and production uptime. Camera performance and vision-algorithm results depend fundamentally on the quality, uniformity and controllability of illumination. Machine vision gives industrial robots the ability to perceive their operating environment, identify parts and features, and [...]

  Last week, I published a story on Matter expanding from residential smart homes to commercial and industrial applications. The following is a large-scale demonstration of applying Matter-over-Thread to a commercial environment. Silicon Labs has demonstrated a 200-node Matter-over-Thread validation network, providing a significant proof point for the use of Matter in commercial lighting, building [...]

  iGuzzini has expanded its recessed lighting portfolio with Laser Evo, a highly configurable downlight system that’s built on visual-comfort principles. Designed for retail, hospitality and residential applications, Laser Evo combines compact form factors, architectural integration, optical flexibility and connected-control options in a platform offering more than one million potential configurations. The product family follows [...]

  Beijing Betavolt New Energy Technology has announced a compact nuclear coin-sized battery, the BV100, capable of delivering continuous power for up to 50 years without recharging or maintenance, positioning the technology as a potential disruptor in long-duration energy supply for low-power electronics and remote applications. The device, often described as a “nuclear microbattery,” leverages [...]

  LEDVANCE has received a 2026 German Innovation Award for Elix, an AI-powered companion lighting robot that combines adaptive illumination, robotics and interactive controls. The product won the Excellence in Business-to-Consumer Lighting category at the May awards ceremony in Berlin, following its public debut at Lichtwoche Sauerland and appearance at Light + Building 2026. Elix [...]

  At its inaugural Unify conference in Austin, the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) made a clear strategic statement: it is no longer just a smart home standards body. While Matter remains the Alliance’s flagship technology, the event made plain that the organization is actively broadening its focus to commercial buildings, industrial IoT, energy management, cybersecurity, [...]