Products + Technology

    Soon California will be banning most petroleum-based plastic packaging from being shipped with products into the state. Five other states have EPR or packaging laws. More information here and here. This will require alternatives to most plastic packaging and foams. I’ve begun covering some bio-based plastic alternatives. See here. In this context, meet [...]

  For a couple years, OLEDWorks has been developing and supplying cutting edge OLED tail lights to Audi. These tail lights go beyond indicating breaking. They also provide symbols alerting drivers behind the tail lights of accidents, construction, other road hazards, and personalization of the tail lights, by the owner. More information on the latest [...]

  One of the big trends at January Lightovation, reported by multiple sources, was lighted mirrors. While lighted mirrors go back to the days of linear fluorescent lamps, the variety, features, and popularity of LED lit mirrors is growing very fast. Decorative lighting manufacturers showing lighted mirrors at January Lightovation include Eurofase (image above), Oxygen, [...]

As someone who suffers with poor quality, rural, cellular internet at my home-office, I’m unusually aware of the limitations of cell service to deliver data services indoors. And for all of 5G’s touted speed, 5G signals don’t go through building walls well (especially mmWave 5G). A typical solution that I’m considering is mounting a cellular [...]

A few LED chip manufacturers have produced laser diodes for some time, including: Nichia, Ushio, and the Soraa Inc spin out SLD Laser that was later acquired by Kyocera and rebranded Kyocera SLD Laser. The most recent example is Luminus Devices. On January 30th, 2024, Luminus Devices announced the launch of green and blue laser [...]

  There are a several E Ink trends in the display industry that could have implications for lighting:  Smart Surfaces Sustainable Product Development and Environmental Impact Incorporation of signage into Smart Cities. Smart Surfaces Displays of the future will personalize, customize, and provide information on top of other surfaces, making surfaces “intelligent” (or at least [...]

  Coastal Source may be an unfamiliar brand to many people in the general lighting industry. LightNOW is pleased to be among the first lighting publications to get an inside look at their new products and to share the company’s story with our readers. Coastal Source is a unique outdoor lighting & audio speaker system [...]

SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet constellation now has over 9,000 communications satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO). The satellites form an enormous mesh network utilizing infrared lasers that share information across space, between satellites, known as inter-satellite laser communication. The inter-satellite system achieves a bandwidth of 42 petabytes (PB) per day, which equals 42 million gigabytes [...]

South Korean researchers have demonstrated a new approach to LiFi using a red, green, and blue (RGB) OLED array. The Pohang University of Science and Technology team utilized an organic photodiode (OPD) array as the receiver. Their study was published October 19, 2023, in the publication, Advanced Materials. The new approach to LiFi reduced interference [...]