A timely post for Halloween. Thanks to CrazietGadgets for flagging this one.Kick your Halloween into the retro future with this 8 Bit LED Jack-o-Lantern. Safer and much cooler looking than setting a blazing gourd on your front porch, this 11" x 9.25" Halloween decoration uses LED lights to simulate a flickering fire. Since it's both 8-bit and has LED's, it's old and new school all at once.It would cost you $17.99 online dollars to buy.
DevCore from Jisu Choi on Vimeo.
Thanks to BoingBoing for this one:My pals Tod Kurt and Mike Kuniavsky are the proprietors of ThingM, a company that makes nifty programmable LEDs and other smart electronic components.
A bit of fun - check out the "Firewinder", the LED Windlight. Courtesy of ThinkGeek, it is a wind-powered LED lighting effect where "breezes provide cool light effects".
A light-hearted diversion for a Friday afternoon. Have a look at this LED-powered Ping-Pong Ball Clock.The clock looks a lot like the ones you might see on the outside of a bank, but uses ping-pong balls as the diffusers on top of a 15×7 matrix of LEDs. The LEDs are pressed into a piece of pegboard, and the display is run by an ATmega168 and a Maxim DS3232 real-time clock, connected in a circuit consisting mostly of transistors and wires. When turned off, the whole thing looks rather unassuming - like a bunch of ping-pong balls glued to a piece of wood. Oh yeah, that's what it is.For more fun with ping pong balls and LEDs, check out these two videos:
Just so ever slightly creepy, maybe - but a bit of fun to highlight on a Friday. Yes, it's an LED Chameleon. Or Chameleon LED..."How does Huey do it? Well, he lights the surface underneath him with two hidden white LEDs then uses a sophisticated optical sensor to determine the correct colour. He then matches this colour by adjusting the shade of numerous multi-color LED's imbedded in his body. Huey is truly a toy of the future. Five years ago the colour sensing technology he uses was too expensive for consumer products and was featured mainly in scientific measuring devices. Now you can leverage this cool tech for your own frivolous pleasure and ThinkGeek is proud to assist you in your noble quest."
This one caught my eye recently. And if the real thing caught your eye, you would be blinded. An LED Bazooka torch, comprising 500 5mm super-bright white LEDs... Just 50 Watt power consumption at full power!
Errm. Not sure about this one...With 430 LEDs the Luxeed is capable of individually lighting each key in your choice of color. What's more it can do some amazing tricks like an animated rainbow across all the keys, or make each key light when you press it.Apparently, the U5 model requires no driver software and works with any OS. All the controls for setting the color of keys, modes and storing key presets are part of the hardware.
Technabob flags that Philips has made some interesting prototype fixtures using their new Lumiblade OLED technology.
One for your car, maybe - they jumped out at me on Sunday, browsing a website called Craziestgadgets.com. "Ingenious, high-intensity LEDs on each clamp automatically light up when you squeeze open the jaws -- illuminating dark engine bays and poorly marked battery terminals," it writes.
I was more than a bit surprised when I actually got some results.
See also Electronics Weekly's roundup of content related to LEDs, with a special focus on both white LEDs and coloured LEDs, and Lighting LEDs.
* White LEDs
* Coloured LEDs
* LED Lighting (1)
* LED Lighting (2)
* LEDs General
* LED optics
* OLEDs
* 50 year history of the LED
Paul Ward
As Opto Product Manager at Farnell, Paul is overseeing the company's involvement in the rapidly evolving and high profile LED lighting market sector.
As well as ensuring that Farnell offers the latest technologies and products related to solid state lighting, Paul is also responsible for ensuring that the resources are in place to make it easier for design engineers to specify and design-in LED solutions for their applications.
Educated in Production Engineering and Design at Sheffield Hallam University, Paul has worked in various engineering, training and marketing roles for companies including C&K switches, ITT Cannon, Cherry and LED specialist Chicago Miniature Lighting.
Away from the world of LEDs, Paul is a Founder of the charity RTTW, Photographer and Harley Davidson rider; he has ridden and snapped across Europe, New Zealand and the USA on his chrome hog!
Gordon Routledge
Gordon Routledge is one of the original pioneers in LED illumination having worked with LEDs in illumination applications since 1996. Currently VP of Illumination at Dialight, Gordon founded Lumidrives in 2001, having previously been managing director at ACDC Lighting Systems. Gordon has a degree in Electrical & Electronic Engineering from university of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology.
Ian Bryant
Ian Bryant is Business Development Manager LED Division at Carclo Technical Plastics. He has worked on and off at Carclo (Formerly Combined Optical Industrial) since leaving school. He has worked through the company from Toolmaking to starting the company on the road of LED optics business some 6-7 years ago, starting with a standard range and more in line with the business of custom optics. In between all this he has worked in engineering and as a works Director for a hydraulics company but kept getting pulled back to the optics industrial. We are able to offer the full solution from idea to parts so have a very good understanding on what is needed. You will see some posts from our design team also under my name.
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