Transparent OLEDs aren’t new – we got up close with Samsung’s transparent marketing system back at CES, for instance – and neither is OLED lighting. However, so far the two have been reluctant to play together.

In traditional OLED lighting panels, they’re only transparent when the light is turned off. Powered up, meanwhile, and light is emitted from both sides; that makes for excess power consumption and less control over what gets lit, Toshiba points out.

Toshiba’s system, however, is counter-intuitive in some ways, as it actually uses non-transparent electrodes. In fact, there’s a fine striping pattern of opaque metal electrodes and gaps, with those gaps allowing for “transmissive” light passage. It’s not fully transparent – Toshiba says it’s good for around a 68-percent light transmission rate – but it does mean that one side is light while the other is dark, and even when the OLED is lit up you can still see through.

The expectation is that the 1.4mm-thick OLED screens will be used in applications like advertising, along with goggles that can light up the work area. Aquariums could also be another potential area, though we’d love to see a video light built into a camcorder lens. Brightness of 450 to 800 cd/m2 is possible, with power consumption of 0-7 to 1.6W.

Toshiba will commercialize the technology itself, though it’s unclear when we could see the first products hit the market.

With the prototype lamp Philips is presenting this week, the TLED that is, they’ve created a lamp that’s twice as efficient as its predecessors while using essentially half of the energy. If and when this technology hits the consumer market, major energy savings will take shape. According to Philips, the TLED lamp is intended to replace the antiquated fluorescent tube lighting used in the business world en masse – accounting for more than half of the world’s total lighting.

“After being recognized for our quality of LED light (mimicking traditional light bulbs) to creating new experience with Philips Hue (the connected light system for the home), we now present the next innovative step in doubling lighting efficiency. It’s exciting to imagine the massive energy and cost savings it will bring to our planet and customers.” – Rene van Schooten, CEO Light Sources & Electronics for Philips Lighting

Also according to Philips, the USA alone uses 200 terawatts of electricity annually in fluorescent lighting alone. If each and every one of these lights was replaced by TLEDS, the US would use right around 100 terawatts less annually, “saving more than US$12 billion and preventing around 60 million metric tons of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere.” Sounds pretty excellent, doesn’t it?

Get pumped up about the next generation of lights – the way forward is through! Have a peek at some additional Philips bits and pieces in our timeline below!

If you only have one Lightning cable, it can be a serious pain having to take it from the car to the house and into the office to keep your device charged. Scosche has been a supplier of all manner of Apple accessories including charging cables for a long time. The company has now announced that it is the first manufacturer offering 5 W and 12 W wall and car chargers for Lighting devices.

Scosche has announced the launch of the strikeBASE wall charger it features a three-foot-long cable and flush folding wall prongs for portability. The charger has a low-profile design that leaves the other outlet open for use. The 5 W version is available for $29.99 and is designed for charging the iPhone or various iPod devices.

People needing to charge the iPad can opt for the 12 W version for $34.99. The strikeDRIVE Lightning car charger is the industry’s first 12 W car charger and has a three-foot coiled cable. It sells for $29.99 and will charge the iPhone or iPad devices. A 5 W version is also available for $24.99 and is designed specifically for the iPhone.

[via Scosche]

Over at Intel you’ll find a new batch of budget-friendly Ivy Bridge processors from all angles. The group known as Kantar World Panel has made it clear that the 2012 Q4 smartphone champion is the iPhone by a giant margin as Android appears to gain a lot of deserters – strange way to put it! AT&T has made an announcement that they’ll be bringing on a full purchase of Alltel for a cool $780 million USD.

Those of you in love with HTC’s user interface for smartphones will be glad to see Sense 5 leaking in full with a lovely aesthetic that’s utterly pared-back compared to past iterations. Verizon has announced a hearty Q4 2012 loss and blamed it on Hurricane Sandy as well as pension costs. It’s time for Firefox OS to hit the smartphone universe with a couple of developer smartphones you’re going to Orange. I mean love!

MySpace’s relaunch is in a bit of trouble – maybe – as they’ve been accused of using music that may not be theirs – dear, oh dear. Paypal has announced that they’re making a full overhaul a reality in the coming months. The folks at MSI have announced a budget tablet with the name Enjoy 71 for the masses, and SteelSeries has unveiled their newest gaming keyboard with aspirations for colorful game-on action.

The lights move forth and faster as the car accelerates, this creating a more “swarm” fabulous effect as you reach top speed. Instead of hitting the turn bar in your car, the swarm moves forth to the left or the right according to where your wheels are aiming – in other words, if you’re leaning toward turning to the right, there’ll be more lovely lights on the right side of the back of your vehicle. If you’re veering left, there wont be any lights on the right.

At the moment, as AutoBlog.GR mentions, this tech has been assuredly NOT been prepped for any vehicles that are going to be market ready any time soon. It’s not that we’ll never ever see such a bit of tech in the future no matter what, but we’re not going to need to be worrying about tuning our eyes for swarming lights next year, certainly. Not on the road, anyway.

Let us know if you’re hoping for such a technology in your vehicle in the future – or perhaps if you’d like to see this lighting working in a video game before we see it in the real world. Can you imagine playing Asphalt 2016: Swarm Lights by next year? Gameloft, that’s your cue! Make our eyes bleed by the time we’re ready to see it all happen in real life!

Also note that we’ve got a giant archive of materials we saw up close and personal at CES 2013 and you can catch more car action than your mind can handle in our Car hub now as well. Audi is there along with many other super-excellent car brands as well!

Luci is unique and what the company calls “solar justice” and the reason behind that is many solar devices don’t seem to work as advertized, or always take forever to charge. MpowerD’s little lantern is only about 5-6 inches tall, and almost something you’d find floating in the pool during the summer months. For those granola types who are always out camping, you’ll want to check this out.

Luci puts out 1200 lumens of bright light using LEDs, and will last anywhere from 8-12 hours depending on charge. Using a few extremely durable and lightweight solar panels you’ll have a full 8-12 hours of light in just 4 hours charge time. Take it camping and charge her up at night, then use Luci to keep camp bright all night long. With a clear plastic round design the light emits in all directions, and Luci states she’ll brighten a 15 square foot area for hours.

“Just charge in the sun, open, and light up your world.”

MpowerD’s new little lantern that is powered by the sun has a few awesome things going for it. It’s extremely lightweight, durable, and completely collapsible to be under an inch tall and smaller than your hand. Then open it up and light up your world — as they say. For the low price of $15.99 Luci can be lighting up your campsite all summer long. It features low, high, and SOS emergency settings with the touch of a button. I’ll be taking this little lantern on a few mountain bike trips this summer. That is for sure.

It’s a fairly simple device with a very minimalist look to it — great for those who yearn for simplicity. You can control any light in your house, and it works anywhere, meaning you don’t have to be connected to your home’s WiFi network in order to use it — you can be away from your house on a data connection if you want.

You can also put different rooms on a schedule for different times if need be, which is great for those who are paranoid about potential thieves when they’re away for the weekend. The WeMo Light Switch also works with outlets as well, making it easy to control different kinds of lamps or other electronic for that matter. Belkin told us the switch can control an unlimited number of lights, and there’s also an unlimited number of mobile devices that can control a single switch.

The WeMo Light Switch will be available starting in the summer of 2013 at a price of $49, which isn’t terribly expensive by any means — it’s certainly a bit cheaper than the company’s other WeMo options. We’re also told the design may see a slight tweak from now until its release in a few months.

We used this array of LEDs in a single unit for several product shoots as of late, including (but not limited to) the Parrot Zikmu Solo speaker, Sony HX850 BRAVIA hdtv, and the Samsung UN75ES9000 HDTV (as seen above and below). This light is more than ready to be one of your key lights in any portrait or product shooting situation, without a doubt.

You’ll be working with 50%-5900 K (Kelvin) Color Temp and 50%-3200 K (Kelvin) Color Temp and there’s a two-way switch for when you only need 250 bulbs instead of all 500 at once. You’ve got AC V style battery pack or XLR connection for power and of course four lovely barndoors to pull the light in what ever direction you do so desire. The light itself is 35 cm X 19 cm X 7 cm / 14 X 7.5 X 2.75 inches in size and you’ve got the ability to work with an add-on Flashpoint battery V Lock mount Li-ion 162.8-watt battery if you do so desire. We just used the massively long cord straight to the wall, this coming in standard with the package.

You do need to purchase a stand separate if you don’t have one handy, this costing around $40 from Adorama as well. The final cost of the light itself without the stand or the add-on battery is $199.95 USD, and for such a price you’ve got yourself a heck of a deal. Brighten up your life with so much light blasting from this beast that you’ll never know how you lived, breathed, and shot without it!

A pledge of $99 during the Kickstarter program would get you one of the lights. It appears that the company was unable to reach its funding goal and its Kickstarter program failed. Undaunted, the company is now trying to raise its money on its own through its own Kickstarter-style auction.

The auction is running on the Moore’s Cloud store website where users can reserve their own light cube for $149. That’s $50 more expensive than the cube was on Kickstarter and you still need to pay a $10 shipping fee. The company says it expects to ship the product in July.

When the Kickstarter campaign was said and done the company had only raised $275,000 out of its goal with about 1950 people backing the project. The company says that it needs to pre-sell about 3000 Lights in order to cover manufacturing costs. They figure that since they had almost 2000 people back the Kickstarter project reaching 3000 should be possible.

Researchers say that the new bulbs could replace traditional fluorescent lighting as early as next year. The team says that a “corporate partner” is already interested in producing the new bulbs at scale. Unlike fluorescent lighting, the new bulbs will be flicker-free, shatterproof, and won’t burn out.

The FIPEL bulbs are made from three layers of white-emitting polymer that contain a small dose of nanomaterials that glow when electric current is passed through them, and they emit light that most closely matches natural sunlight, unlike incandescent light bulbs, which emits a yellowish-orange light, and LEDs, which emit a blueish light.

The FIPEL bulbs will offer the same benefits as traditional lighting, but won’t come with all of the drawbacks associated with them. Researchers pointed out that even the faint humming sound of fluorescent lighting wouldn’t be present in the new FIPEL bulbs, and that heat also wouldn’t be a problem, since the researchers have come up with a way to eliminate heat-producing culprits while still producing as much light as possible.

[via Phys.org]

If you’d like to go extra tiny, check out the MimoMicro MicroUSB card reader lineup including none other than Star Wars’ Chewbacca – they’ve been making super cute USB drives for many years now, most recently with giant brand-name collaborators such as Star Wars and The Dark Knight Rises. For anyone who owns a PlayStation 3 or simply loves to play hand-held games, there’s always the PS Vita – complete with wi-fi or AT&T connectivity to the web as well as full integration with PlayStation 3 consoles as a wireless controller – strange a fun!

If you’ve got a buddy looking to get out and get going with a hardcore camera, it may be time for a Dropcam HD. Another tiny gift that basically anyone may have a use for – and will be glad to use – is the Satechi Premium 4-port aluminum USB-hub – made to match your MacBook. The old-school vinyl record-playing hipster in your family can always do with another vinyl record player – have a peek at the nearly-mobile Pyle Audio Record Player for a lovely experience top-to-bottom – for hobbyists, only!

If you want to get extra unique for your gift this year, we recommend the Philips Hue network-connected lightbulb. You’ll be able to go wireless while you’re wired – and connect all those lights from a single panel! For your gift-getting pals who love to take notes, both on-paper and in-audio; you should have a peek at the LiveScribe Sky Wi-fi Smartpen – you’ll never scribble the same way again. Then there’s the rucksack in which you’ll have them carry it all in – for that we recommend a nice trip over to Powerbag where you’ll see the Business Class Pack – a unit we’ve been using for nearly a year straight!

The fun continues with the Iomega PX2 300D NAS, a piece of equipment that will blow the mind of any nerd you purchase it for – they’ll more than likely ask you how you even know what a NAS is, much less how you knew to buy as high quality a device as this!

That lifespan is estimated at around 25,000 hours, Sylvania says, which means less time up a step ladder. Unlike some LED bulbs, which tend to project a more focused pattern of light, the company claims the new A-Line LED models have an incandescent-style distribution.

If 100W is too much for you, there are 40, 60, and 75W equivalent versions too, and all can be dimmed to as little as 10-percent of their brightness. Inside, there’s none of the mercury or lead that other light fittings can include.

The big drawback for many buyers is likely to be price. Sylvania is asking $49.99 for each of the 100W-equivalent LED bulbs, which is considerably more than the upfront cost of a regular incandescent or even a CCFL bulb. For ten bucks more, in fact, you can have one of Philips’ color-changing hue bulbs.

The Lumen Smart Bulb is on Indiegogo right now seeking $110,000 in funding to come to market. The project has 30 days to go and has so far raised only $1191. If the bulb receives the funding it needs the company will create an LED bulb that produces 400 lumens of warm white light. That is equivalent to a standard 60 W light bulb.

The Lumen features a dimmable LED RGBW light inside and the user will be able to choose whatever color they want to make using a mixture of each LED color. The Lumen will also support four different modes via its control app including Party Mode, Sleep Mode, Wake Mode, and Ambient Mode. Party mode creates flashing lights that change color to the music playing.

Sleep mode simulates moonlight to improve sleep and enhance rest. Wake mode will wake you up starting with dim light that gradually brightens to maximum intensity at wake-up time. Ambient mode creates romantic soft and dim light. Pricing for the bulbs on Indiegogo depends on where you get sponsor the project. An early-bird price of $49 will get you a single bulb. $99 will get two, $450 gets 10, $1000 will get 25, and $3500 will get 100 of the bulbs. The bulbs are expected to start shipping in April of 2013 with an app for Android devices coming later.

Hardware and Installation

Philips’ starter pack for hue – which comes with the base station and three bulbs – is priced at $199.95/£179.95, while subsequent individual hue bulbs are $59.95/£49.95 (initially exclusively through the Apple Store). Philips says the three bulbs that come in the starter pack can’t be used with any other hue base station; sure enough there’s no way to unpair them in the settings, though we were able to manually pair them to an old LivingColor remote. You also get an AC adapter for the base station and an ethernet cable to plug it into your router.

Setup is straightforward, as long as you have the right type of light fitting. Plug the base station into the mains and into a spare ethernet socket on your router, and then screw the Edison-fitting bulbs into whichever lamps you want to use. Philips says bayonet fitting versions are in the pipeline, but for now you’ll have to use an adapter – not supplied, but available online for a couple of dollars – if you want to use a hue bulb in an old-style socket.

Then, in theory, it’s just a case of installing the mobile app on either your iOS or Android device. Philips has iPhone and iPad-scaled versions, as well as a single version for Android phones and tablets, and you can have up to ten apps associated with a single base station. We had no problems with the auto-locate feature on the iOS app, the base station quickly being identified (on the same network) and – after a tap of the single button on top of it – paired up. However, the Android app refused to locate the base station itself, and could only see it after we punched in its IP address (as assigned by the router) manually.

The hue bulbs themselves are of a similar size to a standard bulb, with a mushroom-style glass head and a silver brushed metal body. Philips says each 600 lumen bulb – equivalent to a 50W traditional bulb – uses 80-percent power than old-style versions, and is rated for 15,000 hours of continuous use. Up to fifty can be paired with a single base station, according to Philips’ official count, though unofficially the system will apparently support more.

Those with existing Philips LivingColor lamps will be able to use them with the new hue system, though the process is fiddly. You’ll need to have one of the latter-generation LivingColor remotes (circular, not lozenge shaped, with the three preset keys running along the lower edge) and go through a multi-stage re-pairing process with that and the hue base station. It took us a couple of attempts to get the whole thing working, but once all parts of the system were talking to the other, we were able to control our old lamps with the hue app, and indeed the hue bulbs with the old remote.

hue isn’t limited to Philips’ own bulbs, though. The system uses standard ZigBee – the Light Link profile, specifically – so any third-party lighting that confirms to that will also pair up with the hue base station. Since it’s ZigBee, it also uses mesh networking: the base station acts as a bridge between your WiFi network and the ZigBee network, but as each hue bulb can talk to each other, they can be a great distance from the base station itself. Philips does warn that lag will increase the greater the number of mesh hubs the signal has to jump.

Software

Philips’ iOS and Android apps look broadly the same: large expanses of desktop, with preset icons for lighting schemes. They look fine on a phone, but on tablets there’s an odd waste of space: the buttons are just too small – split in their layout, by default, across two pages despite the potential of easily fitting onto one – and require a slightly closer look than you’d hope for in order to identify which preset you’re selecting. Big, easily stabbed keys would be far preferable.

Most of the presets Philips provides are, in fact, based on images. Tap them once and a brightness bar shows up, as well as the option to dig into the image itself and adjust the colors and lamps involved. That shows a basic white light control at the top – with the option to make the light warmer or cooler – but is mainly taken up by the source image, with color pickers for each bulb that can be dragged around to different points on the picture.

Underneath, there are brightness sliders for each bulb as well as buttons to set timings and switch individual lamps on and off within that preset scheme. Timings can either be to turn the preset on at a certain point each day, or off, or both, with the lights either coming on instantly or fading in/out over the course of three or nine minutes. If you’ve ever wanted to be gently woken to the warm, honeyed glow of a rainforest sunrise, here’s your chance.

Unfortunately there’s no way to move multiple light pickers at the same time – the app doesn’t support multitouch control – so it’s a case of adjusting each bulb individually. Alternatively, shake the device and the accelerometer automatically triggers a random array of colors.

Manual use takes two forms. First, you can pull up a master color-picker, with individual control over each bulb’s brightness, hue, or white temperature; it’s functional, though there’s no way to then save that as a preset for later use. The second way is more permanent: you can choose a photo from your phone or tablet’s gallery, or shoot a new picture with its camera, and then pick colors out of that for the lights to replicate. These can be saved as schemes and shared on Philips’ site.

Obviously some colors are easier for hue to make than others. Brown is tricky, and if you pick black then the bulb simply shuts off. What Philips also provides are four so-called LightRecipes – relax, read, concentrate, and energize – which according to the company’s research have a noticeable affect on mood and productivity. It’s worth noting that they only work with the hue bulbs, not older LivingColor lamps, and annoyingly after we paired up some of those older lamps none of the LightRecipes would actually work. When they were working, however, we can’t say we noticed a particular difference in our mood or our ability to concentrate, though it was far from a scientific experiment.

Philips also supports remote access, though only via the iOS apps; the Android version won’t get that until sometime in 2013. You need to set up a profile via Philips’ site first, and give it permission to access your hue base station: then, when you’re on your iPad or iPhone on the move, you can boot up the app and twiddle away with the colors or, more likely, use it to turn off any lights you may have inadvertently left switched on. It’s of limited use, really, though if you’ve also got a web-connected security camera system, you could potentially use hue to light up rooms for clearer visibility.

Performance

Philips’ hue is a little like Superman. By day, the bulbs can be standard, sensible white lamps – the mild mannered Clark Kent of lighting – but when things start getting interesting you can call up all manner of colors and the whole system becomes far more flexible and creative. The light itself is as bright as a standard bulb when in white mode, while the colors are generally stronger than what the previous generation of LivingColor lamps could manage.

One hue bulb hanging from a central ceiling light is enough, if it’s dark, to illuminate a whole room with color, whereas LivingColor always felt more like an accent tool than primary lighting. As before, though, it works best with white walls, while the Edison screw fitting means you’ll have to think carefully about where you put each hue bulb. An overhead light is the obvious option, but a standalone lamp might do better at focusing attention on a specific area or feature.

For safety, if you flick the light switch on the wall (which has to be left on, obviously, for hue to work properly) the bulbs will automatically come on in their full-brightness, white mode. Unfortunately there’s no way to then restore them to their previous setting, without reaching for your phone or tablet. A wireless lightswitch would be a nice addition to the range, though since it’s ZigBee-compliant you could probably find a third-party option to add to the setup.

In fact, adding functionality is something Philips has planned ahead for. As well as using the Light Link standard, hue has an API for third-party apps to hook into. Philips is hoping that will encourage developers to jump in and add light effects to their apps, whether that be disco flashing or something more subtle, like a lamp that changes color according to stock prices, or flashes when you get a new email.

Right now, there’s not much in the way of third-party functionality, but it’s very early days. We wouldn’t mind a little more polish to the core experience, however: custom color scenes are meant to sync across devices via the cloud service, but that proved hit-and-miss, and sometimes the older LivingColor lamps would get stuck on a certain color and refuse to respond to the hue app unless they were power cycled.

On a cost-per-bulb basis, hue is significantly cheaper than previous Philips color-changing lighting products; the second-gen LivingColors lamp we reviewed back in 2010 still command a $140 price tag, versus sixty bucks for an individual hue bulb. Philips sells white LED bulbs with an RRP of $40, though other, cheaper versions are available.

Wrap-Up

Philips’ hue apps aren’t entirely refined, and the promise of third-party integration is yet to materialize, but hue is off to an excellent start where it counts: bringing the cost of color-changing lighting down to a more manageable price point. That means users are more likely to install a few bulbs (rather than just, say, one expensive LivingColor lamp) and start to see the benefit of flexible lighting. It feels like a gimmick at first, true, but being able to tweak your environment to suit whether you’re listening to music, watching TV, napping on the sofa, or relaxing with friends grows increasingly addictive the more time you spend with hue.

If developers jump on board, color LED lighting could well reach its tipping point. No longer limited to expensive custom installs: you can outfit a few rooms with hue and be up and running with custom colors in less than an hour. If you’ve already got a ZigBee system, there’s even more potential for linking full-on macros with preset lighting schemes. Gimmick it may be, but it’s another example of affordable home automation trickling down to the mass market, just as Sonos did with multi-room audio, and that’s something worth celebrating in today’s smart home.

The starter box – containing three bulbs and the base station – is priced at $199/£179, while individual bulbs are priced at $59/£49. That might seem expensive on the face of it (though Philips has high-end white LED bulbs in its range that are $50-60 alone) but, in comparison with the LivingColors lamps which come in with an RRP of £159 apiece, it starts to look more reasonable. If you’ve already bought any LivingColors models, incidentally, you’ll be able to use them with the hue system too (with one or two limitations).

Installation is simple: screw in the bulbs, plug the ZigBee base station into a spare ethernet port on your router, and hook it up to the mains. A pairing button on the base station allows you to link up any other hue bulbs, while three LED lights show system status including whether there’s an internet connection for remote access. Since ZigBee is a mesh system, each hue bulb can talk to each other: bulbs can be a great distance from the base station itself, just as long as there are other bulbs spanning the intermediate distance (though lag increases the more mesh-points the signal needs to hop through).

Philips hue official demo:

The bulbs themselves use 8.5W at most, and – at 600 lumens – are equivalent to 50W traditional bulbs. They also use a special internal coating that, coupled with the shape of the glass, projects light more evenly around the bulb, meaning there isn’t a dead-zone to your lamp. Officially, up to 50 can be paired with a single base station, though Philips told us that in fact that’s more of a quality-assurance guarantee; in fact, the company has had 250+ bulbs paired with test systems, and had no real issues with them. Bayonet fitting versions are in the pipeline.

Control is via smartphone and tablet app, with iPhone, iPad, and Android versions available at launch; up to ten devices can be linked to control any one base station. The software itself is surprisingly comprehensive. At its most basic, you can adjust the color of any one bulb across the spectrum, including adjusting brightness and color temperature, from a rich red, deep blue, bright white, or anything in-between. You can link up two or more bulbs into a group, and control them all simultaneously, and create preset scenes which each have their own icon on the app’s homescreen.

However, there’s also color sampling to be played with. Philips includes a number of photos in the app – scenes like beaches or mountains – and by dragging pointers linked to each lamp, you can recreate the color of that point in the image. Again, custom setups of multiple lamps tied to different points can be saved, or you create a random arrangement by physically shaking the tablet or iPhone.

You can alternatively pick out a photo from your own photo gallery – or take a new photo, within the Philips hue app – and select colors from that instead. Each of the scenes, whether basic colors or based on photos, can be set to timers, either turning them on or off; you can also have them gently fade in or out over a period of several minutes, helping you to gently wake up or drift off to sleep. Of course, you can also shut off all the bulbs with the tap of a single button.

Finally, though, comes Philips’ splash of science. The company preloads four “LightRecipes” – relax, read, concentrate, and energize – which adjust lighting to specific shades and brightness levels based on research into how those scenarios affect the human body. Philips says testing in schools showed students did better in tests, were calmer, or read faster and more accurately, depending on the different setting active at any one time. It’s worth noting that older LivingColors lamps won’t work with these new LightRecipes, as they don’t have the settings baked in like the new hue bulbs do.

There are some sensible tweaks and decisions Philips has made along the way to the hue system overall. An override feature automatically lights the bulbs up to a regular white “lamp light” default if the physical power switch is used, just in case of emergency, and you can easily deactivate a phone or tablet from the control group in case it’s lost or stolen (or if your kids insist on triggering a mini disco in your room at 2am every day). At launch, the Android app will lack the out-of-house remote control feature, though Philips says it’s coming; if you have any existing remotes from the LivingColors line-up, the company confirmed to us that they, too, would still work, useful for the less tablet-savvy in the household.

Perhaps best of all, it’s all designed to be open. Philips’ base station works as a regular ZigBee hub, and so will function with any other ZigBee devices that conform to the standard, while the individual bulbs are compliant with the ZigBee Light Link standard and so can be integrated with wireless home automation setups you might have already. The company is also opening up its app to third-party developers, in the hope that they’ll step in and augment the functionality. Suggestions included flashing the lights when you get a VIP email, synchronizing color changes with musical playlists, or geo-location so that the lights automatically turn on when you get home, and off when you leave. Individual users will be able to use the site to swap color scheme presets.

At sixty bucks apiece, hue bulbs aren’t cheap. However, the popularity of recent Kickstarter campaigns for WiFi-enabled bulbs such as Lifx - which raised more than 13x of its goal - has shown that there’s a consumer interest for more flexible, smarter lighting. Unlike fund-raising projects, though, Philips’ hue system ships from tomorrow, not sometime next year, and comes from a company with a long history in lighting. We’ll be putting hue through its paces soon, to see if the promise lives up to the price.

Groove Bulb say that’s 25% cheaper than existing LED bulbs on the market, with the founder of the company, James Theobald, noting that the cost of manufacturing is what keeps prices high. The 9W Groove Bulb will feature a bayonet or Edison screw cap, is mercury free, and is 99% recyclable. The LED tech used ensures a “consistent light output”, plus no flickering and superior whites.

The company will begin offering additional bulbs later on in the year, with plans to produce a 100W equivalent and a candle style bulb. If you wanrt to buy the 9W Groove Bulb in the meantime, you’ll have to head directly to the source at groovebulb.com.

Switch’s bulb design is markedly different from competitors. Typically LED bulbs position the LED chips at the bottom near the heatsink, but Switch has opted to put in the globe at the top half of the lamb instead. The globe is filled with liquid designed to help cool the bulb. The new design also means light is more evenly distributed like incandescent bulbs.

Power consumption is low too: the 40-watt equivalent bulb consumes 8 watts, while the high-end 75-watt will consume around 17 watts. Switch is introducing the three variants today, and will make a 100-watt equivalent available later on in the summer. While these bulbs are aimed at businesses (hotels in particular), Switch is said to be working on low-cost models for consumers.

[via CNET]

The company has announced its ChromaLit Contour light bulb to replace the traditional 100 W bulb. The bulb is available in 60, 75, and 100 W equivalents. The company claims that using the LED bulbs can reduce your electricity costs to operate the light by 25% compared to conventional LED lighting. That would make it much more efficient than a standard incandescent bulb.

These new LED bulbs produce uniform and glare-free light with 330° lighting distribution. The bulbs are available in standard color rendering options of CRI 90. There is also a choice of color temperature ranges from 2700 K to 5000 K. Basically that means you should be able to find a color that is very close to that of a normal light bulb. One of the biggest complaints many people have about green and efficient light bulbs is that the color of light they produce is too blue or green and casts harsh shadows. Official pricing is around $20 making these surprisingly inexpensive.

The Philips bulb, which tips the scales at 10W, was engineered to last 30,000 hours. According to the manufacturer, if you compare that life span to the average 60W incandescent bulb, its lifetime value is around $165. Nevertheless, getting customers to wrap their heads around buying a $60 light bulb has been quite a challenge, especially in this economy. Nevertheless, the company thinks it has a winner on its hand.

Philips did manage to win a prize from the US Department of Energy last year, after entering a contest for lighting efficiency. It was awarded $10 million. Philips said in a statement, “Because the new bulb is 83 percent more energy efficient than the standard 60-Watt incandescent, consumers can now experience new savings for their pocketbooks.”

[via MSNBC]

Organic Light Emitting Diodes are at work here, otherwise known as OLED lights, and what you’ve got going on is a set of pieces of hardware that are so tiny that they can all be transparent, and activated can create several layered effects for mixed colors. Four small red OLED plates are aligned next to one another in the Audi Q7, with then eight flat segments making up the curved yellow strip to display the turn indicator. Have a peek at this video before you start to process this amalgamation too hard:

What a masterpiece, yes? As Berlitz explains, Audi is working with OLED technology because it’s able to combine “maximum precision” with “high-end technology” for a wholly “super design.” Follow along with this all if you do so dare:

“These are individual points of light that need additional optical devices – reflectors, optical conductors or scatter optics. OLED surfaces are themselves the source of light, and the thin plates also look attractive. They weigh little, light up extremely fast, develop only a small amount of heat, last for several tens of thousand hours and don’t consume any more energy than conventional light-emitting diodes.” – Berlitz

We’ll be continuing to follow along with Audi’s seemingly other-worldly ability to decorate their vehicles into the future for quite a long time, we suspect. With the oncoming of the massively bright future, light displays like this are sure to be popping up on vehicles from here to Tokyo in the next 5 to 10 years – just you watch!

Also be sure to keep your eyes on Audi for their collaborative efforts with the chipmakers known as NVIDIA for Audi vehicles with Tegra 3 quad-core processors with 4-PLUS-1 technology embedded in the near future. What we’ve seen thus far is impressive – and the final product can only get better from here.

[via Euro Car News]

The company announced today that it is offering two new LED lightbulbs priced at $4.95 and $6.95 that may be priced just low enough to get consumers to adopt them for general lighting. However, the bulbs do have some limitations when compared to their less energy efficient counterparts.

The Pharox Blu line is available in 200-lumen and 350-lumen versions, but both give off less light than a 40-watt incandescent, which offers 450 lumens. These bulbs consume less than 5 watts and 8 watts, respectively, but probably won’t offer enough light for general conditions.

Previously, companies have offered LED bulbs that can give off the same amount of light as 60-watt and 75-watt incandescents, but use 80 percent less power and can last from 15 to 25 years. However, those LED bulbs were priced at around $35 and $40.

Lemins hopes that these cheaper LED bulbs will get some consumers to give the bulbs a try, while the company plans to introduce brighter LED bulbs in the 400 to 800 lumens range later this year with prices starting around $10.

[via CNET]

The organo-chemical materials like dye that are used in the lighting are made by BASF, and the OLEDs are manufactured by Philips. The transparent OLEDs can be turned into a solar panel by sandwiching them with transparent solar cells. The entire surface of the OLED light can produce a soft light with no harsh shadows.

That would make for nice illumination at night in a car when bright light can affect night vision. There is no indication of when this lighting might find its way into production automobiles. I could see this sort of thing being nice in EV and hybrid applications for gathering power for batteries.

“This combination allows the driver to enjoy a unique open-space feeling while it generates electricity during the day and pleasantly suffuses the interior with the warm light of the transparent, highly efficient OLEDs at night,” said Dr. Felix Görth, head of Organic Light-Emitting Diodes and Organic Photovoltaics at BASF Future Business GmbH.

[BASF via Electronics Weekly]

And you’ll want to, since the company’s SDK has attracted dozens of developers to create new apps for the cuddly platform. The hardware includes multicolor LED lighting, a motor for the ears and a webcam, so there’s a surprising variety of notification and interaction apps that can run on it. Switch an app by tapping the Karotz nose with one of the tags – just as if it’s eating a carrot. The most useful is probably a live nannycam that can broadcast to the iPhone, iPad and a Facebook interface.

We stopped to talk to the company about its product at Showstoppers during CES 2012.

Other apps include weather notifications, remote music and Internet radio and basic interactions. The Karotz hardware is available now for $129, and the tiny Nanoz NFC tags and interchangeable ears are extra. Check out a full demo of Violet’s hardware below:

With no on or off switch this is entirely touch-based and the surrounding base is pressure and touch sensitive. With sixteen LED’s that will never need replacing and a unique light up effect as it illuminates through the panels. Energizer has made sure to add only the best quality and brightest LED’s and offers up to 400 lumens of brightness.

Energizer will be offering a small, medium and large version of this unique and impressive lighting system and above we have the larger of the two. The panels are removable and fully interchangeable. You can remove one to help direct light, or fully break it down for moving and transportation. Available now on 3rd party online shops I’ll be sure to get one and give it a try.

Like any good environmentally sound group of manufacturers do, this group of workers takes Christmas lights for what they are: materials that can be used to make products! What they do is take the lights untangled into small enough sizes that they can be tossed into the shredders they’ve got on hand. When they are shredded, they’re turned into millimeter-sized particles and mixed up with water until they’re made into a mud-like substance that’s sticky enough to be near solid. Yuck! Then the fun really begins. As Adam Minter of The Atlantic regales:

“As the table shakes, the heavier flecks of copper (from the wire) and brass (from the light bulb sockets) flow in one direction, and the lighter plastic and glass (from the insulation and bulbs) flows in another. It’s the same concept that miners use when panning for gold, and the results of this updated, age-old technology can be found at the far end of the water tables: baskets of roughly 95% pure copper and brass alongside baskets of insulation and glass. The contaminated water, meanwhile, flows into a recovery system, where it’s re-circulated, over and over, through the recycling system.” – Minter

Does this seem like a job you’d like to have, smashing down Christmas lights with the resulting Christmas dust floating around the air for you to breath in as you create a lovely future in which all the strings are turned to slippers? I hope so! Taking the technology to recycle here on its own is what we hope to take away as a positive as we do not forget that it’s impoverished ladies and gentlemen whose job it is to do the tossing. Merry Christmas and a happy lights toss, everyone!

[via MIC Gadget]

Hardware

A 14 x 14 x 2.5 cm white plastic box, the goLITE BLU is fronted by a pair of panels: a sizable blue LED array on top, and a smaller, blue-backlit touchscreen underneath showing time, light settings and battery status. The only physical control is a power button on the right side; on the left is a socket for the included AC power adapter. Philips also throws in a set of international plug adapters.

A notch on the lower rear panel holds a metal rod, which can be slotted into a hole to prop the goLITE BLU up. Magnets keep the rod in place in both, and there’s a faux-leather slip case for transporting the whole thing. Unfortunately there’s only one possible angle at which you can stand the light unit at, rather than an adjustable base.

Setup is straightforward. Tapping the bell button sets the alarm, using the plus and minus buttons to adjust the time; the stopwatch icon sets the length of time the light is on for. Alarms can be either an audible tone or the LED lights, or a combination of both, while anything from 1 minute to an hour – in minute increments – can be set as the duration.

As well as waking up to light, you can trigger an impromptu session manually. Pressing the power button once turns on the touchscreen, and a second press turns on the LEDs; you can adjust the intensity – in 25-percent increments – and the length of time the goLITE BLU is on for. A temporary pause in a session can be added by pressing the power button briefly, or turning the intensity down to zero, though if you leave it paused and running on battery power for over five minutes, the goLITE BLU will automatically power off.

Performance

Philips recommends 15 to 30 minutes of time in front of the light each day, initially starting off at 50-percent brightness and increasing if you don’t notice a difference after a week. Rather than sitting directly in front of the LEDs, basking in their glow as you might a tanning lamp, Philips advises putting it off to one side so that it shines tangentially onto your face. That, along with the limited angle options from the stand, can make finding the best position tricky, though it’s easier if you’re working at a desk at the time.

Instant results aren’t promised, but the idea is that if you invest several weeks you can gain more energy, alleviate your mood or even help bypass jetlag. Using the goLITE BLU in the morning, when you first wake up, is supposed to make it easier to get out of bed, while a quick session in the middle of the day can, so Philips says, top up your energy levels when you more normally might be flagging.

By using the goLITE BLU for a few days before you travel, you can help your body clock reset itself to the new timezone at your destination: a few morning sessions when traveling east, or a few evening sessions when going west. Normally, though, Philips doesn’t recommend using light therapy in the evening, because of its body-clock tweaking tendencies.

Does it work? That’s a tricky one to judge: unlike, say, a smartphone battery test or laptop benchmarking, there’s no way to conclusively say whether the goLITE BLU is working or not. All we can go on is my personal experience with the light.

After a week or so of use – running the Philips light for 15 minutes in the mid-morning each day – I felt more alert and found myself working continuously for longer periods without realizing it. It’s not like the jolt of energy you get after a strong cup of coffee: instead, I simply felt more balanced and less aware of time passing. Following a 7-10 days of use, I could scale down to using the goLITE BLU every other day, and still feel suitably perky.

Philips rates the goLITE BLU’s battery as good for between three and five sessions. In practice, at 15 minutes each time, I found it was capable of as many as eight.

Wrap-Up

With street pricing at around $132/£190, the Philips goLITE BLU is an expensive buy if you find it doesn’t work for you. Philips does offer a 30-day guarantee just in case, mind, and has plenty of research to say it will have an impact.

Waking up with the goLITE BLU proved somewhat jarring – imagine throwing open the curtains as soon as your alarm goes off, on an incredibly bright day – but as a daily top-up to your energy levels I had a good experience. You pay for the convenience of an alarm, portable form-factor and a rechargeable battery, though.

Those external lights add bulk and they don’t look very nice either. The Qualcomm mirasol eReader uses an internal light that is similar to the light in the cool demo that Flex Lighting is showing off on video. The demo shows off a new LED-based light that is used inside an eReader eliminating the need for that external light.

The Flex Lighting light layer can be turned on or off and promises to slurp little power when on. It also claims to not interfere with normal operation of the eReader when the light isn’t on. The special light layer is designed to offer a more uniform distribution of light making it operate more like a traditional backlight. Check out the video below to see the demo for yourself.

[via Electronista]

While this easter egg may seem to an outsider to have been a simple enough task to implement on a vehicle over a year out of the box, apparently this was no pie when it came to making it a reality. The tiny projector lamp solution came after six or seven attempts at the shiner, the final look appearing very close to what you’re seeing in the images above and below. The perfect balance between awesome and absurd had to be found.

The final solution ended up being so magically delicious that apparently it shut down the production floor at Ford’s Flat Rock assembly line when it was first activated. One of the workers flipped the switch, the light came on, and everyone ran in at a mad rush. We’re sure this sort of thing will start to show up on cars across the industry in just a few years time. Perhaps some Bat Signals in 2014?

[via AutoBlog]

What Samsung is aiming to bring is three sets of bulbs here at the outset, the A19, the PAR, and the MR16, each of them with a specific intent. As the company notes: “A light bulb is no longer just a light bulb. It’s a digital technology made up of LED chips, drivers and electronics—familiar turf for Samsung.” We’re looking for natural light with an energy-efficient future ahead on all bright fronts – can you bring it, Samsung?

A19 Bulbs: These will replace conventional incandescent bulbs and can shine directionally from vanity lights, wall sconces, lamps of several makes, and more. These bulbs are dimmable as well.

PAR Bulbs: This bulb is also dimmable and will last what Samsung says is 20 percent longer than their equivalent halogen opponents. You can adjust its variable beam angle between 25 and 40 degrees, and its great for track lighting and recessed lighting.

MR16 Bulbs: Another bulb great for recessed, vanity, and track lighting, made in two different base types as well as brightness levels for many different uses.

Prices for these bulbs range from $19.98 all the way up to $59.98 and users can expect between 27 and 36 years of life from each of them. This first line of bulbs is available exclusively at Lowe’s immediately.

This isn’t a completed project, kids, I’m sorry to say, but it is on its way to becoming one. This is what’s known as a conceptual industrial design, one made by the designer without as much regard for the final product as one further down the production line would have. It is through projects like these that the most innovative concepts are brought to life – and of course, to light. Soft enough of an idea for you?

Meanwhile this pillow object has already been making the rounds abroad. The inSoft pillow has won the prestigious Koizumi Lighting Award, this bringing it closer to the production floor once more. Now we’ve all just got to find someone with a load of cash to put under the pillow, as it were, so that we can all have one straight from the store. Light em up!

[via Yanko Design]

The laser light could bring with it new light functions with more comfort and safety when driving. The lights can contribute significantly to higher degree of efficiency in energy and fuel savings. BMW notes that laser light is monochromatic and is known as coherent light so the waves are uniform and have a constant phase difference. That means that the lights can create a near-parallel beam with intensity a thousand times that of LEDs in use today.

The laser beams would use less power as well making them more green and ideal for EVs running from a battery. BMW says that unlike some of the laser pointers on the market the light it uses is safe for humans and animals when used in car lighting. The light isn’t emitted directly; it is converted into a form safe for traffic use. The light produced is a very bright white. LEDs are capable of producing 100 lumens per watt while lasers can produce 170 lumens per watt. BMW also uses lasers in other safety technology.

Philips submitted the bulb to the DOE for testing in 2009 and it was tested for 18 months in the lab and in the field. The testing exposed the light to extreme humidity, temperatures, vibration, and voltage changes. The Phillips bulb uses only 10W to produce the same brightness as a 60W normal bulb for an 83% energy savings per bulb. The catch is each bulb is expected to cost $18 when they hit stores next year.

The DOE figures that if everyone in the US changed the 60W normal bulbs to the new Phillips bulbs we would save 35 terawatt-hours of electricity in a year. That is enough juice to power the lights in 18-million homes. The win also brings some other perks for Phillips. The DOE is looking into lowering the price of the bulbs. The price lowering tactics might include things like national retail partnerships to product incentives paid to electric companies.

[via FastCompany]

It looks a lot like the clouds that were produced in the 60′s when the military was testing bombs. The lamp is really cool and you can even order yourself one from Shapeways assuming you have a deep wallet. The lamp is very expensive at $1495. The plastic material is white and is said to be strong and flexible.

The light part comes separately, you can cram the bulb inside, and it makes the center of the cloud glow. I really like the design of the lamp and if it were a fraction of that price, I’d totally buy it for my desk. Would you buy this lamp?

[via LaughingSquid]

The price isn’t the biggest issue for me though; it’s the color of the light produced by the next gen bulbs. I can’t stand the way the harsh white light looks in a room; I want the warm yellow light I have always known. LED bulb makers know this and they are working to get the light into the color range we all know today. As it turns out getting that yellowish light from a LED bulb is not an easy thing to do.

A company called Switch Lighting has been showing off a new LED light bulb that is not only about half the price of the other LED bulbs on the market, it has the same light color as the bulbs in your home right now. The company will be selling 60 and 75W replacement bulbs with LED tech inside in October. The 60W bulb will sell for about $20. The bulbs use about 16W of power and will last for about 20,000 hours.

[via Slate]

You walk in the front door to your brand new house, you haven’t even slept here one night yet. The glow of your Taewon Hwang designed home-lighting-panel illuminates your entry with a soft glow. You toss your keys on the hook next to the door and press the three different buttons to illuminate your path to the kitchen. Taewon Hwang imagines an intuitive design for whole-house lighting systems able to be controlled from custom panels set anywhere in the house.

[via Yanko Design]

Video demo after the cut

The lights themselves are the GE Color Effects GE-35, available in 36 or 50 bulb lengths. On their own, each bulb consists of three LEDs allowing for multiple color combinations, with 14 preset patterns to choose from; however, thanks to some judicious hacking of the LED data bus, they can also be addressed by your choice of microcontroller.

Unsurprisingly, Kyselica opted for .NET, and his lights now show the various statuses of each of his IM friends (complete with Post-It notes labelling each individual). Of course, that’s just one potential application.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/17699178[/vimeo]

[via istartedsomething]

Video demo after the cut

Since LEDs aren’t going to heat up the wax, there’s a separate heating plate for that; all the lighting has to do is make it pretty. A button on the base allows you to lock the color-shifting into one particular hue, and the whole thing is hand-crafted.

Rather confusingly – considering Mathmos sell lighting products that cover all of the shades – there are two versions of the Smart Astro, one cycling through blues to purples, and the other from greens to yellows. There’s no single model that does both. They’re limited edition and Mathmos itself is already sold out; Firebox has some of both color, at time of writing, priced at £84.99 ($133) apiece.

It’s supplied with two mapping discs, one for the authentic night sky and the other a map of the Star Wars universe, including Naboo, Dagobah, Mustafar and Tatooine.  The regular map gives a perspective from the Northern hemisphere, meanwhile.

The whole thing is battery powered and, as such, is only really suitable for nighttime use; Firebox recommend it as a nightlight.  It’s available now for £29.99 ($47).

To demonstrate the system, researchers showed a laptop – with no wired or WiFi network connection – playing smooth streaming internet video that was transmitted via the lighting network.  The team reckons concerns over the impact of electromagnetic waves on the human body will leave users open to alternative carriers, such as lighting.

As for the lights themselves, the pulses are so rapid that the human eye sees the LEDs as consistently lit.  In addition to regular internet connections, the system could be used for “smart” appliances, such as updating clock accuracy automatically, advising home automation systems as to switch statuses, and sending out updates from devices like printers and fax machines when they need more ink.

[Image from previous LED networking research from Boston University]

Florescent bulbs to fit into normal light fixtures have been around for a while now but those are starting to be replaced by LEDs. One of the big drawbacks to LED lighting is that the bulbs are typically very expensive. Home Depot has a new line of LED bulbs that are EcoSmart branded and fit into normal light sockets and sell for under $20 each.

The bulb is equivalent to a 40W incandescent bulb and uses only 8.6W of power. It puts out 429 lumens of light and has a life span of 50000 hours. The bulb claims to save over $155 per bulb over its entire life of at least five years. I would like to know what color light the bulb puts out; florescent bulbs are too white for my tastes and look weird.