From the post earlier about the big award the Watercube just won, here’s some video of the Watercube.  This is the kind of work that makes you wish you had a hand in it.

Also, check out this architect’s concept video of the Watercube:

Shelley Spicuzza is an Indianapolis based designer who has taken recycling and light to another level with her Reglow Lamp project.  Reglow is a clear poly bottle based lighting system that uses existing bottles to screw into a ball-shaped base, illuminating through the bottles and into your space.

Mountain Dew (the regular green or the crazy Code Red), clear bottles, blue bottles, any color you can find - screw them into Shelley’s Reglow Lamp and you’re eco-friendly.

Check out the Reglow Lamp page at Coroflot.

Make Mag has an article about Marieke Staps’ “Soil Lamp,” which is an LED fixture that runs on mud and gets energy for illumination from the microbiotics in the soil.

What?

Seriously.  Check it out.  It’s a cool concept - an LED lamp that thinks it’s a plant!

CleanTechnica has a post about an “ultracapacitor” flashlight that takes 90 seconds to charge for 90 minutes of on time - and can charge fully once a day for 135 years.  5.11 Tactical’s Light for Life runs about $169.9.  From the CleanTechnica article:

According to the company, the flashlight can perform 50,000 charge/discharge cycles with no degradation of quality— that’s one charge a day for over 135 years. And if that isn’t impressive enough, it can go from being dead to fully charged in 90 seconds. The flashlight provides 90 minutes of light per charge.

The 16 oz. Light for Life has no replaceable parts, and requires zero maintenance. At $169.99, it’s somewhat of a bargain considering it may be the last flashlight you ever buy.

Part of designing a lighting package for anything outdoors is worrying about how the fixtures will be affected by the elements.  Typically the answer to that theoretical question is “drastically,” especially if you’re dealing with automated fixtures.  At LDI I ran across a company called Tempest Lighting that manufactures a bunch of enclosures for fixtures and projectors.  These enclosures look every bit as awesome as some of the “sleep pods” in movies like Alien and 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Check them out:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

This is called a Vindicator, and it’s a fiber-optic based laser “module, processor, control system interface, and remote lens assembly,” to quote the product page.  Oh Hell.  Catch The Wind, Inc, I am going to pretty much copy the text from the product page - this is an awesome product.  I hope you don’t mind.  People should buy these so that wind power shows people how awesome green energy will be.  From the product page:

The Vindicator™ fiber optic laser wind sensing system is capable of measuring real-time horizontal and vertical wind speed and direction data at varying ranges ahead of the sensor location. The sensor design is based on state-of-the-art fiber optic laser technology developed and patented at Optical Air Data Systems LLC.

The Vindicator™ system is comprised of a fiber optic based laser module, processor, control system interface, and a remote lens assembly. The laser module and processor are housed in a separate assembly that may be located either within the wind turbine nacelle, or with the remote lens assembly.

Using concepts of Doppler radar, with light as the medium of detection, the Vindicator™ system quickly senses air particle movement. The system processor analyzes the air particle movement producing speed and direction data for wind field determination. The first production variant of the Vindicator™ system will sense the wind out to 300 meters; as industry learns how to utilize and integrate this new technology into various applications, longer ranges can be incorporated.

How does the Vindicator™ laser wind sensor work?

The Vindicator™ wind sensing system works by integrating with a wind turbine’s control system, or electronic brain. The system’s fiber optic lasers sense the wind that is approaching the wind turbine at a range of 300 meters and report this information to the control system in sufficient time to adjust and orient the turbine. Utilizing control algorithms, the control system will decide how to best exploit the wind that is approaching the turbine and command internal systems to either change blade pitch and/or re-orient the entire nacelle in an effort to maintain efficiency, reduce the effects of wind shear and gusts, or maintain a constant blade speed. Without the Vindicator™ laser wind sensor, wind turbines will continue to be out of phase with changes in the prevailing wind.

My alma mater, The Ohio State University, and their Institute for Materials Research has come up with a solar material that utilizes all wavelengths of light across the spectrum - so in layman’s terms, this material can absorb energy from the entire visible spectrum of light!  It’s been a major problem for years with solar voltaics and the amount of energy they’re able to absorb - but OSU has solved this problem with their new super plastic full-spectrum light absorber.  From Inhabitat’s article:

The new electrically-conductive plastic includes materials such as molybdenum and titanium. It operates upon the same principles as standard photovoltaic materials, wherein light energizes the atoms of the material and knocks electrons free to generate a current. Whereas in traditional photovoltaics the electrons are removed for a fraction of a second, in the new hybrid material the electrons are excited for much longer (7 million times) than before.

Wow.  GO BUCKEYES!

The problem with a lot of LED replacement lamps is that they’re space-aged looking, and need special bases and such.  A company called Frog Design has solved this problem, and quite frankly, they’re sitting on a goldmine in this humble LD’s opinion.

I give you the Frog Light.  An LED lamp that looks like an incandescent, uses the same medium screw-type base as all of the other incandescents in your house, and will use a fraction of the power.  Check it out.

thanks Yanko Design!

Treehugger posted an article about “the most relaxing room in the world” - a space at the University of Herfortshire was created to help people relax - lit in heavy blues and greens, the room featured lavendar scented pillows, soft original music by Tim Blinko, and an artificial blue sky.  From the original article at Alpha Galileo:

“The pace of modern-day life, credit crunch, and financial crisis is making many people feel very stressed and so we have created this space to help them relax”, noted Professor Wiseman.

“Research suggests that the subdued green light enhances the production of dopamine in the brain and provide a calming sensation. In addition, the artificial blue sky helps create a mild form of sensory deprivation that will help them turn their attention inward and distract them away from daily stress.”

The Alpha Galileo article has a bunch of tips on busting stress.  Are you stressed out lately?

Did you know that pretty soon over a half a billion people are going to be saying goodbye to incandescent lamps?  Yeah.  A half a billion, plus.  There’s a great article at Forbes about this very topic.  Please read it!

An excerpt:

In a little more than a year, more than half a billion people in nearly 30 nations around the world will bid adieu to the incandescent light bulb.

Last week, the European Union joined Australia, the Philippines and Cuba in finalizing plans to outlaw the sale of incandescent light bulbs by 2010. The U.S. plans to ban the bulbs beginning in 2012.

And for good reason. Incandescent light bulbs, which convert heat into light, are notoriously lazy, using only about 2% of the electricity they consume and wasting the rest as heat. Considering that lighting accounts for nearly one quarter of the world’s electricity use, the potential energy savings are prodigious. The prospect of converting those savings into profits has encouraged a clutch of companies to commercialize cutting-edge lighting technologies. If the past presages the future, it will take more than an intriguing technology and superior economics to kill the incandescent light bulb, especially in the U.S.