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 [...]
Read More 5.11 Tactical, CleanTechnica, LED, LED flashlight, ultracapacitorPart 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 [...]
Read More outdoor enclosures, Tempest enclosures, Tempest LightingThis 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. [...]
Read MoreMy 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 [...]
Read More energy, photovoltaics, Solar, The Ohio State University, visible spectrumThe 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 [...]
Read More frog design, incandescent, LEDTreehugger 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 [...]
Read More blue, calm, green, Herfortshire, lavendar, peaceDid 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 [...]
Read More ecotech, incandescent lamps, lampsNo, we're not all going to be experimenting with illegal amphetamines in this post, we're talking about Efrain E. Velez's crank-powered lamp. Krank, if you notice from the images, looks a heck of a lot like the old crank drills that my father has. On a few cranks of the Krank crank crankable handle, you [...]
Read More Efrain E. Velez, green, Krank, LEDInhabitat has a great article about the Dobpler LED Wall, which is a motion-activated LED installation in the pedestrian tunnel in Sandnes Sentrum, Norway. The installation was a part of the city's European Capital of Culture 2008 events – The Strømmer, as it is called, is an interactive wall of LEDs that illuminate when a [...]
Read More dobpler, interactive LED wall, LED, Norway, Snohetta Architects