ETC had a lot of really friendly people at their booth this year!  The EOS console was something that I am very interested in learning more about, especially after Mike Zinman told me about all of his excellent escapades with it.  Check out images I took of ETC’s space below.

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

If you’ve ever rented a Virtuoso console, the series 400 power/data distro system, and the MBox Media Server, you might have wondered why you can’t buy these products.  A guy named Dean from NYC asked PRG that same question.  Check out the article at Live Design, it’s interesting.

FYI, the Bad Boy from PRG is rental only.

Check out this article at Nationalpost.com.  It’s all about Abhay Wadhwa and his design firm, and all of the amazing stuff that’s going on with them, including some interviewing stuff.  It’s relatively short, so read it!

In 2009 we’re going to be seeing some new and not-quite-the-typical Christmas colors in certain brands of LED Christmas lights.  Evident Technologies, a company specializing in nanocrystal semiconductors has signed an agreement with Holiday Creations/Diogen Lighting, Inc to enable quantum dot LEDs to be commercialized this season.

Why is this notable or exciting?  Well, mostly because we’re going to see peach, lime, aqua, and some other colors in LED Christmas light strands this year, and that’s cool!  Look for the Dotstrand Brand for these new colors.  This is also exciting because enough of us are now buying LED Christmas lights that we’re causing a switchover in market research to make things like this happen.

Thanks to LED Mag for the article!

Is anyone who reads Jim On Light going to LDI this year?  It looks like I’m going after all - and I’ll be snapping pictures, chatting, and talking to whomever I can, for as long as I can.  I’ll be reporting my travels here, and I’ll write about as much stuff as I can see.  I’m only there for Friday, but I will report as much as I can!

Are you going?  Post in the comments, please - I’d love to meet you!

Royal Phillips (you know, Phillips - the company that makes lamps) has a bunch of new technologies geared towards green living, “simplicity,” and sustainability.  Inspired by a post at Inhabitat about Phillips’ Interactive LED Light Bulb, I started researching their new line of “Simplicity” branded stuff.  I must say, holy crap.  The basis for their new technology is making the alteration of lighting levels in your house as easy as the flick of a hand or simple gestures.

First, check out the isocahedron shaped Simplicity LED lamps:

This is hand-controlled.  It senses movement.

I also found this video of the SImplicity Demo Event in NYC:

The whole mantry around the Simplicity technology and products is that they’re engineered and designed around you, easy to operate, and advanced.  I’m impressed.

Funny enough, after writing the post about Sustainable Dance Clubs, I found an article from Interactive Architecture about the kinetic dance floors used in places like Club Watt and the new place opening up in London (King’s Cross, actually).

The floors are equipped with a spring mount system that operate a piezoelectric block, sending the power to batteries used to power whatever it’s connected to, in this case, the LED dance floor.

LED Magazine published an article about a new LED ribbon product to hit the market from Tradekey - a flexible product, waterproof, with unlimited possibilites for applications.  Theatrically, I’m sure you could come up with eleventy billion uses for the product, as I have come up with about 7 billion so far.

Some specs:

1. Three types available. 30 LEDs per meter; 60 LEDs per meter; 120 LEDs per meter
2. Make use of SMD LED which the size is 3.55mm x 2.8mm x 1.85mm
3. Waterproof and its waterproof index being IP 68
4. There are connection wires at both ends
5. The height is 2.5 mm; can be used in small areas
6. Normal brightness, high reliability, long life and non-flickering LED
7. Excellent flexible PCB board. Bend it easily with the angle more than 160 degrees
8. Self-adhesive 3M label in the back, fix it firmly as your requirement
10. Solid-state, high shock or vibration resistant
11. Beam angle: 140 degree
12. Can be applied as backlight or sidelight source

In an article at Optics.org, Rubicon Technology is listed as delivering news that they are having some shortfalls in selling the 2-inch LED wafers that they spent some time developing - and that they are now going to soon enter production on a 6-inch LED wafer. All of this news comes as Samsung is suspected of starting the manufacturing process on a 6-inch LED wafer.

Rubicon Technology, which is driving a shift to move to a 6-inch substrate wafer on the industry. 2-inch wafer technology has been a long-standing tradition in the LED industry, and breakthroughs are expected from a 6-inch substrate. Shortfalls in the sale of all of this technology have been affected by - yep, you guessed it, the crappy American economy right now. From the article:

The drop comes because the substrate maker has postponed nearly $7 million of orders back into 2009, $2.5 million relating to 2-inch LED substrates and $4.3 million for silicon-on-sapphire RF applications.

Parvez blames producers of LEDs for handheld devices and small displays – who he says are struggling in the current economic climate – for the shortfall. He says these companies exclusively use 2-inch substrates, whereas it seems the users of larger diameter substrates are aiming for market sectors with greater growth potential.

What the heck is LED wafer technology, you might ask? Well, there’s a PDF of some manufacturing processes here, and a page here, and one here. Read up - I did, as I was wondering what the article was talking about. It’s actually interesting stuff.