Tagged: LED

April 19, 2012

IKEA is entering the SMART TV market

Yes you read that correctly, our beloved furniture maker from the days when we didn’t have money and we were all about DYI has announced that their TV storage units now come with build-in TVs – called Uppleva.

The LED backlit TVs will be available in 24 – 46 inches and will be build into the furniture together with a Blu-ray / DVD player and a 2.1 (2.1? really? what kind of surround sound is that?) surround sound setup.

The TVs are Full HD, SMART Vs that are Wifi ready and play DivX files which is something that all TVs should do.

One of their selling points is that all the cables are hidden to reduce the clutter, but at the same time the TV offers multiple USB and HDMI ports on the side – so luckily you can add all your other gadgets to it and bring back the cluttered cables Smile

Mind you as a student with no money, just moved out of home and your parents offered to buy you some furniture, why not have the TV build into it. Prices seem to be starting at around $1000 and it should be available later this year in selected European countries.

Will I buy one? probably not. I think IKEA needs to stick to what they are good at and that is furniture.

Check out their video below

Let me know what you think in the comments

@maniac13

July 27, 2009

The wooden Ruler 2.0

The ruler is one of those everyday things we use and never really think about it twice. This is how it works and that’s it.

2 designers with the support of udk industrial design department designed the “Electronic Ruler”. It is a concept that measures the length of drawn lines no matter where on the ruler you start and stop drawing. It can also measure the distance between 2 points, add the value of different lines and change its scale.

To make it even cooler they placed a set of LEDs under a thin strip of wood-like material that displays the digits.

found here

October 9, 2008

Light bulb networks could be the next WiFi

A team at Boston University’s College of Engineering is working on low-power LEDs which could utilize an optical communication system to carry data wirelessly. Using a technique which rapidly switches the LEDs on and off data transmissions could be made via imperceptible flickering patterns, and each light would be its own network entry point at speeds of 1 to 10Mbps. The concept is more secure than current RF techniques because it requires linked devices be in line-of-sight, and the technology would draw far less energy than conventional radios. Says professor Thomas Little, “Imagine if your computer, iPhone, TV, radio and thermostat could all communicate with you when you walked in a room just by flipping the wall light switch and without the usual cluster of wires.”

How to make your own air graffiti photos/art using LED glowsticks.

Painting in the air… so much fun, cheap and easy to do. Here’s how: Now you can probably see my 3 year old daughter’s feet in the pic below whilst her big 6 year old brother manages to go a bit higher with the blue/yellow combo. I made this image on the weekend using colour changing LED glowsticks (you can get these on ebay or the address below) and a 6 second exposure (Nikon D70). I’ve since made a neat few wallpaper desktops with this effect (will post them later when I have a spare sec to edit them to the right size).

Cheap LED glowsticks for under $10 can be found from companies like this:
http://www.glowproducts.com/batteryoperated/rainbowshakestick/

or you can try Ebay:
http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?from=R40&_trksid=m37&satitle=LED+glow+sticks&category0=