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This mesmerizing structure is an arrangement on display at the 2012 Light Festival of Ghent, Belgium. The Italian firm Luminarie De Cagna carefully arranged its 55,000 LEDs. The apparent height of the ceiling is no camera trick. It’s twenty-eight meters high and visitors can walk right in.
Link -via Colossal | Photo: Stijn Coppens
Finally! If you’re like me, you wake up most days and wonder how to best communicate with people details about your nostrils. Noda Akira has now made this process a lot easier, thanks to his new breath-sensing LED gadget. Watch a video at the link.
Link | Photo: Noda Akira
Shopping in The Place Mall in Beijing, China is like taking a strange journey through a hallucinatory wonderland, or maybe it’s just the giant LED screens that play animated videos all day. They don’t look like very much fun for people who suffer from motion sickness, or for those who already think the sky is falling.
–via SuperPunch
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Yoda with LED Light Saber Tree Topper – $59.95
Does Yoda make your days merry and bright? Let the Yoda light up your holiday season with LED Light Saber Tree Topper from the NeatoShop. This fantastic Tree Topper shaped like Yoda wields a green light-up LED Light Saber. Strong with this tree topper, the force is. Hmmmmmm.
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more fabulous Star Wars items and unusual Holiday gear.
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Ring Pops are fun, but I light up candy rings are way more fashionable. These would be good for kids, but they would even be awesome for adults going out at night. If you want to make your own, Instructables can teach you how.
Link Via Geekosystem
Thanks to some eccentrics, the fedora is making a comeback. I guess it’s that whole Don Draper chic thing. But it strikes me as inappropriate headgear for the workplace, or public places in general. This helmet made by Garrett Mace offers a classier, yet subtle statement to people that you meet.
If you think the above photo of the helmet is impressive, then just wait until you see the video at the link. The LED fibers can light up in complex, variable patterns and colors. It’s a really amazing piece of fashion design.
Look at this tie -isn’t it awesome? It’s like the ties worn in the Kraftwerk video for the song “The Robots.” Nine LEDs flash in descending order, guaranteeing you’ll be noticed. You can make your own, too, and be the robot of the party, with instructions from Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories. Link
Dress up a plain pair of shoes for a special occasion by making your own Twinkle Toes, colorful ruffles that contain LEDs to show off your fancy footwork. Becky Stern takes you through the process step-by-step, plus a video tutorial. Link -via Laughing Squid
This image of Nyan Cat was created using Light Scythe, an open-source invention for writing text and drawing images with light in mid-air. I can’t begin to tell you I understand it, but you can see for yourself. Link -via I Can Has Cheezburger
(Image credit: Flickr user Mechatronics Guy)
Philips aims to make our lives quite a bit brighter in the future, and their latest creation is like something out of a science fiction movie. They, along with Kvadrat Soft Cells, are in the process of making luminous textile, essentially mini LED lights embedded into material that can be hung on walls like regular wallpaper, or hung up like glowing works of art. Read more about it, and watch a short commercial style video with a shot of the ghostly wallpaper in action, over at PopSci.
Rooster LED Flashlight and Keychain – $3.95
Behold the Rooster LED Flashlight and Keychain from the NeatoShop! With a push of a button, a hearty crow, and a small beacon of light you can show the world your love of all things chicken.
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more hilarious Keychains & Key Covers.
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Star Wars Lightsaber Flashlight (Darth Vader) – $25.95
Are you a Star Wars fanatic in need of a new flashlight? Behold the Star Wars Lightsaber Flashlight (Darth Vader) from the NeatoShop. This fabulous red LED flashlight has lightsaber sound effects when you turn it on/off. Get one of these flashlights and a light source force will always be with you! Star Wars Lightsaber Flashlight (Anakin Skywalker) is also available.
Be sure to check out all the fabulous Star Wars items available at the NeatoShop.
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Deep-Sea Anglerfish LED Light – $15.95
The Deep-Sea Anglerfish LED Light from the NeatoShop is so cool that you are captivated by its awesomeness. You can’t help but to come in for a closer look. Chomp! Gulp! If you were a little fishy in the ocean this guy would have already devoured you whole. Aren’t you glad he is just a tame little light?
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more fabulous Night Lights!
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The lighting apparently doesn’t head the bench itself, so it’s probably more comfortable than the keyboard bench or retractable spike bench. Opulent Items sells a bench that can be lit with different colors. It’s weather resistant, but you do have to plug it into an electrical outlet.
Link via Technabob | Photo: Opulent Items
Not only is this super cool, it’s homemade! Instructables user chr posted the entire process, with pictures. This project is entered into a contest where the rules were “Make something awesome”. I think he did. Link -via The Daily What
Mike Szczys went all out this Halloween and installed a matrix of 70 LEDs in a pumpkin! The result is a way to scroll messages in the dark for visitors and trick-or-treaters. See a video of the Jack-o-Lantern in action, and the complete process of building it at Hack a Day. Link -Thanks, Mike!
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Last year, I mentioned speculation by some scientists that it might be possible to create LED tattoos. There’s been progress in the field since that time. Researchers have developed arrays that are 2.5 micrometers thick and 100 micrometers across:
The PDMS substrate is flexible enough that the circuits can still function even if twisted or stretched by even as much as 75 percent.[...]
The researchers successfully tested the LEDs by integrating a sheet into the fingertip of a vinyl glove, which they then immersed in soapy water, and they have also implanted an array beneath the skin in an animal model.
Link via DVICE | Image: Nature Materials
LEGO City Minifig Keylights: Policeman, Fireman, Construction Worker – $9.95
LEGO has come up with the follow-up of their popular Minifig keychain LED flashlight: here are the Policeman, Fireman, and Construction Worker City Key Light from the NeatoShop. Please take a look at our current selection of neat LEGO stuff – they’re the perfect geek gifts: Link
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This skirt, designed by Meredith Scheff, is called the StarBoard North Skirt. When you are facing north, little LEDs in the skirt light up! Actually, the part of the skirt that is facing north is always lit, so different panels light up as you move around. She doesn’t sell the skirts, but she will sell you a kit that includes LEDS and soft circuit boards so you can make your own. Link to project (with video). Link to the kit. -via Bad Astronomy
What do you get when you mix tiny remote-controlled helicopters, LEDs, and MIT Researchers?
Introducing Flyfire, an awesome project that aims to produce fully immersive and interactive environment. It’s sort of like being in a 3D monitor with the pixels actually flying around you:
In its first implementation, the Flyfire project sets out to explore the capabilities of this display system by using a large number of self-organizing micro helicopters. Each helicopter contains small LEDs and acts as a smart pixel. Through precisely controlled movements, the helicopters perform elaborate and synchronized motions and form an elastic display surface for any desired scenario.
With the self-stabilizing and precise controlling technology from the ARES Lab, the motion of the pixels is adaptable in real time. The Flyfire canvas can transform itself from one shape to another or morph a two-dimensional photographic image into an articulated shape. The pixels are physically engaged in transitioning images from one state to another, which allows the Flyfire canvas to demonstrate a spatially animated viewing experience.
Link | BuzzFeed has the video clip
LEGO Head Lamp – $11.95
Need illumination and your hands free at the same time? LEGO minifig to the rescue! New at the NeatoShop: LED flashlight shaped like LEGO minifig (complete with posable legs) that can clip onto a headband, shirt pocket, backpack and so on.
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The folks at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories will put an LED into anything, but this is quite lovely. The dried shells of sea urchins are already beautiful, and can be made into tiny lights that resemble paper lanterns for night lights or decorations. Link
Dutch distiller Medea Spirits came up with a clever advertising gimmick for their vodka: scrolling LED labels. You can even program them to express 6 of your own messages, each of which is up to 225 characters long. Video in the links.
Link via OhGizmo! | Video | Photo: Medea
When you watch this video, you might think that this is a man standing behind a sheet of plastic, re-drawing the hands on a clock face every minute. Actually, this clock by designer Maarten Baas is a LED screen showing the artist doing precisely that on a continuous loop. The video is from the recent Design Miami fair, which ended on December 5th.
Link via Gizmodo | Artist’s Website | Design Miami
Charlie Sorrel has an article at Wired exploring the potential development of LED-lit tattoos. New chips are small enough to be placed under the skin, mounted on a sheet of silk that dissolves into the body:
New LED tattoos from the University of Pennsylvania could make the Illustrated Man real (minus the creepy stories, of course). Researchers there are developing silicon-and-silk implantable devices which sit under the skin like a tattoo. Already implanted into mice, these tattoos could carry LEDs, turning your skin into a screen.
The silk substrate onto which the chips are mounted eventually dissolves away inside the body, leaving just the electronics behind. The silicon chips are around the length of a small grain of rice — about 1 millimeter, and just 250 nanometers thick. The sheet of silk will keep them in place, molding to the shape of the skin when saline solution is added.
These displays could be hooked up to any kind of electronic device, also inside the body. Medical uses are being explored, from blood-sugar sensors that show their readouts on the skin itself to neurodevices that tie into the body’s nervous system — hooking chips to particular nerves to control a prosthetic hand, for example.
Chips are already used inside bodies, most notably the tiny RFID tags injected into pets. But the flexible nature of these “tattooed” circuits means they can move elastically with the body, sitting in places that a rigid circuit board couldn’t.
The electronics company Philips is developing the idea, and you can see a concept video of their work at the link.
Link | Image: flickr user spacemanbobby
The Galaxy Dress is composed of 24,000 LEDs, each measuring two by two millimeters, attached to four layers of chiffon and forty layers of crinoline. The whole thing can be powered by a few iPod batteries for up to an hour. It’s one of the recent creations of CuteCircuit, a design firm specializing in “wearable technology.” The dress is now on permanent display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. More pictures at the link.
Link via Fast Company | CuteCircuit
Artist Soomi Park created a LED rig that gives the user the appearance of having glowing eyelashes. Here’s her motivation:
An LED Eyelash project is brought into the world to find an answer to this simple question: Why do women want larger and bigger eyes? In particular, Asians tend to have stronger needs for bigger eyes as a standard of beauty.
Since relatively few Asians are born with big eyes, those without can only look for alternative ways to make their eyes look prettier – i.e., larger. They have a repertoire of skills to make their eyes look enlarged: makeup, jewelry, and plastic surgery. Their desire for bigger eyes are almost obsessive in that so many women look to plastic surgery in order to make their dream come true. Soomi calls this, the fetish of Big Eyes.
Artist’s Website via Make
This video describes a banner consisting of LED tubes and sophisticated sensors that graces the atrium at one of the buildings on Microsoft’s campus. It was designed by Mode Studios in order to encourage creativity and envision dynamic systems. What’s on the screen changes with the weather and traffic patterns inside the atrium. There’s also a “hot spot” where a person can control what’s on the screen through body movements and temperature.
Via Gizmodo | Mode Studios Website
A company called Evergreen sells wood-faced LED-lit alarm clock radios with speakers. There are two versions available, with either one or two speakers. It sells for about $25, but so far, only in Japan. More info at the link (if you speak Japanese).
Link via CrunchGear
