Gravity-Powered LED Lamp Revolutionizes Self-Sufficient Lighting

For approximately US$ 5.– GravityLight allows to shed light into any dwelling. Picture from the article

This is a very interesting new development. Since the arrival of affordable LEDs and their increasingly better efficiency and light quality new mechanisms can be used to power these new lights in any dwelling.

British designers Martin Riddiford and Jim Reeves of GravityLight use just this–gravity with a sand filled bag or other wights to power the lamp. The lamp also serves as a power station to power radios or other low-wattage devices.

See for yourself and watch the video at SmartPlanet: How a $5 gravity-powered LED could revolutionize cheap lighting | SmartPlanet.

Related articles

• Duo create GravityLight: Lamp that runs off of gravity (w/ video) (phys.org)
• Lights Powered by Gravity Brighten Rural Areas (treehugger.com)
• GravityLight is a Cheap, Green Weight-Powered Alternative To Solar Lamps (inhabitat.com)
• A $5 LED Lamp Powered By Sand And Gravity (fastcodesign.com)
• New Frontiers in Free Energy: The Gravity Light (wakingtimes.com)
• Innovative £3 light powered by sand and gravity (wired.co.uk)
• Gravity powered lights, cheaper than solar (boingboing.net)
• Powered By Gravity (andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com)

‘Li-Fi’: Wireless Data Via LED Lights, Anywhere

R, G, and B LEDs. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In an earlier post I wrote about data transmission by light in the home.

But this development gives the story a new twist: Using not only the lights in buildings but also outside light sources to transmit data wirelessly.

Invisible Mercedes Brings James Bond Technology To Life

Usually I don’t promote companies or products. But this is too good to let pass.

Invisible Mercedes. Image from firewireblog.com

RT from TechCast.org: From the Yahoo Auto Blog (By Justin Hyde | Motoramic):

In a promotion for its first production fuel-cell vehicle in Germany, Mercedes-Benz turned a B-Class hatchback invisible — at least, from a distance, using the same idea behind the invisible car in the James Bond film “Die Another Day.” See if you can see it before it sees you.

Visible Light Communication An Alternative to Wifi?

Project Omega

An interesting alternative to WiFi in the home is the use of LED lamps where the network signal can be modulated on the light beam (Visible Light Communication, VLC) resulting in data transfers of  1GB/s.

Project Omega, the Home Gigabit Access Project is a project in the EU’s FP7 framework. The interdisciplinary project consortium consists of 20 European partners from industry and academia.

So the next time an Audi is blinking with his LED lights on the Autobahn behind you he might just want to send you a tweet.

It will be easy now to tell the kids that surfing time is over by just switching off the light at night . . .

Home: Omega.

Image via Wikipedia

Related articles

• D-Light Project (see.ed.ac.uk)
• Optical WLAN uses LED light for up to 800 Mbit/s networking (slashgear.com)
• Data are traveling by light (eurekalert.org)
• Data are traveling by light (physorg.com)