This $27 multi-color LED light bulb has a built-in Bluetooth speaker

Want to add some tunes to a room without adding any clutter whatsoever? Installing speakers in your walls or ceiling is awesome if you’ve got a ton of cash to burn, but the RAYWAY LED Bluetooth Speaker Light Bulb is a much easier and cheaper way to go. It’s a tiny speaker so the sound quality isn’t going to blow you away, but it’s an awesome way to add streaming music to a bathroom, garage, or basement in a matter of seconds with no installation necessary. If you can screw in a light bulb, you can install this speaker — literally.

Magna International to buy lighting products maker Olsa for $267 million

Canadian auto parts supplier Magna International Inc said on Thursday it would buy Italian company Olsa SpA for 230 million euros ($267 million), to expand its automobile lighting business. Turin-based Olsa supplies lighting products to car makers such as Volkswagen and BMW. Magna will have a total of 11 lighting manufacturing facilities after the Olsa deal, which is expected to close by the end of 2018.

An Artsy and Functional LED Filament Lamp

Some projects end up being more objet d’art than objet d’utile. There’s no accounting for taste, of course, but we really like the way commanderkull’s LED filament lamp turned out, and it’s obvious that a fair amount of work went into it. Five COB filament strips were suspended from a lacy frame made of wire, which also supports the custom boost converter needed to raise the 12-volt input to the 60 volts needed by the filaments. The boost converter is based on the venerable 555 timer chip, which sits in the middle of the frame suspended by its splayed-out legs and support components.

The E.P. Light Bulb is energy efficient and made to be recycled

As the world finally starts to realize the problems with plastic, new eco-friendly products are proving popular. The E.P. Eco-Friendly LED Light Bulb is one example—this beautiful bulb uses 60 percent less energy than a standard bulb, and it is made from recyclable material. The E.P. bulb is currently available for $19.95 at the PopSci Shop in a range of styles. Chances are, you won’t have seen a bulb that looks quite like this one. Each E.P. is made from clear resin, decorated by hand with a drop of color. The effect is stunning, but this design isn’t just for show. The resin can be recycled, meaning the bulb can be used for something else in future. It also has the benefit of being drop-proof.

Outdoor lighting: A beginner’s guide

Summer is upon us and many of us have already started spending more time outdoors. So in addition to making sure you have enough gas for your grill, it’s also a good time to figure out your outdoor lighting setup. To help you get started, we asked two experts for tips and advice and included a handful of product picks to consider as well. Bright lights that wash a house or columns not only add drama, but also security, as outdoor lighting can be an enormous deterrent for would-be burglars, Wong explains. There are loads of options that help boost security, from Wi-Fi-controlled LED light bulbs that can be controlled remotely to motion-sensor lights with distance and size controls.

Streetlights along Noida expressway make way for LEDs

Noida: LED lights, which have replaced traditional streetlamps along the Noida-Greater Noida Expressway in India, were inaugurated on Friday evening. The Noida Authority has decided to replace around 74,000 streetlamps in the city with LEDs by next year, a move that is expected to reduce power consumption by more than 50%. Noida Authority CEO Alok Tandon said the expression of interest for the project was released last year in July and Tata Projects Ltd had bagged the tender two months ago for replacing streetlamps in the city with LEDs and maintaining them for seven years.

UN Aims to Eradicate Inefficient Incandescent Light Bulbs

Partners in a new United Nations-led initiative want to ensure that as the most inefficient light bulbs disappear from retailers’ shelves in the United States and Europe, those incandescent and halogen bulbs aren’t sold in developing countries. Last month, at the Energy Efficiency Global Forum in Copenhagen, the U.N. Environment Programme, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and Philips Lighting (now known as Signify) released a model lighting regulation that will enable developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America to easily adopt energy-efficiency standards as stringent as those in the United States and Europe.

Despite the Hype, LEDs Haven’t Revolutionized Broadcasting

When LEDs began to take over from old-style light bulbs in homes and businesses, the film industry looked on in awe. The mathematics were impossible to ignore: at a conservative estimation, these new light sources produced four or five times as much light as the traditional technology for the same power? And despite some early uncertainty over color rendering, it’s now reasonably easy to obtain lights that fulfill that early promise to at least some degree. Over roughly the same period of time, we’ve also seen camera sensitivity increase greatly. Film never really got much faster than ISO 500 — there was some 800 but it was grainy, perhaps so grainy that people preferred to push-process the 500 and end up in much the same place.

Cree XLamp CMA LEDs now in stock at RS Components

RS Components is among the first to stock Cree XLamp CMA high-current LEDs which feature optical-source sizes and package sizes consistent with the standard-density CXA2 series. Similarity with CXA2 LEDs helps developers create higher-performing variants of existing lighting products to satisfy new market opportunities efficiently. Designed for best-in-class lumen output and efficacy at high drive currents, the XLamp CMA series features an enhanced metal COB design that ensures superior thermal management and reliability.

Tomorrow’s lighting technology is already here, though the changeover is not yet complete

Theatre has come a long way from the days when “lighting” meant the ability to manipulate or work around the movement of the sun. Now theatres have extensive grids that allow designers to hang and focus tens and hundreds of lights to conjure everything from bright sunlight to a candlelit dinner, and all points in between. Until fairly recently, if you walked into any given theatre that was setting up for tech, you’d often see a lighting designer up on a ladder on the stage, possibly with an assistant down below. They’d hang one, two, maybe a third instrument and focus all of them on the same area. Now you might see something a little different, as theatre is in the midst of a fundamental lighting change—one that will narrow those three instruments down to one, and make them at least partly remotely adjustable. The change has a bulky official name, Light Emitting Diode, but everyone knows it as LED.

Silicon carbide LEDs make bright single photon sources

A variety of new colour centres (luminescing crystal defects that can emit individual photons) have been found in light-emitting diodes made from silicon carbide (SiC). The result confirms once again that it is a promising single-photon source and a good material out of which to make quantum bits (qubits). Single-photon emitters operating at room temperature could be used in on-chip quantum communication applications, and as a source of “flying” qubits for quantum computers. Such computers exploit the ability of quantum particles to be in a “superposition” of two or more states at the same time unlike classical computers that store and process information as “bits” that can have one of two logic states – “0” or “1”

Engineers have developed a low cost production technology for thin-film blue flexible vertical micro LEDs

A KAIST research team developed a crucial source technology that will advance the commercialization of micro LEDs. Professor Keon Jae Lee from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and his team have developed a low cost production technology for thin-film blue flexible vertical micro LEDs (f-VLEDs). In CES 2018, micro LED TV was spotlighted as a strong candidate for replacing the active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) display. Micro LED is a sub-100 um light source for red, green and blue light, which has advantages of outstanding optical output, ultra-low power consumption, fast response speed, and excellent flexibility.

Twist-N-Dim Lighting

TWIST is a literal and figurative twist on the pendant light that makes dimming possible without installing a dimmer switch. Its unique construction and woven form make it possible to manually twist the base to enclose the bulb and instantly reduce its brightness. Let’s say you want to set the mood, or maybe you just need some brightness as you sit down with your favorite book, you can give TWIST a twist and create the custom illumination you need. Its artistic, sculptural shape also looks great whether the lights on or off.

UV-C LEDs disinfect and purify

Luminus Devices has expanded its ultraviolet LED portfolio with two short-wave UV-C emitters intended for medical and health products. Each device provides an emission wavelength of 280 nm for healthcare product disinfection, water and air purification, and surface disinfection of consumer appliances. The standard-footprint XST-3535-UV surface-mount emitter has a maximum drive current of 350 mA with optical power output of 30 mW to 60 mW. It provides a narrow viewing angle of 60° from its 3.5×3.5 mm package.

Energy-Efficient Light Bulbs Harder to Find, More Expensive in High-Poverty Neighborhoods

One of the easiest ways for a household to save energy and money is to install energy-efficient light bulbs in as many sockets as possible. But, according to a new University of Michigan study, the low-income households that benefit most from these savings have a harder time finding CFL and LED bulbs than do households in more affluent neighborhoods. They pay more money for them, too. For the study, a team led by Tony Reames, assistant professor at the School for Environment and Sustainability and director of the Urban Energy Justice Lab, canvassed 130 stores across Wayne County, Michigan, which encompasses Detroit and surrounding suburbs. Graduate students Michael Reiner and M. Ben Stacey conducted much of the on-the-ground data collection.

Modern LEDs in our cities that have the same impact 'as the midday sun' on animals are wreaking HAVOC with their internal body clocks

Light pollution from cities and towns is now so bad, much of Earth resembles a bright, glowing ball from space. LEDs, commonly used in street lights, can wreak havoc with the internal body clock of nocturnal animals, which can destroy migration patterns and reproductive cycles. Light-Emitting Diode, or LED, bulbs produce a sharp and intense light which is unnatural for many nocturnal animals and can be as damaging as 'the same brightness of midday sun', according to scientists. The latest findings of a two-year study could help protect migrating birds, as well as nocturnal animals whose predatory and breeding behaviour is being endangered by LED lights.

Simplifying Basic LED Effects

There was a time when having a blinking blue LED on a project was all you needed to be one of the cool kids. But now you need something more complex. LEDs should not just snap on, they should fade in and out. And blinking? Today’s hotness is breathing LEDs. If that’s the kind of project you want, you should check out [jandelgado’s] jled library. At first glance, an Arduino library for LED control might seem superfluous, but if you are interested in nice effects, the coding for them can be a bit onerous. If you don’t mind stopping everything while you fade an LED on (or off) then sure, you just write a loop and it is a few lines of code. But if you want to have it happen while other things continue to execute, it is a little different.

Bellefonte borough switches to LED lights to save money and environment

A local town in Centre County is making changes to save money. The Bellefonte borough's street lights will soon be changed to LED lights. Changing street lights may sound like a minor thing but in the end this project can save the borough thousands of dollars, while also being good for the environment. "In Bellefonte those lights have all been there for long enough, so yes... we are putting in new lights," West Penn Power spokesperson Todd Meyers said.

New study shows some LED lights can harm wildlife

Researchers have concluded that certain types of LED lights can be harmful toward a wide variety of wildlife, calling attention to the potential hazards of the rapid expansion of LED light usage. Though LEDs made up only 9 percent of the global market in 2011, that number is expected to rise to 69 percent by 2020. In a study published in the Journal of Experimental Zoology Part A: Ecological and Integrative Physiology, researchers concluded that blue and white LED lighting is the most harmful to wildlife, particularly animals such as sea turtles and insects, while green, amber and yellow are more favorable.

Standardized LEDs to slash the cost of automotive signal lamps

By combining standardized light sources and LED technology the Osram expects to fundamentally change the automotive signal lamp sector, enabling a uniform platform with four different light sources to cover all the important signal applications in vehicles. This will allow simple replacements, reduce complexity and overall costs for car manufacturers and it will lead to faster development processes thanks to adapted standards, the company anticipates. The UN/ECE (R128) standardized lamps will be available in four types for different signal applications in yellow (LY5), white (LW5, L1) and red (LR5).

Le Mans drivers to sample LED eyewear for alertness

There’s nothing like a world stage to promote an emerging technology. In international auto racing, the stage doesn’t get much bigger than Le Mans, the grueling 24-hour endurance contest and the latest sporting event where Osram will trial specially-adjusted LED lighting to help keep drivers and crew alert. Osram is providing LED-equipped glasses, tunable to blue, to drivers of the two-car BMW M Motorsport team and is outfitting BMW’s pit control area with blue-hued luminaires at the event, coming up this Saturday and Sunday at the fabled Circuit de la Sarthe raceway near Le Mans, France.

New LED lights help Jasper become 'smart city'

About 2,800 light fixtures in the city of Jasper will soon be converted to LED lighting. This energy saving effort is being led by Mayor David O’Mary, who says the switch to LED lights will enhance the city's appearance and raise awareness of the environment as Jasper leads the way with this type of technology.

There’s a Bluetooth speaker hiding in this $22 multicolor LED light bulb

Sometimes you come across a product and wonder why you didn’t think of it yourself. Well, this might be one of those times. If you want a simple Bluetooth speaker that doesn’t take up any space and never needs to be charged, you need to check out the RAYWAY LED Bluetooth Speaker Light Bulb. As the name subtly suggests, it’s an LED light bulb with a Bluetooth speaker built right in.

GE can't get rid of its light bulb business

General Electric has been linked to the light bulb for the past 126 years. Now, GE is having a hard time getting rid of it. It's been nearly a year since cash-strapped GE revealed plans to sell the struggling light bulb business and focus instead on moneymakers like jet engines and MRI machines. But GE (GE) has yet to find a taker for the iconic unit. The company is in "active discussions" with potential suitors for the lighting division, CEO John Flannery told analysts during a conference call last month.

Best smart light bulbs compatible with Google Home and Amazon Echo

Google Home and Amazon Echo devices can do more than just tell corny jokes and answer your weird questions. They can also control various smart devices in your home, like smart light bulbs and other lighting products. That means you can turn the lights on or off, dim them, and even change their color with voice commands. The setup process is a breeze. All you have to do is plug or screw in your smart light bulbs, connect them to your smart speaker using the Google Home or Alexa app, and you’re good to go. Some require a hub to work, while others connect directly to your Wi-Fi network.

Ambient Lighting for Baby

There are plenty of great reasons to have a child. Perhaps you find the idea of being harshly criticized by a tiny person very appealing, or maybe you enjoy somebody screaming nonsense at you while you’re trying to work on something. But for us, we think the best reason for procreation is getting another excuse to build stuff. It’ll be what, at least two years before a baby can solder or program a microcontroller? Somebody’s going to have to do it for them until then. To try to help his baby daughter get on a better sleep schedule, Amir Avni decided to outfit her room with some smart lighting to establish when it’s time for her to wake up. Not only can he and his wife control the time the lights come on to “day” mode, but they can also change the colors. For example, they can switch over to a red glow at night. Despite some learning experience setbacks, the both the parents and the baby are very happy with the final product.

5 best LED bulbs that are worth the money

Your home has never looked so bright and beautiful. That's because modern light bulbs are bright, clear, energy-efficient and smart. It's easier now than ever to dim your lights, control them from your smartphone or with your voice. These days, light bulbs truly transform your house into an inviting, beautiful home. That's due in large part to LED bulbs. You've probably changed your old-fashioned incandescent bulbs in favor of LED bulbs over the past few years. They've largely replaced traditional light bulbs on store shelves. They're more energy efficient and, if you know which ones work the best, they can be a great value, no matter your budget.

Fagerhult taps new CEO with strong IoT credentials

Bodil Sonesson is steeped in connected security cameras and data analytics for video surveillance stalwart Axis, and is well clued in on sensors. She joins later this year. With the lighting industry heading resolutely into the Internet of Things, Fagerhult Group has landed a new CEO who looks set to bring solid IoT experience — including sensors, data collection, and data analysis — when she joins the Swedish lighting vendor later this year. Bodil Sonesson is currently vice president of global sales at Swedish security-camera stalwart Axis Communications, which claims to have been the first company in the world to have launched a networked camera, back in 1996, the year Sonesson joined.

LED stool shows you how to sit

We all know that it's important to sit up straight, and to not stay seated for too long. With that in mind, researchers at Germany's Fraunhofer Institutes for Industrial Engineering and for Silicate Research have developed an LED-equipped stool that coaches people in their sitting. Along with LEDs, the stool is also outfitted with multiple flexible pressure sensors, each one consisting of an insulating film sandwiched by two electrode layers made of conductive silicone. By measuring the user's weight distribution, these sensors are able to determine if the person is sitting ergonomically – more specifically, they detect if the user is seated at an improper angle, or is maintaining one posture for too long.

Salesforce Tower skyscraper crowned with six-floor LED art project

The tallest public art installation in the United States is now live, comprising the top six floors of the new Salesforce Tower skyscraper in San Francisco that is one of the two tallest buildings on the west coast of the US. Local San Francisco artist Jim Campbell designed the LED-based dynamic artwork entitled “Day for Night.” The 11,000 LEDs said to comprise the solid-state lighting (SSL) project will deliver dynamic but soft lighting and animations that are meant to evoke the culture and pace of the city.

Noon Home smart lighting’s app boosts its customization options

Noon Home launched an updated app that boosts the system’s smart home lighting customization capabilities. Noon added compatibility with smart home standard Lifx light bulbs and also tripled its capacity for customized lighting combinations or scenes. Noon’s support for Lifx Wi-Fi-enabled smart LED light bulbs increases the system’s potential for room light control and custom lighting scene creation. Lifx white, infinite color, and infrared bulbs are available in various sizes. Because they do not require a smart home lighting hub, Noon’s Room Director module can identify, configure, and control Lifx bulbs directly.

NASA utilizes Osram LED horticultural lighting to tune recipes for plants in space

Osram has announced that it is supporting an LED horticultural lighting project at the NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The space agency is testing a multichannel solid-state lighting (SSL) design that combines phosphor-converted white LEDs, monochromatic red and blue LEDs, and ultraviolet (UV) LEDs. The research into horticultural lighting is intended to enable crews to more quickly grow produce in the future during space travel or aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

Plessey micro-LEDs selected for AR glasses

Plessey has tied up with Vuzix to develop augmented reality glasses, combining Plessey’s ‘Quanta-Brite’ micro-LED arrays and Vuzix’ expertise and IP in smart glasses and optics. Quanta-Brite is a light source for illuminating DMD (digital micro-mirror device) or LCoS (liquid crystal-on-silicon) display engines, based on monolithic arrays of micro-LEDs, which Plessey claims will enable an optical system up to 50% smaller, lighter and simpler than incumbent solutions, as well as improve power-efficiency.

Quincy Mall improvements include new lighting

Quincy Mall will soon be shining a little brighter with the addition of all new LED lighting to the interior and exterior of the site. Mall owner Cullinan Properties informs that "environmentally friendly changes are being made" as part of a $4 million investment. "We are continually looking for ways to make Quincy Mall an even more enjoyable destination, which include a number of building enhancements," said Sean Garrett, director of community relations for Cullinan Properties, in a release. Cullinan Properties has offices in Peoria, Chicago and St. Louis.

LEDs to light up 62 dark stretches in Bhubaneswar

The civic body of Bhubaneswar will light up 62 dark stretches in the city with LED bulbs in what promises to be the biggest-ever street light installation project covering 78km. The project, which will take a month to complete, began last week. It is part of the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation's second-phase LED street light installation drive, under which it plans to install 6,000 energy efficient bulbs in various parts of the city. The authorities have already installed around 35,000 LED bulbs to light up various stretches. Photo: I, G-u-t (cc)

Flexible LED material rivals OLEDs inside Kone elevator

It sounds like another proclamation that OLEDs will be the future of lighting, design, and architecture, and it even throws in the Internet of Things (IoT) to boot: Finnish engineering company Kone is outfitting an elevator with walls made from a thin, flexible, illuminating material that provides the car’s artificial light while also functioning as an information display board and a giant interactive touch screen. But this so-called “interactive media surface panel” does not make use of OLEDs — the organic light-emitting diode technology in which every bit of an entire surface lights up in response to an electrical current, and which proponents say will literally become part of the fabric of building interiors, exteriors, furniture, fashions, and all sorts.

Luminus Devices enters UV-C LED market

Luminus Devices has announced the XBT-1313-UV and XST-3535-UV ultraviolet (UV) packaged LEDs targeting the disinfection and sterilization market segments. The new LEDs emit at 280 nm — within the UV-C band where emitted energy can instantly kill pathogens. Applications could range from water sterilization to usage in medical facilities to kill pathogens. We’ve been charting the progress of UV-C LEDs for several years. The UV-C LED technology — in terms of cost, radiometric power output, efficiency, reliability, and lifetime — has trailed the longer-wavelength UV-B and UV-A LEDs that are primarily used in industrial applications such as curing. We covered the basics of the UV bands in an article about presentations at Strategies in Light a few years back.

Schoharie wants more info on LEDs

Laura Mohr, of Eastern Energy Solutions, spoke to the Schoharie Village Board recently about conversion of street lighting to LED technology. Eastern Energy Solutions, a family-owned company, is working with a number of towns and villages, including Stamford, Middleburgh and Sidney and in Afton, they’re working on a case study that will show municipalities the scope of work and how much conversion costs. Ms. Mohr talked about privatizing street lighting as one way for any municipality to save money. The village rents the street lighting fixtures from National Grid; owning the fixtures is cheaper, she said.

Hella equips A7 Sportback with intelligent lighting functions

Together with the automobile manufacturer Audi, HELLA has developed a striking lighting technology for the new Audi A7 Sportback. The headlamps of the four-door coupé are available as LED, Matrix LED and HD Matrix LED with laser high beam variants. The system uses a new control unit, which takes care of all lighting functions. Audi and HELLA have additionally developed a new interior lighting concept together. The HELLA lighting technology already successfully serving the Audi A8 will also provide optimal road vision for the new Audi A7. The glare-free high beam function will for example allow eclipsing other road users from the light beam, thus avoiding glaring. Reliable communication between the front camera, sensors and headlamps is prerequisite for the HD Matrix LED with laser high beam.

Everything you need to know about buying Himalayan salt lamps

There are a lot of products out there that claim to make your home a healthier place. Light therapy alarm clocks are thought to improve your overall mood and help you wake up more naturally; weighted blankets are designed to help you fall asleep faster and sleep more soundly. And Himalayan salt lamps are said to improve your home's overall air quality, which may be why they've grown in popularity over the past few years. It's important to note that no major studies have supported the health benefits of Himalayan salt lamps, even though plenty of people out there swear by them. But that being said, we still think this popular home decoration can make a great addition to your home.

Set the mood with these LED light bulbs that look like real flickering flames

LED bulbs that look like real flickering flames seem like the sort of thing that might be cheesy, but they’re actually awesome. I mean, I wouldn’t replace the overhead lights in my kitchen with them, but as accent lighting in outside lanterns, for example, they create an awesome effect that you’re going to love. They also look fantastic on a table in a base like this one. We’ve got two different sizes for you to check out. The first is the CPPSLEE E26 LED Flame Effect Light Bulb, which will fit in any normal socket, and then the KINDEEP E12 Candelabra LED Flame Light Bulb will fit smaller candelabra sockets. They’re both awesome, so it all depends on what type of fixture you have in mind.

ASU Bisgrove Scholar illuminates the future of LED lighting

The electrical engineering professor at Arizona State University proposed that by developing smart LEDs, the devices could heal wounds and even replace existing Wi-Fi technology with light-based “Li-Fi” wireless communication capable of 10,000 times higher capacity bandwidth. In 2015, this was a risky proposal involving a new and relatively untested area of research in photonics and LEDs. Luckily for Zhao, his first proposal as an ASU faculty member was accepted by the Science Foundation Arizona Bisgrove Scholar program, which funded his research.

In the years since, Zhao has made great strides on the frontier of LEDs in three areas.
First, Zhao and his team investigated the theoretical limits of LED efficiency and device structure bottlenecks in order to create a new and better structure that is less prone to efficiency “droop” and the limitations inherent to green LED light. Zhao says the solution lies in producing high-quality indium gallium nitride, or InGaN, with a low amount of defects and impurities. Green LED light is especially problematic because it requires InGaN with more indium, which is difficult to synthesize and is typically low quality with many defects.