Products + Technology

How It’s Made is a TV series consisting of short 24-minute episodes showing how everyday products are made. While visiting the in-laws today, I caught a segment showing how pole outdoor luminaires are made at a manufacturing plant operated by Canadian manufacturer Lumec. I found it very interesting, and later found it on YouTube. Here [...]

ElectricTV.net, operated by NECA, has published a short video about hi-bay T5HO lighting here. It’s a little basic and attempts to characterize T5HO lighting as “new,” but has interesting visuals and makes a simple case for T5HO lighting. It makes no mention of high-performance T8, however, which is also suitable for many hi-bay lighting applications.

On the lighter side of things, here’s a fun little gadget: the “temperature controlled faucet light,” which activates based on water pressure and changes color based upon water temperature. Blue when the water is cold or simply turned on, and red when the water hits 89 degrees F. Would probably be a hit with kids [...]

Via Yahoo, AFP has distributed an article about Mansfield, UK using garish pink lighting, normally used by dermatologists to reveal acne, to deter youths from loitering. It’s apparently achieving its intended result. Click here for the full story.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and PG&E recently demonstrated streetlights installed on Turk Street (between Taylor and Jones) in the Tenderloin District, networked using Echelon’s LonWorks technology. The new LED streetlights, remotely controlled and monitored, promise to reduce the city’s energy and maintenance costs while improving lighting quality and safety. Streetlights are among a city’s [...]

The OLED lighting market is setting the stage to take off in 2011, with OLED lighting revenues forecasted to surpass PMOLED displays in the 2013-2014 time frame and reach $6 billion by 2018, according to DisplaySearch’s newly-released report, OLED Lighting in 2009 and Beyond: The Bright Future. “The unique features of OLED lighting are inspiring [...]

Philips has announced its MASTER LED collection of LED lamps that can be used in luminaires with E27 and GU10 sockets. The 7W E27 A55 lamp, identical in form factor to a conventional light bulb, is most interesting, suitable for retrofit of 40W incandescents for nearly 83% energy savings in general lighting applications. The lamp [...]

I recently wrote an article for TED Magazine about load-shedding ballasts, available online here. A building’s demand for electric power is the sum of the power required to run its electrical equipment in operation at any given time. Demand rises and falls as equipment is turned on and off. Peak demand is the highest level [...]

One of my favorite bloggers, Jim Hutchison of Jim on Light (he’s chief design consultant for Alive Lighting, an entertainment lighting design firm), recently found this gem–“lighting bags” containing fluorescent materials, which react with chemicals in a cup. The result is illumination, seemingly from a “tea bag” (but unfortunately inedible), the product of South Korean [...]