There's an interesting article in The Guardian which reports some developments in the field of new forms of lighting and display called OLED ( Organic Light Emitting Diode).
OLED is a leading edge technology that is being developed for the next generation of PC and TV screens but it has other potential uses for example as home lighting - an idea that Lomox, a small UK company is developing.
OLED is built upon the principle of exciting organic molecules by the application of a small electrical voltage. It is potentially a very flexible technology because of the prospect that OLED displays can be printed by laser jet technology. The most efficient form of OLED is Phophorescent OLED technology or PHOLED . OLED produces light very efficiently but at present OLED displays are still costly and have relatively short lifetimes.
Lomox reckon that their approach which is backed by seven patents deals with these problems and will let them produce lighting displays for indoor or outdoor use and deal with both of these problems.
There is an interesting convergence of two technologies now happening. More efficient Solar panels(1) together with increasingly commercial and efficient light production system means that it may soon be possible to realistically provide indoor or outdoor illumination at night from power collected from the sun during the day.
The day looks closer when it will become attractive to build these types of technologies into new build houses. The buyers will have the prospect of cheap and probably very flexible low voltage lighting systems. We may for example be able to buy GlowPaper to replace our wall coverings with flat panel lighting.
What will the house designer of the future do with these new forms of lighting I wonder?
How about a "forest" wallpaper that stretched around your room that glowed to give you the impression of sitting in a sunlight forest clearing?
If you had the chance to design your own wallpapers or panels what would you put on them?
(1) There were for example recent reports that good progress has been made on producing solar panels that collect nearer to the infrared and which are less dependent on direct sunlight.
Here's an Amazon link to the Sony OLED TV
"A Man's a Man for all that!" - Rabbie Burns
Dec 30, 2009
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5 comments:
I would like the lighting to be much more like sunlight in terms of color and distribution.
I suppose given thatthe panels are only around 1mm thick then it would be possible to panel the ceiling. If this could be treated as one giant display then perhaps you coul have a sun and clouds on your ceiling - and maybe a sandy beach an some swaying plam trees on your walls.
Make the displays 3d and you could be sipping a cool iced juice on a desert Islan in your own living room.
Now that what I would call immersive media.
I would like the beach displayed on my walls, complete with tide. :)
I was just reading about light-emitting wallpaper. They say it's very much like sunlight, it removes the usual shadows from light bulbs. Good for the SAD-afflicted like myself. And it only needs 3 to 5 volts, which would mean brilliant energy-saving.
Very interesting Bunc. A number of initiatives to provide solar powered lighting for villages not yet connected with electricity are already quite successful in India. There are inexpensive solar powered lanterns that one can carry around, very much like the old petromax or the hurricane lanterns. Just to give you an idea, here is a site http://www.tradekey.com/ks-solar-powered-lantern/
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