Though it seems like some patent disputes never go away, at least an ongoing tiff between LED makers LG and Osram has been settled amicably. Details were kept under wraps, other than a statement that “the parties have reached a license agreement for their respective patents” and that all the disputes worldwide were dismissed. That means that a threatened Korean ban of Audi and BMW vehicles using the LED tech won’t happen — but we doubt teutonic car-lovers there were terribly worried about that unlikely-seeming proposition.
These high-tech lights can be controlled using your iOS devices using a companion app. Simply screw them into your standard light socket and connect them to your wi-fi network. Lights can be controlled to automatically turn on and off at preset times, and you can set up different zones for each room of your house. You can even create presets which gradually turn on the lights when you wake up in the morning, or shut off if you fall asleep with the lights on.
The energy-efficient 600 lumen LED bulbs can not only output as much white light as a 50-watt bulb, but in a wide variety of colors too. You can even paint visual palettes based on your own personal lighting preferences, and sampling colors from photographs.
With its companion app, you’ll be able to do everything from tweak colors and brightness to just that right shade for optimal reading, or to turn your house into a veritable party for the eyes.
Hue lamps will be available exclusively from the Apple Store starting on October 30th, so you won’t have to wait long to get your hands on them. A starter kit with three Hue bulbs, along with the wireless bridge device and all necessary software will run you $199 (USD). Additional bulbs sell for $59 each. While that may seem like a lot to spend on light bulbs, these will last for many years, and can do things no ordinary bulb can.
Dutch multinational electronics company, Philips, is introducing a new LED home lighting system that will enable users to control light wirelessly through an app for smartphones or tablets. Philips hue, as it is called, features pre-programmed lighting settings that are based on Philips’ research surrounding the biological effects of light on the body. So how does it work? Basically, Philips hue has a starter pack that includes three bulbs, a bridge that can be plugged into a Wi-Fi router, and an app that can be downloaded into your iPhone or iPad.
The app will allow users to save their favorite light themes for each room, use any photo on their phone as a color palette, create ambience or complement room decorations, monitor lights remotely, and set program timers to help them with their daily schedule. Philips hue will be available exclusively on Apple Stores beginning October 30 for the price of $199. There’s also an individual pack which is actually an extension to the introduction pack. Philips says that users can connect up to 50 bulbs into the bridge. You can learn more about Philips hue here.
Colored LED lighting that could be remotely controlled used to take professional installation and thousands of dollars; now, Philips’ new hue system makes it as easy as screwing in a bulb. On sale on Tuesday – initially exclusively through Apple Stores – the hue bulbs screw into a regular ES fitting and are remotely controlled from iOS or Android apps over a ZigBee connection, either locally around the home or (handy if you’ve left the lights on while you’re on holiday) anywhere with an internet connection. They’re hardly a cheap replacement to a standard incandescent bulb, though, so we spent some time with Philips to find out why hue is special, and how the system could actually make us happier or more productive.
The starter box – containing three bulbs and the base station – is priced at $199/£179, while individual bulbs are priced at $59/£49. That might seem expensive on the face of it (though Philips has high-end white LED bulbs in its range that are $50-60 alone) but, in comparison with the LivingColors lamps which come in with an RRP of £159 apiece, it starts to look more reasonable. If you’ve already bought any LivingColors models, incidentally, you’ll be able to use them with the hue system too (with one or two limitations).
Installation is simple: screw in the bulbs, plug the ZigBee base station into a spare ethernet port on your router, and hook it up to the mains. A pairing button on the base station allows you to link up any other hue bulbs, while three LED lights show system status including whether there’s an internet connection for remote access. Since ZigBee is a mesh system, each hue bulb can talk to each other: bulbs can be a great distance from the base station itself, just as long as there are other bulbs spanning the intermediate distance (though lag increases the more mesh-points the signal needs to hop through).
Philips hue official demo:
The bulbs themselves use 8.5W at most, and – at 600 lumens – are equivalent to 50W traditional bulbs. They also use a special internal coating that, coupled with the shape of the glass, projects light more evenly around the bulb, meaning there isn’t a dead-zone to your lamp. Officially, up to 50 can be paired with a single base station, though Philips told us that in fact that’s more of a quality-assurance guarantee; in fact, the company has had 250+ bulbs paired with test systems, and had no real issues with them. Bayonet fitting versions are in the pipeline.
Control is via smartphone and tablet app, with iPhone, iPad, and Android versions available at launch; up to ten devices can be linked to control any one base station. The software itself is surprisingly comprehensive. At its most basic, you can adjust the color of any one bulb across the spectrum, including adjusting brightness and color temperature, from a rich red, deep blue, bright white, or anything in-between. You can link up two or more bulbs into a group, and control them all simultaneously, and create preset scenes which each have their own icon on the app’s homescreen.
However, there’s also color sampling to be played with. Philips includes a number of photos in the app – scenes like beaches or mountains – and by dragging pointers linked to each lamp, you can recreate the color of that point in the image. Again, custom setups of multiple lamps tied to different points can be saved, or you create a random arrangement by physically shaking the tablet or iPhone.
You can alternatively pick out a photo from your own photo gallery – or take a new photo, within the Philips hue app – and select colors from that instead. Each of the scenes, whether basic colors or based on photos, can be set to timers, either turning them on or off; you can also have them gently fade in or out over a period of several minutes, helping you to gently wake up or drift off to sleep. Of course, you can also shut off all the bulbs with the tap of a single button.
Finally, though, comes Philips’ splash of science. The company preloads four “LightRecipes” – relax, read, concentrate, and energize – which adjust lighting to specific shades and brightness levels based on research into how those scenarios affect the human body. Philips says testing in schools showed students did better in tests, were calmer, or read faster and more accurately, depending on the different setting active at any one time. It’s worth noting that older LivingColors lamps won’t work with these new LightRecipes, as they don’t have the settings baked in like the new hue bulbs do.
There are some sensible tweaks and decisions Philips has made along the way to the hue system overall. An override feature automatically lights the bulbs up to a regular white “lamp light” default if the physical power switch is used, just in case of emergency, and you can easily deactivate a phone or tablet from the control group in case it’s lost or stolen (or if your kids insist on triggering a mini disco in your room at 2am every day). At launch, the Android app will lack the out-of-house remote control feature, though Philips says it’s coming; if you have any existing remotes from the LivingColors line-up, the company confirmed to us that they, too, would still work, useful for the less tablet-savvy in the household.
Perhaps best of all, it’s all designed to be open. Philips’ base station works as a regular ZigBee hub, and so will function with any other ZigBee devices that conform to the standard, while the individual bulbs are compliant with the ZigBee Light Link standard and so can be integrated with wireless home automation setups you might have already. The company is also opening up its app to third-party developers, in the hope that they’ll step in and augment the functionality. Suggestions included flashing the lights when you get a VIP email, synchronizing color changes with musical playlists, or geo-location so that the lights automatically turn on when you get home, and off when you leave. Individual users will be able to use the site to swap color scheme presets.
At sixty bucks apiece, hue bulbs aren’t cheap. However, the popularity of recent Kickstarter campaigns for WiFi-enabled bulbs such as Lifx – which raised more than 13x of its goal – has shown that there’s a consumer interest for more flexible, smarter lighting. Unlike fund-raising projects, though, Philips’ hue system ships from tomorrow, not sometime next year, and comes from a company with a long history in lighting. We’ll be putting hue through its paces soon, to see if the promise lives up to the price.
Light painting can be a pretty awesome technique, which involves the capture of a moving light source, using long-exposure photography. Photographers have created some prettyamazingimages using the medium, but it can be complicated to pull off unless you know exactly what you’re doing, and have a camera with full manual exposure controls. Now the fine folks at Japan’s Takara Tomy Arts have released a little gadget and app combo which makes it easy for anyone with an iPhone or iPad to make their own light paintings.
This little penlight gadget, thats name roughly translates to “Oekaki: The Night Sky” provides a bright, point source of light, and works with a companion iOS app to let you record long-exposure images. Simply start up the app, place your phone in the included base (or stand up your iPad), and start drawing in space. The penlight itself lets you choose from combinations of cyan, magenta or yellow light in 8 levels each, providing for a total of 27 colors for your images, and you can shoot either stills or time-lapse video with the app.
You can check out the app and pen in action in this clip (though it is in Japanese, it’s pretty easy to follow), or you can download the app itself for free here – though you’ll really want to have the light pen or a good point light source to make it work. I tried it out with a laser pointer aimed at the wall and it worked pretty well.
The app and light pen combo makes it shockingly easy to create light paintings. While the gadget was designed for Japanese markets, you can pre-order one for worldwide shipment over at Gizmine now for $69.99 (USD) with an estimated ship date of November 20th.
High-end television sets are increasingly overrun with gimmicky hardware—gesture control remotes come to mind—that few people need and even fewer want. But Sony’s latest Bravia flagship does only what a TV should do—and does it better than any other LED. Thank goodness. More »
LED light bulbs are becoming more common and affordable, but a company called Greenwave Reality made the energy-saving light source even cooler. The company’s Connected Lighting Solution is a kit that includes LED bulbs that can be controlled via a mobile app. It’s one more reason to keep your phone out of your kids’ hands.
While not nearly as cool and showy as LIFX wi-fi lighting, the Greenwave kit is all about convenience and energy savings for consumers. You only need to screw in the bulbs to existing sockets and then plug in the adapter to your router. No complicated setup is necessary. You can then toggle or dim many bulbs at once using the remote control or the mobile app. No more fumbling for light switches in the dark (although you can still use the switches if you want to).
But it’s also a boon for electric companies. Aside from being cheaper than conventional light bulbs, the kit can keep track of their electricity consumption and other usage information. Which is why Greenwave Reality will sell the kit to the companies, and not to end users. Before you complain, know that each kit costs $200 (USD), and only includes 4 bulbs. The plan is for electric companies to buy the kit from Greenwave Reality and then sell them to consumers at a subsidized cost. Everybody wins. Except the old light bulb, that is.
Unveiled for the first time at IFA 2012, the TM2792 from LG is finally available for all in Korea! This elegant 27” mini Smart TV features some of the hottest goodies from LG like 3D Cinema, a New IPS Panel, Mobile High-Definition Link (MHL) and even Intel’s Wireless Display (WiDi). Anyway if you are desperate to get one you will have to fly to Korea right now and ready to shade 729,000 WON, a pretty descent price for what this TM2792 is offering! TM2792:
Unveiled for the first time a CEATEC 2012, here you are the first series of TVs featuring Sharp Moth Eye technology. By adding tiny (on a nanoscale level) irregularities on its panel Sharp is capable to drastically reduce glare while still being able to display bright and perfect colors and contrast, and the first TVs to support this new Moth Eye technology is the XL9 Series from Sharp. Available in 46, 52, 60, 70 and 80” with a price range between 280,000 up to 1 Million yen these XL9 Full HD …
Sharp may look like it’s in trouble, but that’s not stopping it bringing new displays to the market, including today’s announcement of the AQUOS Quattron 3D XL TV line. Behind the mouthful of acronyms, these LED-backlit LCD panels are the first to feature Sharp’s Moth-Eye technology, designed to reduce glare and pump out bright colors, as well as a deep black. The company’s ‘four primary color’ tech is partly responsible for the rich output, which squeezes a yellow sub-pixel in with the standard R, G and B. All the panels run at 1,920 x 1,080, as you’d expect, sport a 10 million to 1 contrast ratio and use five speakers to deliver audio. Prices aren’t fixed, but the 46-, 52- and 80-inch models will be released in Japan on December 15th, while the 60- and 70-inch variants will come slightly earlier, on November 30th. You’re going to have to be quick on launch day, though — only 10,000 units are expected to be available in the first month.
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Dutch multinational electronics company, Philips, is introducing a new LED home lighting system that will enable users to control light wirelessly through an app for smartphones or tablets. Philips hue, as it is called, features pre-programmed lighting settings that are based on Philips’ research surrounding the biological effects of light on the body. So how does it work? Basically, Philips hue has a starter pack that includes three bulbs, a bridge that can be plugged into a Wi-Fi router, and an app that can be downloaded into your iPhone or iPad.
