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Thin, Flat LEDs
An anonymous reader writes "Here's a story about how a company called OMRON has developed a totally flat light source which might give traditional LED's a run for their money." And reader ekarjala points to an article in the EE Times about thin, organic LEDs.
This will have serious effect on all facets of life. Imagine less intrusive instruments for orthroscopic surguery, saftey lighting on floors that isn't a trip hazard, thinner gadgets, etc. And of course the most important impact... NEW CASE MODS!!!! ;-)
"Da ist ein Technölüst in mein Unterpanten!"
You're right, the Omron picture looks a lot like a Fresnel lens, and it is distorted. Cool, but it seems more useful for car headlights or room lighting than for computer displays.
The EETimes article OTOH is all about Organic LED's, and looks to be the real next generation for display tech.
The requested URL
"flat" means the surface has an infinite radius of curvature, so you're both right :)
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Do you know what LED stands for? Light Emitting Diode. *Emitting*. A reflective emitter makes about as much sense as dry water. You clearly have no idea about how LEDs work and the fact that you've been modded up means no one else does either.
Alrighty, what would you propose such a light switch would look like? Keeping in mind the usability of a lightswitch. (at most, you've got a touchpad that brightens or dims based on time spent on the pad, a slider or an on/off switch)
So now you've got, what, three sliders? a switch and three knobs? A switch and three holes you've gotta put a screwdriver in to adjust intensity?
But that's just one plate, what if you want do adjust the ones in the kitchen as well as the ones in the living room?
Being able to set an 8-bit value for R, G, B and what-the-hell Alpha transparency would be a non-starter.
Of course, your lightswitch could have an Adobe colorwheel and an intensity slider, but then your _lights_ might cost you $20, but your light SWITCH will cost ya $250.
Ritalin? Nope, I'm not on Ritalin. I DID neglect to take my Zyrtec 'tho.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
How can it be "truely full color" and "make any color possible" when it's only got normal red green and blue LED technology to work with? Although you can mix up quite a lot of colours with these three, you're still fairly limited in what you can produce in terms of the full gamut of the eye. For example, monitors (also obviously using RGB) can only display a certain set of colours that you can see in real life. It can't display a shade of red that's verging on infra red for example, or an extremely deep purple that's almost ultra-violet. It can only display colours which it can "mix" out of red green and blue ie colours which have a wavelength higher than the wavelengh of the red channel and lower than the wavelengh of the blue channel - and even those will be limited by the quality of those individual colours.
:)
Nick...
PS: I speak English English from England, so sorry if me spelling colour correctly offends you