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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.
Perhaps this will bridge the gap between roll up screens and the current lcd displays? It seems like it will still be awhile before oleds will be available for solid viewing. Any thoughts?
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Then our screens could be used in direct sunlight, like a newspaper. And we could open all the blinds again, at last.
Its a tile barely over a square inch and still a 1/4 inch thick, hardly ready to change lighting tech as we know it.
I was personally hoping for something that would come of the production line by the roll and be applied like wallpaper to my walls or ceilings. Hide wiring in the baseboard moldings. Room not bright enough or the wrong color? Just turn it up . . . .
Well, looking at their technology, it appears that it is basically a Fresnel type mirror that disperses the light from a single LED source. If I recall my undergraduate physics, this sort of thing could result in uneven light distribution and chromatic aberration in lighting surfaces making this less than ideal for displays, especially for those users where color is critically important.
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Anything that could make the bezel (display face) of radios and instrument panels slimmer and less space-demanding might save cost and even allow for more informative (or at least decorative) dashboard components. You could make your car's interior look like the Enterprise if you wanted.
the U.S. needs more phat car mods.
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Oh. He stole it from here.. Give credit next time, dude.
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OK, I'm presently a bit car-crazy ;)
... three feet overhead. I would much prefer several LED clusters (with diffusers) as my dome light.
... I guess.)
Flat LEDs (heck, current LEDs would be fine, really, but flatter would be better in a space-starved environment like a car) are what I want in a couple specific places in my car:
1) dashboard lights. Mine dashlights died a long time ago, and I'm using a clip-on LED flashlight to illuminate my speedometer etc. This is clunky and ugly in a way that many kids find themselves yelling at their dads for inflicting on the world, but a) dashwork is expensive and b) no joke, my LED flashlight clipped on an airvent does a *much better job* than the dashlights ever did. Granted, it's a cheap car, but still. Dashlights are lousy in most cars, though they've gotten better. But -- and I'm serious about this -- dashlights should NOT be incandescent bulbs any more. They should be LEDs, OLEDs, or some other basically permanent light source. Silly to have such a vital piece of equipment be something as outdated as an incandescent bulb, *and* be so difficult to replace (in most cars).
2) Domelight. Same deal -- domelights are generally lame anyhow, sort of like lighting a candle
3) Overhead reading lights. (For your navigator, lights that don't blind the driver.) Bright LEDs with a shade so they can't be aimed at the driver's face accidentally. (Breakable shade, so you *could* aim them intentionally when you're kidnapped for ransom and are being driven away in your own car
4) Map light -- Think of the LED "stalk" lights for notebook computers. A thin gooseneck with an integral LED for pointing at your book / map / sketchpad (not for the driver).
Bring on the flat LEDs, and send some to the car maker's *design teams* please.
timothy
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Perhaps this technology could also be used in computer displays? At this point, the backlight behind a flat screen display makes up for most of the bulk. The Apple 23 inch display is something like 8 inches thick where the the backlight is. This technology could be used to create flat panel displays that are even thinner than the ones we have now by providing a bright, flat backlight.
In the long run, we're all dead.
For just basic home lighting scenarios, this would be really cool. Imagine your light switch now has 3 knobs, ones for red green and blue, plus an intensity switch. You could set up some nice mood lighting using rgb values. Maybe have it so you could save some values and call them when you wanted to. Would be a cool little toy to have.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
In its current state, LCD seems to be a horrible technology. I go to futureshop or its equivelant and look at the flat screen lcd tvs. There is a dvd playing on it, but it looks fuggin terrible.
LCD monitors generally have less viewing quality, and of course the horrible response time, bad viewing angle, poor contrast, and fixed resolution. I havent seen that many desks that were in such dire need of desk space that they needed to settle for LCD. A guy will buy a lcd tv or monitor and tell himself that the ghosting really isnt thaaat bad, or the viewing angle doesnt bother him thaaat much. These people are just fooling themselves because LCD is really the only real flatscreen tech on the market right now.
I believe when OLEDs hit the market LCD will pretty much be useless obslete technology. OLED has a fixed resolution, true, but suffers from none of the other disadvantages.
Look at this picture.
After seeing something that amazing from a prototype, i really dont see a future for LCD in the computing world. Maybe somewhere in the embedded arena where a non-backlit LCD would suffice, but other than that, where?
Plus if these things hit 40-60 inches..that pretty much boots plasma out the door too.
I am only worried that since OLED will junk such a big area of displays, manufactuerers will be hesitant to deploy it, or will deploy it expensively and with low supply. The good thing is i guess it only takes one company to do it right, and the prices will come crashing down.
I guess as long as the manufacturers dont jack the prices up too much, i dont see a barrier to wide spread acceptance.
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It's disappointing that the article doesn't say anything about luminous efficacy (lumens per watt). Is it greater than or less than traditional LED's?
From the fact that it's NOT mentioned I'm guessing that it's less, meaning that these are more useful for decorative applications than as a serious source of illumination.
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applied like wallpaper to my walls or ceilings
Maybe they can design them in 1/16 or 1/8 inch sizes to snap together in a way that can be multiplexed. Run your lines on the horizontal and vertical edge and individually address each element in any color.
Maybe a 640x480 grid (expensive, I'm sure) of these things will be useful enough for simple gaming. But only if they change color fast enough. I'd hook a PS2 to it if I could.
These guys are already notorious among wearable developers. Here's why. The bought the patents and designs for the Private Eye HUD from the previous manufacturer, and put it and all of it's relatives out of production. Never mind that they were higher resolution, cheaper, and lower current than any of the competing display solutions, and STILL ARE!
The display technology involved a single strip of extremely high density LEDs packed together in a line, and a vibrating mirror that would scan back and forth as the LEDs blinked to make a picture. Neat technology. Very high contrast, readable in high light conditions.
I spent a year or two hoping they'd come back, but no =:-( They're gone, and _just_ before I managed to get my hands on one.
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