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Organic LED Could Replace Light Bulbs?
egrinake writes to mention a BBC article about a 'natural' replacement for lightbulbs. From the article: "The organic light-emitting diode (OLED) emits a brilliant white light when attached to an electricity supply. The material, described in the journal Nature, can be printed in wafer thin sheets that could transform walls, ceilings or even furniture into lights. The OLEDs do not heat up like today's light bulbs and so are far more energy efficient and should last longer."
Drop a couple AAs into a pouch in a jacket or something, wire it up to strips of this: Suddenly drivers etc. can see you at night. I wonder if there's any feasible way to do this in a torch format....
The problem with your idea is that it makes sense.
I have 10,000 light sources in my house... and I want to customize lighting scenes for every mood. Each OLED has its own IPv6 address, and I have a touch screen where I can paint different color lights.
Hmm, interesting possibilities...
the same manufactures doing a couple of things.
1. Putting out all sorts of products using OLEDs, expanding beyond what we conceive of light being used for
2. Putting out specialty incadescents/flourescents that fill the gaps in the first
If anything this expands their market and an innovative company will take off. Not all lighted items need to provide illumination that is bright enough to read by. A lot can be done with highlights, accenting areas with different shades and such. Accent lighting will be a big, replacing LEDs that are currently trying to edge into that market. All the business uses will help as well. It would be far much easier to use these for instore billboards than the flourescent lit displays so common today.
Now another area is backgrounds. Better for business use than home, though some may use it in homes. Can't imagine my home looking like 1999's moonbase but I can see walls in certain types of businesses where the whole area is covered and changed in color for events and such.
Lighting products are not all about letting you see things, some exist to be seen
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
as far as I can tell, that is marketing bullshit.
I have a LED headlight for my bicycle and while it is very intense when its pointing right at you, it has very poor illumination capability when compared to an incandescent headlight. The light is very directional so when they say 'X lumens' it generally means they measured the output in the beam segment rather than the the whole sphere.
For town riding, such a headlight is fine. You arent using it for its illumination, you really only want a light so cars can see you, and if you are riding into oncoming traffic at night chances are you are a fool. The rear light is generally more important. In the country where streetlighting is non existent, the LED is barely adequate and you need an incandescent bulb.
I can't be bothered to google for references to back my shaky claims up, its just a personal anecdote.