Category Archives: Gadgets and Tech
Looks like lighting up our lives isn’t just all those light bulbs do these days. They’re turning into designer electronics too! And looks aren’t all they proudly flaunt; they’ve got a whole lot of green in them. We’ve seen neon lights being twisted and turned to form shapes before. Its time we welcome these designer green bulbs by Plumen UK. These fluorescent bulbs might seem slightly silly though, taken that people don’t usually leave fluorescent bulbs exposed, covering them up with lamps and such. To flaunt it, you’d just need to dump that shade and light this one up. And yes, here’s what grabbed our attention the most, besides just its curvy shape. The bulbs are low energy consuming and make sure your electricity bill fits in the palm of your hand, not running the length of your home.
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Going the green way can very much start for you at home, by controlling the wastage of electricity. If you can’t really teach your family to turn off the lights when no one is around, why not automate the entire set up? An innovative design called Flat Light does just that via the LED Hourglass interface. Winner of the Liteon Award for the year, the lights go off when the LED grains hit the bottom of the hour glass.
So get ready to conserve electricity!
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Echelon recently has developed a software platform along with a hardware device that can collect information from smart meters and devices on a power grid. For the benefit of customers to help realize their energy consumption, utility companies are installing sensors on networks and two-way meters that help make the grid a lot more reliable and efficient. The sensors help utility companies notice problems in grids before they turn bad, helping them fix before it’s too late. The Echelon system makes all this a lot easier by gathering large amounts of data from grid sensors and smart meters installed in buildings. It also reports problems in grids and redirects electricity flow automatically. The hardware device called the Edge Control Node (ECN) 7000 fits on to electric poles and is hooked on to the software platform called Echelon Control System (Ecos).
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Shutterbugs world over! Put aside those plastic and metal bodied DSLRs and have a look at this! A cardboard camera that actually works! The cameras made by Kiel Johnson is made from cardboard, hot glue, and tape and include everything from the 8mm, point and shoot, Polaroid, to the latest DSLR. Not all of these actually function though. The twin lens created by Kiel functions as a pinhole camera, while the others are just models, though strikingly accurate.
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Energy is wasted everywhere today, most of all, at home. We tend to switch on lights and fans at home, in room s that we don’t really occupy. Not everyone’s eco-conscious enough to go around switching off unneeded lights and fans when at home. Well if you’re too lazy to flick a switch to save some power, here’s a counter sensor electricity-cutting system by Botem that showed up at the International Environment Energy Industry Exhibition at BEXCO. The firm specializes in devices and systems like these. The new system detects energy reduction and low carbon-green growth and automatically turns lights on and off on a person’s entrance and departure from a room.
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Street lighting in the future will be a lot more advanced and a whole lot greener than the lamps we have today. And we’re certain of that, looking at what turned up at the ‘International Lighting & Display Exhibition (L&D Korea 2010) in EXCO, Daegu. Yuyang DNU pulled the veil of this system of hybrid LED streetlamps composed of an LED streetlamp (56W). The system can make use of solar energy as well as the wind to power up and lighten up your path. Also, it controls its lighting hours, meaning that no energy is wasted in the form of useless lighting. Depending on the weather, this one automatically selects its best power source and alternates accordingly.
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In China, most people barely spare a second glance to their refrigerators in the colder winter months, and chose to store food on their balconies, a space and energy saving technique. This inspired designer Nicholas Hubert to create the External Refrigerator for Electrolux. Now, unlike the boxy one you’ve got plugged into the grid in your kitchen, this refrigerator keeps its act clean, using solar energy to power up when the sun shines. The refrigerator is equipped with solar panels in its side that help absorb solar juice. The refrigerator mounts on an exterior wall of a home, and slides out towards the window every time you need something from it. In the months of cold, the refrigerator keeps up with the ambient temperature outside to cool food.
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Now here’s a great way to listen to those favorite tracks of yours while on the go, using a bit of renewable energy. The Kinetic MP3 Player by British designer Matthew Smith makes sure you have your music playing, using kinetic energy! The energy generated to power this one up is created due to friction, so be it a jog or a brisk walk home from the supermarket, the Kinetic will just keep pumping those beats. The MP3 player uses a built in kinetic energy generator, that converts all that kinetic energy you create with motion, into power. The player boasts a joystick that you can use to browse through the menus and metal pads on its handle grip, that keep your heart rate in check. This comes handy while working out.
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Innovation with a touch of green does tend to bring a wide smile across our faces. That’s just why we love the Hunter Fanaway Ceiling Fan. The fan is made of recyclable materials and is built sleek and sturdy. Its energy efficient too! This one also packs some pretty eye-catching technology, retractable blades. When switched off, the blades of the fan retract back into its body. The fan uses a WhisperWind motor that’s as quite as a sneaking cat. It produces a pretty awesome airflow too, with 4186 cubic feet per minute. If that’s not all, this ceiling fan is also integrated with energy-efficient, low-power-consuming lighting.
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Electronic devices like cell phones and laptop computers in the future could go a bit lighter and work for hours longer than the one’s we used today, thanks to a super capacitor developed by a team of scientists recently. These are cheap enough and powerful to be used commercially. Also, the capacitor charges in as little as a few seconds and could keep our phones and laptops powered on for days together. Capacitors store energy too, though unlike batteries, that store energy chemically, these store an electrical charge between two conductive plates separated by an electrical insulator. Batteries on the other hand undergo a slow process of converting chemical energy into electricity and last long, though take ages to charge up. Capacitors use no chemical conversion, which is why they charge up a lot quicker and last longer too. Plus, they weigh much less than batteries.
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