For a little over two thousand years, the primary light sources after the sun had set were oil lamps and candles. This was well before the age of fossil fuels, so these oil lamps were often fueled with a labor-intensive agricultural product like olive oil. Candles were similarly difficult to make, made from tallow, beeswax, […]
LED lighting is now commonplace across homes, businesses, and industrial settings. It uses little energy and provides a great deal of light. However, a new study suggests it may come with a trade-off. New research suggests human vision may not perform at its peak under this particular form of illumination. The study ran with a […]
[Voria Labs] has created a whole bunch of artworks referred to as Lumanoi Interactive Light Sculptures. A new video explains the hardware behind these beautiful glowing pieces, as well as the magic that makes their interactivity work. The basic architecture of the Lumanoi pieces starts with a custom main control board, based around the ESP-32-S3-WROOM-2. […]
If you want to protect a system from being hacked, a great way to do that is with an airgap. This term specifically refers to keeping a system off any sort of network or external connection — there is literally air in between it and other systems. Of course, this can be limiting if you […]
Content warning: Human alteration and scalpels. General warning: We are not speaking as doctors. Or lawyers. If you watch sci-fi, you probably do not have to think hard to conjure a scene in a trendy bar where the patrons have glowing make-up or tattoos. That bit of futuristic flair was possible years ago with UV-reactive […]
Have you ever struggled with the concept of quantum measurement, feeling it’s unnecessarily abstract? You’re not alone. Enter this guide by [Mithuna] from Looking Glass Universe, where she circles back on the concept of measurement basis in quantum mechanics using a rather simple piece of calcite crystal. We wrote about similar endeavours in reflection on […]
Hackers and makers have built just about every kind of clock under the sun. Digital, analog, seven-segment, mechanical seven-segment, binary, ternary, hexadecimal… you name it. It’s been done. You really have to try to find something that shocks us… something we haven’t seen before. [Moritz v. Sivers] has done just that. Wild. Just wild. Meet […]
Germanium. It might sound like just another periodic table entry (number 32, to be exact), but in the world of infrared light, it’s anything but ordinary. A recent video by [The Action Lab] dives into the fascinating property of germanium being transparent to infrared light. This might sound like sci-fi jargon, but it’s a real […]
Who would’ve thought a cheap AliExpress emergency light could be packed with such crafty design choices? Found for about $5, this unit uses simple components yet achieves surprisingly sophisticated behaviors. Its self-latching feature and decisive illumination shut-off are just the beginning. A detailed analysis by [BigCliveDotCom] reveals a smart circuit that defies its humble price. […]
Sometimes, we build things with LEDs as indicator lamps or to illuminate something important. Sometimes, we build things with LEDs purely to glow and be beautiful. This interactive light toy from [Jens] falls into the latter category. The build uses a 16×16 addressable LED matrix. [Jens] then ported some “Bouncy Bubbles” Processing code from Keith […]