During January 26 to January 29, 2012, the spectacular Ghent Light Festival held in Belgium and showcased several fantastic light art pieces submitted by designer from all over the world. One of those interesting projects is this cathedral made from no less than 55,000 LED lights. The art installation is very huge, eye-catching, especially when it is turned on with all the colorful lights in the evenings. But quite surprisingly, the cathedral, though has used over 55,000 LEDs, consumes only 20Kwatt / h of electricity, thus making it both a charming art piece and energy-saving project as well.

Although LED technology has already been widely used in our daily life, there’re still some LED related products we seldom know or use, and one on that list is rightly the LED Light Strips. It is thin and waterproof, ideal for both indoors and outdoors use, capable of serving as night lights or decorative lights. According to your needs, you may cut the strips into various sizes as well.

Selling Price: $17.99

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“Switch” is a liquid cooled lightbulb that combines analog and digital technology to bring light into your home. It was showcased during the CES2012, coming with a digital driver in the base and some LEDs mounted on the top. With the digital driver to monitor the bulb’s temperature all the time, the fluid inside the glass globe will draw heat from the LEDs if the temperature is too high. Such a unique function not only allows these lightbulbs to be used more widely, but ensures them a better lightening result. As an additional bonus, each component of the bulbs is reusable or recyclable, making them also ideal for the eco-friendly lifestyle.

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The world’s first cloud-based LED lighting system was recently launched by Japan-based Net LED Technology Company. It’s called NetLED system, composed of LED tube with built-in Wi-Fi as well as a free NetLed app. After installing the NetLed app on your smartphone, tablets or other devices and replaced your lights with the NetLED tubes, you can then control individual, multiple, or a set of lights via the app: to dim the lights (each tube has 10 different dimming levels), to turn them on or off, or to track energy usage in real-time. Net LED says that when a company, for instance, installs 200 of these lights, its power consumption can be reduced down by up to 50%.

Designer: Net LED Technology Corp

Anytime, anywhere, watch what you’d like to watch, and that’s rightly the thing David Forbes’ Wearable LED TV would help you to do. The wearable LED display involves customized display boards, circuits, batteries, iPod and speakers, making it functional enough to display some videos even during your moving.  For more details and manufacturing costs, you can check out the story at Popsci.

Designer: David Forbes

Ever miss the blue sky and white clouds when you’re actually working within your offices? Well for all nature lovers here is the Dynamic Luminous Ceiling Sky. It is composed of regular LCD TVs and LEDs, to simulating the natural cloudy sky and light conditions as accurately as possible. The ceiling consists of 19.6 x 19.6 inch square tiles that each holds 288 LEDs, and 11.8 inches below these lights there’s a diffuser film to create homogenous lighting that illuminates the room throughout.

Designer: Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering & LEiDs GmbH

Work smarter, not merely harder. FLEXiT is an ultra-flexible light that can be wrapped around tubes, bent into tight corners or magnetically fastened onto metal objects to serve as different types of lights: table light, camping light, work light, directional light and so on. Except for it adjustable shapes, the FLEXiT’s light functions can be changed too, offering low, medium and high light according to your various needs.

Selling Price: $29.99

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The fields in which LED is applied are far more than what we’ve ever expected, but it’s still quite surprising to see LED lights used in building an anti-aging mask. Can LED solve our skin problems? The answer from scientists is “yes”, and it is claimed that the “Magic LED Beauty Mask” will bring young and healthy skin back to you within 7 to 21 days by encouraging collagen and elastin regeneration as LED can “stimulate fibroblast activity”.

Selling Price: $199.56

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Launched by Japan-based Panasonic, this is the world’s first LED bulb that uses clear glass to show the light source. It features a single filament, coming with a power of 4.4 watts while lasting for over 40,000 hours. Requiring no time to get prepared, the bulb offers 100% of the light once you switch it on, and thus quite ideal for public places like the stairs and toilets. As a bonus, the bulb is announced to get a high efficiency, even remaining high lumen of 70% at end of life.

The bulb received the gold award in the “Japan Good Design Award 2011″.

A light signal isn’t functional enough to help you communicate with other drivers? Well, possibly the LED Light Display can. It is composed of mesh grid with about 600 LEDs, which are controlled by an ATmega AT89C51 microcontroller and play the messages you’ve already stored in the system. That means, when driving on the road, you can inform those behind you to back off, go ahead or do other things you may want with words displayed by the LED light. See what? The communication between drivers would become easier and clearer now.

Made of energy-efficient LED light and translucent fibers, the Hobo Lantern is a stylish bag that also doubles as a portable luminary. It was inspired by the urban nightlife of Zona Tortona during Design Week, and via the design Todd MacAllen aims to offer people some fashionable and functional accessories. Powered by 8 AA batteries, the Hobo can be safely used even when the LED light is turned on, and you may find it fabulous to go across the streets with a glowing bag.

Selling Price: $75-$125

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Slim, slim, slim, seeming everything nowadays is pursuing a good figure, even includes the fire extinguishers. Have a look at this one by Jinwoo Kim: it features a slim body design that fits in small storage space, thus makes it quite outstanding among common round-shaped fire extinguishers.  Besides, the Flameingo also comes with a replaceable cartridge to reduce waste; its pressure indicator and a built-in alarm also allow users to check out the status of the extinguisher more easily. When there’s fire breaking out, a LED light will soon switch on for people to find the extinguishers quickly.

Designer: Jinwoo Kim

In the movie “Back to the Future Part II”, a pair of Nike shoes that came from 2015 had successfully drawn many shoe collectors’ interest. It was Nike Air Mag, intelligent shoes that can glow and tie the shoelace automatically. But in 1989, there were merely 20 pairs of shoes made as properties in movie, thus many people feel quite pity about that. Fortunately they now have another chance to get the shoes, as Nike company has decided to sell 1500 “Back to the Future” shoes all around the world.

These new shoes look the same as that in movie, with LED panels that’ll light up for 5 hours on the outer sole and a electroluminescent Nike logo in the strap. At 11:30 EST on 8th September, these shoes were put up for auction at nikemag.eBay.com, and the proceeds will go to the Michael J. Fox Foundation in the hopes of finding a cure for Parkinson’s disease.

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It is everybody’s duty to keep away from a drunken driving so we may need some special gadgets to accomplish that task. Men should have a try with this Breathalyzer Jacket. It is embedded with an alcohol sensor located in the collar and a simple LED display on the cuff. Thus when you blow into the alcohol sensor, the LEDs will then light up to indicate your blood alcohol levels: the more alcohol you have, the more lights turn on.

Designer: Matt Leggett

It is surprisingly simple to create your own chess – you firstly need to draw out a chessboard and then find some cardboard, keys, LED bulbs, or even cakes to work as chess pieces. And to offer you some inspirations, we’ve collected some here for you to check through. Just go and enjoy them.

【Camera Lens Chess Pieces】

【Wooden Sculpture Chess Pieces】

【Cardboard Chess Pieces】

【Super Mario Chess Pieces】

【Transparent Chess Pieces】

【Key Chess Pieces】

【LED Chess Pieces】

【LEGO Chess Pieces】

【Wall Chess】

【Giant Chess】

【Edible Chess Pieces】

【Ice Chess Pieces】

Surprised, ordinary sugar can be used as a sustainable resource to make lamps? But of course you may need other materials when to make a Crystallized Sugar LED Lamp as that of Won Joon Lee’s.

After experimenting with sugar by burning, melting, freezing, Won Joon Lee finally created light-diffracting sugar crystals when he placed LEDs into concentrated sugar water. The unique sugar crystal lamp seems quite beautifully designed, giving out soft light to decorate your rooms. Besides, its modular design also allows the users to freely change its shape according to their different needs.

Designer: Won Joon Lee

Ordinary lamps can never go behind desks for finding your because they’re not flat enough to do that, but fortunately you now have a new lamp that illuminate almost any spaces. It is the Looksoflat Lamp. The design is constructed of several LED bulbs and thus features a maximized simplicity. And its functionality? Don’t worry about that, as the lamp performs really well.

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For all those who want their gates to have a unique look but feel upset about designing and painting them, designer Mathis Heller has created the iGate. These high-tech gates can easily change their appearances, getting new colors, patterns via changing the built-in LEDs.

Designer: Mathis Heller

This particular lamp is named as the “LED Rope.” It’s designed by Christian Haas to bring light into your environment and features a fabulously cunning combination of advanced LED lights with cute textile knots.

Designer: Christian Haas

Shaped like a piano and also named as a piano, these LED lamps allow you to produce a melody of light as your fingers slide across their keys. Something more impressive is that the illumination will be adjusted if you press these keys with various amounts of strength.

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Designer: QisDesign

【Piano Desk Lamp】 Selling Price: $630 Buy it here

【Piano Floor Lamp】 Selling Price: $1650 Buy it here

Driving carpet designs to a new level, Lama Concept has built some LED lights into 100% wool carpet. When they’re turned on in the nights, these lights’ shinning and romantic light will make both your carpet and room quite attractive. As all these LEDs are embedded in decorative knots, they wouldn’t destroy the entire beauty of your carpet even when they cannot work.

Designer: Lama Concept

Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are… That song suddenly hit me the moment I saw this Starlight. Put forward Omri Barzeev, the inimitable lamp is built with 126 LEDs that shine in almost the same way of real stars. So if you love stars, you’ll love the Starlight too.

Designer: Omri Barzeev

Thanva Tivawong wants to lead the traffic in a different way, with the help of the sand hour glass. Compared with the current traffic lights, the new design not only changes color but shows the time left to indicate the statement. So no more numbers but still good order.

Designer: Thanva Tivawong

Colorful LED lights have given the US map a new look and actually they’re used to highlight your travels within America. Beautifully framed, the Lighted LED US can effectively interact with the users, allowing them to easily find out how many cities they’ve been to. Really intuitive but pity that we don’t have a LED world map at the present.

Selling Price: $149.99

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For years turn signals have been protecting cars and car drivers, but now Lee Myung Su is making headway in creating a clever solution for cyclists’ safety. The SEIL (Safe Enjoy Interact Light) bag concept features an LED-equipped backpack that is controlled by a detachable wireless remote to let others on the road know when you’d like to make a turn or brakes, so as to reduce the possibility of crashes. Really a nice idea and I just wonder if the concept can also be used for pedestrians so that more and more people can be kept from the accidents.

Designer: Lee Myung Su

A withered tree comes to life again. That Chinese idiom suddenly struck me the first time I saw these cute LED mushrooms growing on the ugly wood blocks. Created by a Japan based company using reclaimed wood and LED lights, these shining mushrooms are available in various patterns and we bet each of them will give your gardens and living rooms a new look. You’ll find these LED Mushrooms indeed look better than they were on the screen when you buy them home.

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More doesn’t always mean better, and that is a most important law for the creative and energetic designers. And today we’d like to show you what the Austria based designer Thomas Feichtner has recently created: a table lamp that is constructed from merely a steel tube.

Possibly the so-called “Drawing Lamp” is the simplest lamp you’ve ever seen, but the simple shape doesn’t weaken its lighting function. With an LED built inside, the lamp can be “put down in a horizontal position with the illuminant slightly above the desk surface or in a vertical position with a maximum distance between the illuminant and the desk surface.” Wow, so the “Drawing Lamp” is not a lighting device that can be trifled with, right?

Designer: Thomas Feichtner

The Fiber Optic Stilettos, to some degree, have pointed out the importance of science and technology. I mean, the improvement of science not only changes our daily life, but also influences the woman fashion. The sexy stilettos are from Francesca Castagnacci, who uses light-reflecting optical fibers and LEDs as main materials, and therefore making the stunning piece shine like a bright star in the dark nights.

Designer: Francesca Castagnacci

Do not think that you can input whatever you want to the computer, coz the Pepper Mouth will monitor every word you type—it lights up for a moment when you type a bad word but releases fumes to punish you if you do not retract the cuss! You’re not afraid? Oh man, at least you should feel ashamed.

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We people, especially the women, are used to taking all kinds of items in one big bag for emergency needs. But the actual situation is that, we seldom find the needed object quickly simply because the interior of the bag is too dark. So to solve that problem, Nicole Osella has come up with an innovative bag light named as “Bulbo”, which utilizes LED bulbs to illuminate the bag. It features an ergonomic structure and therefore can be used in any type of bags. The metal ball outside the bag is used to create kinetic energy to charge the battery that powers the LED bulbs.

Designer: Nicole Osella

Imagination and creativity make everything possible. And right here is another impressive design, the Hands Fountain. Shaped like two hands cupping around a stream of water, the fountain also comes with six LED lights to illuminate the water as it spurts into the air.

Selling Price: $69.95

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Well, I have to say, the bulb created by Pieke Bergmans is really too fat…Look, the crystal LED lamp has to rest its big belly on the table. Aha, really impressive.

Here is some more information from the designer:

“It is a light bulb that has gone way out of line. Infected by the dreaded Design Virus, these Blubs have taken on all kinds of forms and sizes you wouldn’t expect from such well behaving and reliable little products.”

The future of recreation has arrived! Simply unfold chessboard, turn on the power button, and then you can play chess by pressing the board! Isn’t that cool? The portable LED chess set, inspired by the scroll paintings commonly seen in China and Japan, uses silica gel as its main material and therefore can be easily rolled up for portability. Another point you may be interested in is the onboard computer, which will make an opponent if you can’t find a partner. Great!

Designer: Guan Yi Quan

Thanks to GE for coming up with the Energy Smart® LED bulb, we can save much more electrical energy in the future. Compared with ordinary bulbs, the new one can distribute light in all directions, but costing less energy. It consumes 9-W of energy, amounting to a 77% savings compared to 40-W incandescent. It is also said that the LED bulb can last up to 17 years, if you use it 4 hours per day. The GE will launch it sometime early 2011 at a price of $40 to $50.

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Portable Pen projector, from the Mexico-based designer Edgar Navarro, is a good helper for you to realize better communication. It’s about as powerful as other projection devices, but much lighter and smarter. The new projector has a stainless steel body, features a LED system and works wirelessly via Bluetooth. On the body, there’re also several touch-sensitive rings, allowing the users to easily adjust the resolution and focus of the projection.

Nobody would refuse a trip around the world, but the premise is to have enough money and also a lightweight backpack. Otherwise, you’ll walk with a slow dragging motion…So why not replace the big torch with the FLEXI lightweight LED lights? As a collaborative work of Kyeore Kim, Jaesuk Han, Sungkuk Hong and Sena Joo, the flexible light is made out of a thin rectangular silicon pad, with a powerful but energy-efficient LED lights on the edge. It can be rolled up into different shapes, to serve as a directional light or a flashlight when needed. But in most conditions, the kids prefer to make it open like a sheet and use it as an ambient illumination.

Designer: Kyeore Kim, Jaesuk Han, Sungkuk Hong, Sena Joo

By installing LED lights inside the recyclable plastic pegs, designer Natalia Romanova has come up with a new kind of light equipment, the ‘Light Peg’. When getting charged on the tree for 30 minutes or so, these pegs could serve as book lights or shelf lights for 4-5hours. Or you can simply leave them on the tree, to create a unique and romantic decoration for your living rooms.

Designer: Natalia Romanova

No doubt the development of technology has greatly changed our life, and we wouldn’t agree with that more after we’ve seen the continuous improvement of LED films. Dubbed LightForm, the world’s first flexible LED lighting film measure 254mm long and 12.7mm wide, with an average thickness of less than 1mm. Moreover, it could be easily cut into various shapes, according to your different needs—attaching them onto your car or even sew them onto your clothes. Available in red, amber, green and blue colors, the LED film is priced from $ 26.95 (no battery included) to $29.95 (a battery included).

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Perhaps next time you’re to furnish your living room, you’d prefer the Lighting Design by Seo Dong-Hun. It consists of two parts, some color LEDs installed on the ceiling and a “light brush” to control them. Just as shown in the pictures, you can easily complete a shinning painting on the ceiling by turning on or off certain LEDs.

Designer: Seo Dong-Hun

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Imagine a table cover that also functions as a luminaire…Unbelievable? But technology has made that come true. Just have a look at the LED Table Cover. Made from fiber optics, the cloth could create a soft and warm glow when its elven-foot power cord is plugged into an electric outlet. Moreover, the cloth is completely waterproof so that you could easily wash it under running water.

Selling Price: $500

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The multi-tab power strip was invented as a result of the idea to save you much trouble in finding out what plug goes to those various appliances. It features a LED-Lego, which would present a monitor-shaped label on the block when in use. And when you want to unplug it, you can simply press on the tab. Easy as that!

Designer: Soon Mo Kang

Tokyoflash is a Japanese watch manufacturer that believes “the crazier, the better”. One of their unique design—’LED Watch’ may help you catch on that slogan better. It is the world’s first Morse Code Watch, featuring three modes for telling the time: Audio speaker sounding out the time in Morse Code, regular time display and Morse Code LED display. Taking the last time display for example, the LEDs will light up for three times to indicate the exact time. For the first time, each stripe on the display stands for ‘an hour’, for the second time, they means ‘ten minutes’, and for the last time, each of the stripe indicates ‘one minute’. So the watch shown in the picture below just tells “10:58″. You think that’s complicated? Surely it is to others, but not to the owners.

Specifications:

• Face: 40mm x 40mm x 10mm

• Wrist: Max 205mm (approx.)

• Weight: 150 grams

Selling Price: $247.72

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Selling Price: $247.72

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The White Fruit Radio by Swann Bourotte could be another option in that you can find great convenience and pleasure brought by the development of technology. Made of sycamore, the radio also integrates an LED substrate hidden under the thin surface to reveal its status. It has no knob or button, but employs the top ridges for the users to control the volume and tunes—all you need to do is to rub finger across.

Designer: Swann Bourotte

Air Scale is an innovative design by Yasuhiro Akama. The concept is all about telling the users the quality of the air they’re breathing in. According to the amount of pollutants, Air Scale rates the air in three colors: red means ‘dirty’, white indicates ‘normal’ and green means ‘clean’.

Designer: Yasuhiro Akama

The newly launched electric vehicle is aimed at big cities and other places where the streets are always congested. To meet the urban commute requirements, the electric scooter not only features a compact shape, but promises an easy storage. When not in use, the vehicle could be conveniently folded up in five steps. The design also speaks of green promises, as it is powered by super charging lithium batteries (they could be full charged in merely five minutes) and won’t lead to exhaust gas pollution. Besides, the vehicle also features an LED blue halo headlight for night riding.

Designer: Stuart Emmerson

I cannot think of a rational reason why I love these squeezable LED lights, but I just know clearly I do. Diana Lin’s d°light Bubbles are silicone LED lights that give out a ‘whoo’ sound when you squeeze them. Apart from decorating your stylish room, these lights also seem like a better way for you to spend a tiresome evening. Just squeeze, squeeze and squeeze!

Designer: Diana Lin

Selling Price: $139

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Launched by Armatix, the $10,000 weapon won’t fire unless the user is wearing a corresponding watch. But the gun still won’t shoot if the watch isn’t close enough. So only when you see the LED lights turn green, you can then use the expensive weapon. I cannot think of a rational reason why I want this gun, but I know clearly that I love the creative concept a lot.

Selling Price: 7,000Euro

Designer: Armatix

Though claimed featuring a perfect energy saving property long ago, LED hasn’t been widely used yet due to its high cost of up to 28 dollars each. But that’s no longer true after the Cambridge University researchers have developed the cheap LED bulbs that are priced at merely $2.85 each. Even better, the new LEDs are much brighter than usual one and can last quite a long time of up to 60 years.

We’’already covered some attractive LED designs in the blog, but the ‘LED Sketch Art’ is totally different from all those. It is a toy which allows you to ‘draw’ a glowing picture by sticking LEDs into the board. Powered by batteries, USB cable, AC wall adapter, or car adapter, the LED toy could be easily taken along with you, and therefore to ensure you a ‘drawing’ time (also ‘enjoying’ time) whenever you want.

Selling Price: $37.99

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That’s a ceiling light for real? Bravo! Including 108 LEDs and several fiber-optic cables, seemingly the lamp has created numerous shining stars in the room. You could also DIY a similar one with fishing lines and LEDs if you wouldn’t like to spend too much money on a lamp.

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