When we think of alternative energy, we usually think of the big players: solar, wind, geothermal, and the like. But there are some alternative energy sources that we rarely consider. Dutch designer Teresa van Dongen explores one of these alternatives in her bioluminescent lamp called Ambio.

Ambio consists of a glass tube half-filled with an “artificial seawater medium,” counterbalanced by two brass weights. The seawater contains a photobacterium species harvested by taking a scraping from the skin of octopi found at a fish market. The tube is capped off with thick wool that allows oxygen to enter the chamber.

When the bacteria are agitated and provided with oxygen, they glow an otherworldly blue color. By gently nudging one of the brass weights, the tube begins to gently sway, waking up the glowing bacteria inside. For a short time, the lamp provides a perfectly electricity-free light source.

The project is compelling and completely beautiful, but there are problems. The bacteria tend to either run out of food or overpopulate the container fairly quickly, putting an end to the display within about two days. The students from TU Delft who helped van Dongen work on the lamp are currently working on prolonging the lifespan of the bacteria so the living lamp can survive longer.

The post Living Lights: Sea Bacteria Make This Swinging Lamp Glow first appeared on Gajitz.

Color plays a larger role in our daily lives than some people realize. The color red, for example, can make us feel hungry. Blue can encourage a feeling of peace and tranquility. Retail stores, restaurants, advertisers, and even doctors’ offices use colors to manipulate our emotions to achieve a certain goal. The ColorUp Lamp from Pega Design & Engineering lets you perform the same kind of color-related emotional manipulation on your own terms.

The table lamp is shaped like an oversized light bulb. Its squishy silicone body is not only fun to play with; it’s the method by which the user interacts with the lamp. Set it on any surface and give it a squeeze, and the internal sensors will absorb that color frequency and display it as the lamp’s new color.

The large silicone casing diffuses the light and casts a soft colored glow all around you. It’s possible to change the entire mood of the room just by giving the ColorUp lamp a little squeeze. You can use different colors for studying, relaxing, working, and whatever else your day throws your way.

Making the lamp able to absorb and display every color possible would make the lamp cost-prohibitive, but it has a wide range of a few hundred color frequencies that it can duplicate. The designers wanted to make a product that users could interact with and get the immediate tangible satisfaction of that interaction via the tactile squeeze and the fun lighting color shift.

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Bioluminescence is a pretty cool natural phenomenon that lets living organisms glow with their own inner light. Tiny bioluminescent plankton called dinoflagellates make up the inner glow in a cool new toy/virtual pet called Dino Pet.

Dino Pet gets its name and its shape from the dinoflagellates that inhabit its plastic shell. The tiny plankton live in salt water and require minimal care to thrive and bring you a sweet little light show at night.

During the day, your Dino Pet should be set in indirect light. At night, give it a little shake to stimulate the plankton and make them glow. Every now and then, you dump some liquid nutrients into the dino’s belly to keep the plankton fed.

The amount of light your Dino Pet puts off depends on how well you care for it. If you pay attention to it and give it lots of love, it will put on a show for you every night after a little shake.

The toy/pet/biological lamp from BioPop was developed after the company began a quest for a sustainable bio-light. They found dinoflagellates, designed an adorable vessel for them, and made a completely lovable living lamp that’s available in the US for $59.95.

The post Living Lamp Glows Brighter the More Attention You Give It first appeared on Gajitz.

In areas of the world where there is no grid to deliver electricity, homes are often lit by kerosene lamps. The smoke from those lamps is incredibly dangerous, as are the flames themselves: millions of people every year suffer severe burns and property loss as a result of kerosene lamps tipping over. A startup company has come up with an absolutely brilliant solution for lighting off-grid homes, using one of the most overlooked but abundant resources available absolutely everywhere on Earth: gravity.

GravityLight addresses the fact that more than 1.5 billion people on the planet have no access to reliable electricity. The clean, green LED lamp only requires users to lift a 20-pound weight every 30 minutes. As the weight descends the attached tracks, it powers an internal dynamo which in turn lights the light. It’s the same concept we’ve seen used with hand-cranked gadgets for years, just with less overall effort required of the user thanks to gravity’s help.

The team behind GravityLight looked to IndieGoGo for initial funding of the research stage of their project. They blew way past their initial funding goal, meaning that they will soon be able to provide lights to people in Africa and India for real-world testing. After the lights make it to large-scale manufacturing, they will cost less than $5 each, meaning that people who switch to a GravityLight from a kerosene lamp will recoup their investment in a matter of weeks. The health and safety benefits of switching away from kerosene are incalculable.

The post Ingenious Lamp Lights Third World With the Power of Gravity first appeared on Gajitz.

Finn Magee‘s series of impossible gadgets is a fun look at just how small our electronics have gotten. The three gadgets – a clock, a lamp and a speaker – all look like nothing more than wall posters with oddly trailing cords.

But when you plug in the cords, the true nature of these unusual posters becomes apparent. The 2D images actually perform the functions of their three-dimensional counterparts.

The picture of the speaker really works as a speaker when plugged into an MP3 player; the picture of the digital clock actually gives the time; the picture of the desk lamp gives off real light when the cord switch is flipped.

Magee’s brilliant objects were all made in limited editions which can be ordered from AREAWARE. They’re the perfect solution for the tiny apartment that is short on tabletop space. More importantly, however, they’re definitely the coolest posters that will ever grace a wall.

The post Flat Out Cool: 2D Wall Posters Function Like 3D Electronics first appeared on Gajitz.