Shadowplay starts out looking like a piece of illuminated art. Its gently glowing circular form sits serenely on the wall until it receives some human attention. When touched, parts of the LED ring turn off, creating strategic shadows.

When you approach the clock and touch the middle of its face, it projects two shadows mimicking clock hands. The shadows point out the current time while a small LED blips around the edge to show the seconds.

The Shadowplay clock is a concept from design studio breadedEscalope. They built it using an Arduino microcomputer that senses your touch, tells the time, and decides which LEDs need to be turned off. The studio hasn’t release information on whether they plan to produce and market the clock, but here’s hoping we can eventually hang this beauty on our walls.

The post Timely Touch: Hidden Clock is Illuminated With a Push first appeared on Gajitz.

Working out at home is far different than working out at the gym – so why is home gym equipment so similar to the gear you’d find at the gym? The designers at Lunar Europe adopted the challenge of creating a home workout experience that felt more tailored to the home environment.

The result is Tera: an interactive concept that combines home decorating with home fitness. The circular wool rug looks ordinary enough when it isn’t in use, but when you turn on the specially-developed app it becomes a high-tech exercise mat.

After you select a training discipline (like yoga, pilates, or Zumba), the LEDs on Tera’s surface help guide your movements. The pressure sensitive surface can detect with a high level of accuracy how you are moving your body, and the app gives you feedback on your workout.

The app records and analyzes your workouts, and when you’re done you can share the information with a personal trainer via social media. Tera is a concept and not a real product at the moment, but the innovative fitness tool has already won several design awards.

The post Hi-Tech Yoga: Wool Rug Becomes Interactive Exercise Mat first appeared on Gajitz.

An Idaho-based company called Rohinni has a question for you: what if light was printable? It’s an odd question, for sure, and one that was purely hypothetical until recently. Rohinni has created a paper-thin LED light source that needs nothing more than an electrical current to light up. Appropriately, they have named it Lightpaper.

Current LED lighting requires soldering LEDs to circuit boards, a process which is expensive and time-consuming as evidenced by the relatively high cost of LED home lighting. Rohinni’s method is simple, cheap, quick, and can be produced in large quantities.

It works by mixing tiny LEDs – each no bigger than a red blood cell – with ink. The illuminating ink is then printed onto a substance that conducts electricity. The process is clever, but not yet perfected. Currently, the LEDs aren’t distributed evenly over the entire printing surface, which can create a type of “twinkling” effect. But the company says that their forthcoming second version of Lightpaper will not have this flaw.

With its low cost and an expected lifespan of 20 years, Lightpaper is on track to displace OLEDs as the future of flexible lighting. Rohinni’s ideas for potential applications are plentiful, including lighted wallpaper for hotels, glowing logos on just about anything, and even car headlights. They are working with several companies to put the cool paper-thin lighting to work, and they expect the first round of products and objects with integrated Lightpaper to go public sometime in 2015.

The post Everything is Illuminated: Paper-Thin Printed LED Lighting first appeared on Gajitz.

If you have small children, houseguests, or just a house that’s difficult to navigate, you’ve probably used traditional night lights at some point. They’re bulky, they’re intrusive, and they take up at least one of the sockets on your power outlet. The SnapRays Guidelight from Snap Power is a simple but brilliant alternative that lets you keep both sockets open while illuminating your space.

The SnapRays Guidelight takes the place of an ordinary outlet cover and looks just like one except for the LEDs at the bottom. The lights have a sensor so they turn on at night and off in the day. According to the company, the LEDs cost less than 10 cents per year to operate, and they can keep producing light for more than 25 years.

Installing the nightlights is easy enough for just about any adult who knows how to use a screwdriver. You just have to shut off power to the outlet you want to install the Guidelight on, then unscrew the existing outlet cover plate. The SnapRays Guidelight fits over the outlet, you screw it in place, and it’s ready to go with no wiring or electrical work necessary.

It works with two clip-type arms that the company calls “power extractors.” These make contact with the sides of the outlet and provide energy to the sockets as normal. The device also draws a tiny bit of power from the outlet to light the LEDs. Because the nightlights look just like regular outlets, they don’t take up any extra space – but they do provide a nice ambient light in the dark that helps you get around without hogging your electrical outlets. They’re available from Snap Power’s website.

The post Wall Sockets + LEDs = Convenient Nightlights, Free Outlets first appeared on Gajitz.

Traditionally, traffic cops have held up little signs to direct traffic. The Traffic Guiding Baton from designers Chih Wei Lai and Chi Wang is a funny but modern alternative to those analog signs.

The baton works by lighting up a line of LEDs on its surface. When the baton is still, it’s difficult to make out what the LEDs spell out. But when an officer waves it in the air, the LEDs spell out “Slow” in red or “Fast” in green.

Although we’ve never seen a traffic cop actually tell people to go “fast,” the idea is very fun. It would definitely be more eye-catching than the typical “Stop,” “Slow,” and “Go” signs that they’ve been using for decades. We just hope their arms don’t get tired from all the waving.

The post Lighted Baton Replaces Boring Stationary Traffic Signs first appeared on Gajitz.