Philips Shows Light Emitting Clothing

Paul Cobbaut writes "From Physorg: Philips Research intends to impress the visitors at this year's IFA (Internationale Funkausstellung) with a world-first demonstration of promotional jackets and furniture featuring its innovative Lumalive technology. Lumalive textiles make it possible to create fabrics that carry dynamic advertisements, graphics and constantly changing color surfaces. Here is the Philips Press Release." Obviously, all Devo videos will need to be reshot using this valuabe new technology advance.

They're not alone

[inputsprocket]

They're not alone - try Luminex [luminex.it] for fibre optic threads in clothes and Elekson [eleksen.com] for pressure sensitive fabrics....

Re:Useful for safety wear? -- Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article, there didn't seem to be much implication of safety wear.

In fact:

On jackets containing the Philips Lumalive fabrics dynamic advertisements, graphics and constantly changing color surfaces can be displayed

Is one of the captions of the picture. They seem to just be concerned with better advertisement on people's bodies for brand names. Yuck. Or perhaps just the showy aspect of this. It's quite possible that these lack the power to produce lights bright enough for safety gear. Remember that a reflective jacket these days uses the driver's headlights to reflect a pretty bright light.

Re:Feedback?

[inputsprocket]

make that Eleksen [eleksen.com]

Re:Useful for safety wear?

[MobyDisk]

Actually, I think this type of visibility is a bad idea. If you are driving at night, and something has bright flashing lights, the ONLY thing you can see is the flashing lights. Everything that you could see before now becomes invisible, because your eye has to re-adjust to the bright object. Either that, or the bright object burns into your retina and now you can't see anything else. Either way, this makes it more dangerous for the driver.

Other examples:
- Near my home there is a school. The added super-bright flashing LEDs onto the standard reflective pederstrian sign. Now, whenever I drive by it at night, I am momentarily blinded just as I approach the school crosswalk.
- Ever see the school buses that have the strobe lights on top? Not so bad during the day, but on an early cloudy winter morning those things are dangerously bright. It makes me blink twice as much to avoid looking right at them.

Instead of hanging a handful of 'blinkies' off the back of my bike

Do yourself a favor: Turn your blinkies around so they shine against your back. This will illuminate you so people see you, rather than shine a light into the driver's eyes. Face the LED lights toward the person on the bike so that the cars see a person on a bike, not "Hey, look at that cool...! "

Reflectors also work well because they are softer light and they only reflect what is sent out.