There’s a fair chance you probably have not heard of this Italian lighting company, so please allow us to introduce them to you. Founded in 1930, the Luminarie De Cagna is an Italian Family lighting business with an interesting history.

Back in the 1930′s the business would illuminate buildings and squares for festive occasions. Back then it was through the use of oil and carbide lamps, followed by electric lamps, and as early as 2006 they’ve switched to using just LED lights. The LED lights are joined together to form large curtains of light. These curtains are used to cover everything from large buildings to sculptures, bathing entire streets in colorful lighting.

De Cagna was listed as the first stop in this year’s Ghent Light Festival. The family lighting company used over 55,000 LED lights to produce an LED cathedral that consumes only 20 kWh of electricity (Using a 60 watt light bulb for one hour consumes 0.06 kWh of electricity. Using a 60 watt light bulb for 1 thousand hours consumes 60 kWh of electricity).

For more than 10 years, the City of Ghent has been realizing the Ghent Light Festival, during the first year the Light Festival had a barely noticeable increase in energy consumption. By reducing other lighting sources, use of solar energy, and encouraging the artists to use as much LED lamps as possible they’ve continued to keep the energy demands low. This year the festival exhibits were considered energy neutral, except for two pieces, the De Cagna family’s LED Cathedral and a piece called Les oiseaux de Mr Maeterlinck. The birds in this artistic piece land on the branches of trees and ropes without any noise or energy consumption.

The event draws over 200,000 visitors to the city, and ran from January 26th to the 29th. The theme of this year’s festival was ‘Happiness’, as the city combined the talented works of LED artists and local musicians (Ghent was recently honored with the title of Creative City of Music by UNESCO. – The United Nations Educational, Scientif, and Cultural Organization).

After a trip to the Getty it’s hard not to feel inspired to go out and create something. The Museum is home to some truly interesting pieces of art from a wide range of talented artists and different styles. As the cost of LED lighting has continued to decrease over the time, the use of LED lights in art as a medium has and will continue to grow.

Though we still love our LED Graffiti, becoming increasingly popular is Light Art Performance Photography. This combines the use of a variety of lighting types to paint light graffiti for a single long-exposure image. These impressive images created by LAPP artists are not edited or photoshopped. There are plenty of tutorials and videos that explain how to get started with working in this medium for those that are interested. It seems that all it takes to get started is a lot of patience, a digital camera, lights (LED rope?) and a calculator.  Some of LAPP-Pro’s dramatic images were created in an hour, you can create your own interesting images in about three minutes.

Another personal favorite is the Multiverse,  built by artist Leo Villareal. It is one of the largest and most complex light sculptures currently housed at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC.
The work uses 41,000 computer programmed LED lights, and took almost three years of work. Programmed with his own software, the piece combines programmed patterns and random chance to generate the hypnotic images.

The variety of LED artwork out there is growing. As the material becomes more affordable and easier to work with artists will continue to use it as a creative medium. We are looking forward to discovering both new artists and their works as pieces like these continue to gain momentum and attention. We’ve come a long way from the felt paintings with the carefully placed led light bulb.

Photo by Boegh

There’s nothing quite as shocking as waking up in a house with a broken heater. The moment you realize you were wrapped a little more tightly than usual under the blankets, the air is a little nippier, and something just isn’t right, all seem to collide when your foot then hits a cold kitchen tile floor.
As a former New York resident now living in Southern California, I really feel like I’d have no room to complain about cold weather. For the next few months, it’s going to be cold (even if it’s 50 degrees here), and knowing how to stay warm without a heater could help to reduce some bills and possibly help with keeping healthy.

Now, if you happen to have a working heater in your home or office it’s suggested that you keep it between 60 and 65 degrees in the winter. This certainly isn’t the warmest setting but by keeping it low and dressing appropriately you should be able to save some money on your bill.

With your home temperature set, now we can take a look at some tips that will help reduce the strain on your heater. Poorly insulated windows and doors can really hurt your heating bill and keep your home or office drafty. You can temporarily fix your windows so that they are insulated with a removable window caulk, or just stuff a t-shirt or towel into any leaks that are created. In older homes or houses with heavy wooden windows I would consider the removable caulk, as it will work better than the shirt!

Once you have insulated your windows and doorways (and thus stopped any leaks) we can look at heating things up without turning on the furnace.
If you have windows that receive a lot of sunlight, take a clear plastic shower curtain and put it up right in front of the window. The clear plastic will work to keep out cold air from outside, and use the sunlight to heat the air in the room. I’ve seen this done using shower curtains that have designs on the lower portion and it can look pretty interesting.

If your home or office has rooms that aren’t being used, be sure to leave those doors shut. The reduced air circulation will help cut heat loss. Other suggestions include using curtains in front of windows that do not receive a lot of sun (to help keep the cold air out), putting down a throw rug or something to cover cold flooring (beach towels?) and by setting up a dehumidifier to make the air in your home feel warmer.

Of course dressing appropriately is a good idea as well, and I would even consider wearing a nice hat. There are a lot of really interesting, warm, and comfortable hat options out there for you these days. You would be surprised how much you’ll appreciate a nice pair of thick ski socks sitting in your living room (and on the slopes should you decide to go skiing).

Finally, two suggestions that I absolutely love to use to keep warm.

1) Drinking hot cocoa (or any warm beverage) will help make you feel warmer and can be a great treat.

2) Cook something. When I lived in New York we would make a hearty beef stew, home made bread, and of course some fresh warm cookies. These may not make your entire house feel a nice 80 degrees, but you’ll be surprised at how warm you’ll feel after a bowl of stew with home made bread followed by hot cocoa and cookies.

We’ve got a whole list of other suggestions on how to stay warm in the colder months, but we want to hear from you. What are your tips for staying warm in the winter?

You may remember our post on Android & LED’s  about devices connecting with LED Lights in the New Year. Well this year’s Consumer Electronics Showcase seems to be keeping up with the idea of the Smart Home or Office.

Chip Manufacturer Marvell Semiconductor introduced two new smart energy platforms for smart appliances and LED lighting applications. The new platforms are designed to allow manufacturers to offer a broad range of services to consumers beyond just controlling devices. The new technology will include capabilities like energy-management, demand-response, home automation and remote access. This would allow service providers to remote connect and diagnose problems with machinery. Imagine having your technician connecting to your washing machine from his office and being able to see what parts need to be ordered before showing up at your home to install them.

“As consumers increasingly expect their devices and interfaces to be continuously connected to the content and data they want – at anytime, from anywhere – Marvell is very proud to provide the technologies that enable a seamless Connected Lifestyle across a wide array of platforms and devices.” said Kishore Manghnani, vice president of marketing for Green Energy Products at Marvell Semiconductor, Inc. “Currently, appliances and lighting systems do not have high-performance host processors to support connectivity and smart applications. In addition, these appliances and devices are also not mobile – they are in fixed locations and appliances are often surrounded by thick encasings – creating various radio frequency challenges. Marvell’s new Smart Energy and LED Lighting Platforms address each of these areas by providing fully integrated, end-to-end solutions in small form factors that can be easily and affordably integrated into appliances and lighting products for the next-generation of energy-efficient smart homes and offices.”

The Smart LED Lighting Platform is built around the companies Wi-Fi/ZigBee gateway. Connecting the lighting control networks to the parent network, allowing control via smart phones and tablets. This potentially could mean that you can access your home or business lighting from any computer. This new Marvell system is designed for both affordability, ease of use and installation.

It will be interesting to see how this new technology influences the Consumer Electronics and Appliances industry over the year as we continue to see even more smart home and smart office technology.

TerraCycle takes recycling to a whole new level with their recycling brigades program. The company was originally founded in 2001 by Tom Szaky, a then 20 year old Princeton University Freshman. TerraCycle started by producing organic fertilizer (worm poop) in used soda bottles.

The company focuses on recycling and upcycling, a method that takes an item in its current shape and condition and finds an alternative use for it (Taking a plastic bag and reusing it as opposed to melting it down to make something new). The company uses a system of brigades to break down different recycling and upcycling options.

The sign up process is incredibly easy. After signing up with your e-mail address, you’re prompted to complete your profile and then join a brigade. Different brigades offer users rewards in the form of points. These points represent money that can be donated to the user’s charity of choice. To date, TerraCycle users have donated $3,424,309.67 and over 2 billion units of trash, with more than 26 Million people actively collecting trash.

The brigade system allows users to see available spots (some brigades are waitlisted) and the opportunities for point per item. Joining an open brigade is easy, and once you’ve collected the material you’re going to be sending to TerraCycle you can login, go to your brigade and click “Ship Us Your Waste”. At the moment we’re generating our packing slip so we can ship out the box of plastic bottles we’ve collected that were waiting to go out into our recycle bin.

TerraCycle is a great fundraising mechanism for nonprofit organizations and schools. By signing up and asking members of the community to save and send their brigades waste, organizations have an opportunity to then donate those points to their organization. Based on the available information it appears that this will be contributed to 501 3-C non profit organizations and public schools.

Take a look through the available programs at TerraCycle and help reduce even more of your carbon footprint today!

We hope everyone is having as wonderful a Holiday Season as we are here at Seesmart! We have spent the last few nights driving around our city looking at all of the wonderful Holiday Light Displays people have put together (We even had our thermos of hot cocoa!).

Yesterday we noticed people had started to take down their Holiday lights, so we wanted to walk you through how to store your Holiday lights to avoid the frustration of tangles, breaks, or having to replace them next year.

The easiest way to safely pack Holiday lights for next year is by cutting up a nice chunk of cardboard into a sun pattern as shown here. We used a sharpie and ruler to outline the shape we were going to use before putting our box cutter to work. When doing this, it is a good idea to use the thickest cardboard you have available to you (so thin Macy’s boxes will not work) and to limit the number of lights you wrap onto them.

To start your lights on the cardboard you’ll want to slice about one inch into the center of the cardboard circle. Slide the male or female end of the cord into the slit and then begin wrapping the lights across and through the divots. Be sure to wrap parallel from your starting point, moving over by one in a specific direction in a star pattern. This will make things easier for you when it comes time to unwrap your lights or garland next season.

Once you have wrapped up your lights on these you can take an old twist tie (found at your local Home Depot or leftover from a loaf of bread) and secure the final end to the wrapped lights.

Depending on the number of light boards you have, it may be a good idea to store them in a large plastic bin (cardboard boxes are more susceptible to impact damage). We suggest keeping any pets out of the plastic bin as they may think this is a new toy for them.

Once you’ve convinced your pets not to help with storing your holiday decorations, you can begin to pack your lights and any garlands away. To pack away any glass bulbs, candles, or other extremely fragile items we suggest using egg cartons, or purchasing packing supplies from your local post office. Once again, we suggest purchasing plastic bins to reduce the possiblity of impact damage.
 

If this seems like too much of a headache (or your cat simply refuses to leave your plastic bins alone) you can always hire a team to come in and take down your decorations and pack them up for you safely. You can also purchase specialty items to help organize your Holiday decorations. Just try to keep an inventory of what you have to avoid buying duplicates next year.

Have a safe and Happy New Year everyone!

Today we received a last minute invitation to a Holiday party; part of that invitation requires us to bring a “Holiday themed white elephant gift”. The gift had to be under $20, eco-friendly, and if possible homemade. Not the easiest thing to have to come up with at the last minute right?

We took a quick trip to our local craft store and picked up a green wreath, LED lights, and some ornaments.

First we start out with our basic wreath. We cleaned off any dust and made sure that the metal guides on the back weren’t showing through. Next we took all of our Ornaments and Decorations and glued them to the wreath. You can be as creative as you would like with this as there are a lot of different types of Holiday decorations that would work. We went with a classic clear glass, white, and red ornament collection. Should you live in warm areas, avoid using anything that will attract insects, rodents, or birds (as popcorn tends to do).

Next we unboxed our LED lights. These are easy to use, affordable, and as we’ve seen this year can be used for a variety of DIY LED projects. 

Make sure you place the small green power box behind the wreath in the wire track. Once you have the lights woven through the wreath the way you want you’ll need to use a zip tie to make sure the power supply box won’t fall out of place. 

If you’re going to use glass ornaments, make sure to be careful when you need to place your wreath on its face as breaking them once they’re glued on can be a pain. Also, you’ll want to wrap your LED lights around and sometimes behind these items as the lights look great coming through the glass.

You’ll want to want to try a few different layouts. Avoid touching the wires to any glue or getting them stuck with the zip ties used to secure the power supply.

Once you’ve got your wreath looking just the way you like it, you’re ready to go! Here’s an example of what our wreath looked like before we wrapped it up in a bag for the party.

You’re all set! Have a Happy Holiday!

With the Holidays right around the corner we’re excited to bring you our 2011 LED Holiday Gift List. We’ve taken a look at what is available across the web as well as hit our local stores to find a list of really interesting LED themed gifts for you this year. Now we’ve tried to cover everyone you may be shopping for, but in the event we missed someone let us know and we will see what special LED gift is out there just for them. Have a Happy Holiday season!

1) This winter you can show Fido some LED love with this K9 MeteorLight LED ball! Available from the folks at Think Geek, this rubber ball lights up and changes colors making for the perfect after-dark game of fetch! Of course not everyone that buys this LED light up will end up giving it to their pooch, so we’re guessing it’ll make a great gift for anyone who wants to play ball.

2) Light up your desk with this GIANT LED!  If you’re as crazy about LEDs as we are then this is probably already number 1 on your Holiday Wish list. This is the perfect gift idea for any College student staying in a dorm. These table lights are great for late night studying and wont upset the roommates.

3)  This Square Chrome Rain LED Shower Head is a hit with both kids and adults. Though our research has found that there are a lot of products similar to this, we’ve also found that they are likely to malfunction so we strongly suggest buying this from a reputable seller. I have to admit, we went for the high end model on this one (it’s on my wish list) but there are alternatives.

4) This LED Car Light is perfect for any driver, and a must have for that friend who loves the phrase “road trip”. This flash light fits into most car lighter/charging spaces and comes with a dc converter if there’s any issue.

5) LED Magnetic Digital Graffiti! Some of you may remember our post over the summer about LED & DIY Throwies, well now you can buy the LED’s premade and have all sorts of fun with them! We picked up a few of these packs at Walgreens to have fun making some LED art. Grab some for a friend or family member and see what they create!

Naturally, one of my favorite things about the Holiday season is the lighting decorations people put up. Growing up, my siblings and I would get bundled up and shuffle into my parents station wagon to drive around our town to look at all of the houses and trees lit up for the Holidays. Back then we usually weren’t gone for long before someone had to use the bathroom, or someone (my sister) was crying because someone else (not me) might have not been touching her.  Though we may not torture each other in the car anymore, going for a ride to look at the holiday lights and decorations is still a family tradition.

When we were kids, LED lights weren’t the readily available Holiday decoration they’ve become today. Because of the increase in environmental awareness, energy efficiency, and even YouTube, these types of light shows have become incredibly and increasingly popular. Travel blog “Take the Kids” has a solid list of some of the major lighting events held in cities across the country.

If you feel inspired by any of these videos, or just want to show off for the neighborhood, take a look at our post on creating your own Holiday light show for some general information.

Here are some steps to get you started on your Holiday Light Show creation.

1 – Decide how grand you want your light show to be. A channel is a unit of lights that can be controlled independently. For example, a single bush in your yard may be a channel. All the lights in a channel work as a unit. 32 channels are a good starting point.
2 – Stock up. The best time to buy lights is the day after Christmas. Many times you will find lights that were normally priced around $2 a strand fall to $0.50. Check out Wal-Mart, Lowe’s, Home Depot, or look for deals online.
3 – Obtain a control system. You will need hardware that hooks up to your computer. You can buy a system completely built, a kit, or a full do-it-yourself system. This is where things can get expensive. Remember, the more work you are willing to do yourself the less costly things will be.
4 – You will need to get software. Lighting display software is available for purchase; however you can also find free software available for Do-It-Yourself systems.
5 – Design your show! There are a variety of LED light types out there, from the simple rope lights to large and complex multicolor bulbs. Get creative!
6 – Program your show. Here comes the time consuming part! Select the music that you will be synchronizing to, and begin programming on your time grid.
7 – To avoid aggravating the neighbors, look into broadcasting your audio via an FM transmitter. This may not be the cheapest thing to do, but it will help to keep the neighbors happy. Alternatives to this are to only run your audio at certain times for a selected period. One of the large displays in our neighborhood runs every 10 minutes for one hour a night. You may also need to check with your HOA about your display, and notifying your local police department is also a good idea (better safe than sorry).
8 – Do a test run! Make sure everything works great before you’re scheduled to go live.
9 – Advertise. Get the word out! Use Facebook and other social networks to tell people what you’re doing. Uploading a video to YouTube is also a great way to show off your creation.

Water is such an important part of our ecosystem and a vital resource, especially here in Southern California. We rely on water for everything from watering our crops, to manufacturing and production. Through all this it seems every year we hear about critical water shortages and droughts. In some places you can be fined for running your sprinkler system for too long, or on the wrong day, all to try to curb the amount of water we use.

Whether it’s during a drought or just to try to conserve this vital resource, we have come up with a list of easy ways for you to reduce the amount of water you use. Some of these are obvious while others are a little more creative. The best part is that by using these tips to conserve water you will not only help cut your water usage, but you’ll also help keep our rivers and oceans clean.

1) Turn the water off when brushing your teeth.
This is often the easiest and most forgotten way to save water, partially because brushing our teeth isn’t something that requires our full attention. If you find yourself forgetting to turn off the faucet, try adding a little note or ribbon to your toothbrush. This quick reminder will help you to establish the new pattern as part of your daily routine. This simple act can help to save over two gallons of water per minute.

2) Run your laundry and dishwasher only with full loads.
I’m personally guilty of trying to overstuff both my dishwasher and my washing machine to avoid doing dishes and to try to get through laundry faster. If you don’t have enough dishes to fill your dishwasher but want them clean, consider
doing dishes by hand (and checking out our next suggestion). To help with laundry, make a mental note of how many items it takes to fill your machine. You can then set that amount aside separately and think of it as your minimum for doing laundry. This not only helps you conserve water, but it will help you with your detergent as well.

3) When washing dishes by hand, don’t let the water run while rinsing.
Fill one sink with wash water and the other with rinse water, and if you happen to only have one sink go with the rinse station. You can pile up soapy dishes on the counter with the worst case scenario being that you end up with an especially clean counter.

4) Dye your toilet water.
This is my personal favorite thing to do (especially if we have company. We use neon colors). To check your toilet to see if water is leaking into the bowl, place a few drops of food coloring into your toilet tank. If the bowl water starts to show the new color you have a leak. If you don’t have a leak it makes for an interesting way to discuss water conservation with the guest who will eventually ask “Why is your water neon pink?”

5) Know when to take a bath instead of a shower.
If you really love taking a long hot shower to relax, just think how much more you’ll enjoy getting to lie down and soak in a tub. When you do want to shower make sure you’re doing so under a water-efficient shower head. A good way to tell if you have one already or not is to place a one gallon bucket in your shower and see how long it takes for it to fill. If your bucket fills in less than 20 seconds you should consider replacing the shower head. You can also save water by reducing the amount of time you spend in the shower, setting a timer to see how long you’re in there will help with cutting back on the time used.

What tips do you have for conserving water in your home?