LCD Panel Lamp Shade Makes For Eye-Catching Lighting

At first sight, [Kyle]’s Elroy lamp is simply an attractive piece of modern-styled interior furnishing; its clean lines, wood grain, and contemporary patterning being an asset to the room. But when he pulls out his phone, things change. Because this lamp hides a secret: at its heart may be a standard LED bulb, but the shade conceals four LCD screens driven by an Nvidia Jetson. These can be controlled through a web app to display a variety of textures, completing the effect.

This is not however simply a set of laptop screens bolted to a lampshade. The screens started life in laptops sure enough, but have since had their reflective backing removed to create a transparent LCD panel. Then an appropriate diffuser had to be found, which after much experimentation became a composite including more than one textured paper. Finally the whole was enclosed in an attractive wooden lamp frame and became part of the furniture. We like it, both as an aesthetically pleasing lamp and as a genuine departure from the norm.

This isn’t the first eye-catching lampshade we’ve brought you, but it’s certainly raised the bar. You can see it in action in the video below the break.

14 thoughts on “LCD Panel Lamp Shade Makes For Eye-Catching Lighting

    1. I was wondering the exact same thing. I like random gadgets and cool things like this, but I end up not running them for long if they’re too power hungry. I *believe* most of the power consumption of a laptops screen would be from the backlight, but don’t quote me on that.

      1. I’m getting a spitball of around half a watt per panel, backlight free, but apparently after that the refresh is what’s power hungry, so for static or seldom changing displays, the refresh could be stretched way out from what is acceptable on a TV or monitor.

  1. I like it. I would probably stare at schematic diagrams on the four panels more attentively than what to me what looks like wallpaper patterns (interesting though they are in their own right) but maybe that’s just my electronics mindset coming to the fore. Also, having a different image, or an extension of a larger image such as another connected or similar schematic appear on the panels could make it a useful design tool and not just a table lamp.

  2. Wow, implementation is very nicely done. It’d be neat if it could play video loops like lava lamp or fireplace animations or maybe even cast videos to it and use it as some sort of casual background video player.

  3. Another neat project. Back when I was a kid we had lamps that used incandescent bulbs and the only animation that was wide spread was having a metal turbine at the top so the rising air from the heat of the lamp would rotate the shade.

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