Tag Archives: lcd

Wipe Fake concept brings drawing on steamed windows experience

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Are you one of those people that cannot resist writing or drawing on a fogged-up window? There’s just something so inviting about sliding your fingers along that surface and making your mark by doodling some random thing there that you know will eventually disappear. Still, it’s something fun to do when you find those steamed windows in various places. But what if it’s something you can do even without the need for fog or steam? That’s one of the things that they came up with at a hackathon at a Japanese creative agency.

Designer: IMG SRC (Suzuki, Koyama, Saito, Ikishawa)

These creatives from the agency created a device called Wipe Fake which is basically like a magic slate with a digital twist. They were able to recreate what we do when we swipe through a window fogged up because of condensation. You touch, draw, sketch, and create something using your fingers and this device does that. It is even able to add some water droplets effects which is what we experience when we do it on an actual window.

Users will be able to wipe off what they did and then start all over again. What makes it even more amazing is that you will be able to view “scenery” from behind the screen. You can install a display behind it which will eventually be revealed when you draw and swipe through the window. The display doesn’t really serve a higher function other than it’s fun to draw on something like this. I mean you probably can’t use it in a meeting but you can make it part of your guessing or drawing game.

Wipe Fake is one of three concepts that came out of a in-house hackathon where they had to come up with ideas to use a transparent liquid crystal display for an R&D project called µProto. The other one is called Biotalk which highlights animals in aquariums or zoo displays and give viewers more information about them. The third one is called Suru Heart which will show you the “heart” of the person you’re talking to on the other side through non-verbal cues.

The post Wipe Fake concept brings drawing on steamed windows experience first appeared on Yanko Design.

Sharp sues Vizio over display tech in 70-inch TVs

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Sharp, the Japanese electronics company behind the world's largest 8K LCD TV, is suing Vizio and two other companies over alleged patent infringement. Sharp claims that the companies infringed 12 patents related to panel technologies, like liquid cry...

TokyoFlash Quasar LCD Watch Is Deceptively Easy to Read

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Do you love unusual watches? Well Tokyoflash Japan has been a great source for strange and wonderful timepieces since the year 2000. While many of their designs are eye-catching, they’re also often difficult to read at a glance. That’s why I love the design of their Kisai Quasar LCD watch.

At first glance, these digital watches look incredibly complicated, with lots of geometric patterns that almost just look like abstract modern art. But take a moment to look closer, and you’ll notice that the time is right there, hiding in plain sight. You see, at the middle of the display’s four hexagonal quadrants, a small digit appears. So for instance, the watch above shows the time “0935”, while the one below says “2039.” Simple, eh?

The hex-shaped watch can also display an animation on its LCD, and can show the digits without the patterns around them – but I think that takes away from the design. Each one includes date, stopwatch, and alarm functions, and electroluminescent backlighting, as well as 12-hour and 24-hour modes.

The Kisai Quasar watch is available in black or silver stainless steel cases, with a blue, red, green or mirrored display.  You can pick one up at Tokyoflash for $179.00.

Bosch’s Virtual Sun Visor uses an LCD screen to cut the glare without cutting your view

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Its animated-PowerPoint video editing aside, Bosch does make a pretty good point. We’ve innovated in every part of the car, except the sin visor. The visor, although designed with good intent, is often obstructive, as it reduces your visibility in its effort to shade your eyes. The fact that you can’t wear heavily tinted sun-glasses while driving (in most parts of the world) just further aggravates the matter because you’re faced with one of two issues when you’re driving with the sun shining right at you. Either ignore the horrible glare, or cut your vision in half by holding an opaque flap against the sunlight. Bosch’s solution to the problem is pretty simple and just as effective.

The Virtual Visor is a transparent plate that sits in front of you, allowing you to see the road ahead right through it. The visor does, however, come with a facial-sensing RGB camera that sits on your dashboard, tracking your face as you drive. When it begins sensing glare or an excess of brightness on your face, a part of the visor goes dark, thanks to an LCD film integrated into it. This hexagonal matrix of dark pixels shifts around as your face moves, casting a shadow on your eyes to cut the glare, while the rest of the visor remains transparent for you to see through. Bosch demonstrated the Virtual Visor as a very basic prototype promising major improvements to it. For now, the idea itself seems pretty impressive, and the prototype does a pretty neat job of tracking your face and providing a dark visor only to your eyes while 90% of the visor remains clear and transparent.

My initial thought would be that Bosch should integrate this right into windshields, rather than having it as a separate visor, but the guys at Bosch rightfully point out that LCD panels tend to go dark if and when they fail or break, which would in turn compromise the driver’s full view were the windscreen to instantly turn black if gravel, hail, or even a rock slightly cracked the glass. The Virtual Visor, however, only cuts a portion of your view if it fails, and can always be folded right back up. Another issue with the Virtual Visor is its facial tracking, which at the moment seems like it needs better calibration. The camera can sometimes fail to detect your face if you turn it to look sideways or back, and the LCD pixels sometimes prove to be a bit of a distraction as they move around right in front of you.

Bosch is promising to develop this technology further to help it reach customers soon. Under development since 2016, the Virtual Visor hopes to be miniaturized further, with the ability to even swivel sideways to cut glare from the side of the driver. I guess all we need to do is wait and ‘watch’.

Designer: Bosch

Bosch’s virtual visor eliminates sun glare without blocking your view

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Sun glare is responsible for thousands of car accidents every year -- almost twice as many as any other weather-related condition, in fact. Now Bosch has reimagined the traditional sun visor to help tackle the problem -- and it's an incredibly techy...