Mercedes uses LEDs to create invisible car

Mercedes uses LEDs to create invisible car article tells that Mercedes campaign makes interesting use of LED technology to market new message to consumers.

To promote its new fuel cell technology, luxury car manufacturer Mercedes-Benz went in the complete opposite direction of what most companies do when marketing a new product: As opposed to inundating consumers with hundreds of shots of the car, they made the vehicle completely invisible.

And they did this using LED technology. They outfitted one side of the car with a mat of LEDs. On the other side, the team at Mercedes mounted a Canon 5D Mark II digital SLR camera. The video that the camera picked up was then displayed on the LED side of the vehicle. The use of LED technology is pretty cool. Here are some shots of how it all turned out:

As you can see in the Mercedes video, even though people could still tell there was a car going by, they seemed impressed by the “invisible” fuel-cell vehicle.

Mercedes Rolls Out Invisible Car [VIDEO] article has in addition to the video shown above a car setup picture set.

Mercedes Rolls Out Invisible Car [VIDEO] article also mentions (with a video) that the technology used in making car visible was basically pretty similar to one used in iPad2 Halloween Costume- Gaping hole in torso video (in this case thsi DIY person was using 2 iPad2s that have FaceTime chat between them).

8 Comments

  1. Tomi Engdahl says:

    This is another nice LED display in car application.
    In this case this is intended to be opposite of “invisible”!

    Mirage 2.0 Lights up the desert with 4,024 LEDs
    http://hackaday.com/2012/10/15/mirage-2-0-lights-up-the-desert-with-4024-leds/

    Wrap the entire friggen vehicle in a netting of 4,000 LEDs! Take that officials!

    Most of the hardware is Phillips display stuff, digital LED fixture controllers are used to interpret HDMI data and then pipe out color data to addressed chains. All this mapping and addressing means that the entire setup functions like a 168×24 pixel monitor. Split chains of LEDs also happen to allow the crew to operate the doors and get in and out of the vehicle.

    Mirage 2.0
    A mobile, interactive visualizer.
    what is this thing?
    http://dustandmirrors.tumblr.com/about

    Demo videos
    http://dustandmirrors.tumblr.com/post/33200547580/software-output-tests

    Reply
  2. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Satellite writes in the night sky
    http://www2.electronicproducts.com/Satellite_writes_in_the_night_sky-article-FANE_Japan_Satellite_Oct2012-html.aspx

    If you happen to look into the night sky in the near future and see flashing lights or what appears to be extraterrestrial activity, don’t be alarmed, it’s just a tiny satellite that was launched by Japanese scientists that will be writing Morse code messages in the sky.

    Researchers from the Fukuoka Institute of Technology developed the four-inch satellite cube and it was released along with two other cubesats from the International Space Station, 242 miles above earth, on October 5. It will be the first of its kind to transmit an LED message across the sky.

    Beginning next month, the satellite, FITSAT-1, nicknamed NIWAKA by scientists, will shoot the phrase “Hi this is Niwaka Japan” in Morse code. Initially, the writing was only supposed to be seen in Japan, but people from all around the world have taken an interest in this pursuit and the team has received requests to display the writing in different parts of the world.

    In the northern hemisphere, spectators with binoculars will see green flashes of light emitted from the front of the satellite. Those in the southern hemisphere will see red flashes of light from the back.

    Reply
  3. Tomi Engdahl says:

    4096 LEDs means the biggest LED cube ever
    http://hackaday.com/2012/10/21/4096-leds-means-the-biggest-led-cube-ever/

    Adaptive Computing, a cloud management and high performance computing outfit in Utah, needed something really cool to bring to their trade shows

    hey decided building the largest non-commercial LED cube would be a good project, and thus the 16x16x16 All Spark Cube was born.

    The All Spark Cube was constructed using 10 mm RGB LEDs wired together with three-foot lengths of 16 ga pre-tinned copper wire.

    The hardware for the build uses 16 Arduino Megas with a custom-made shield powering a 16×16 LED grid. The custom shields provide the 24V for the LEDs, 5V for the ‘duino, The Arduino boards communicate to each other through an RS485 connection, and the entire cube is connected to a computer through an RS232 serial connection.

    Reply
  4. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Color changing bag matches clothing color, tells you what’s inside
    http://hackaday.com/2013/01/02/color-changing-bag-matches-clothing-color-tells-you-whats-inside/

    Adding some lights to your everyday items will certainly give you a style leaning toward the world of Blade Runner. But if you can add functionality to control the blinky components you’ve actually got something. A great example of this is [Kathryn McElroy's] Chameleon Bag. It’s a shoulder bag with a light-up flap. It can color match your clothing, but she also built some features that will let you know what is inside of the bag.

    Reply
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  6. Tomi Engdahl says:

    LED Blinds Turn Windows into Displays
    http://hackaday.com/2013/10/10/led-blinds-turn-windows-into-displays/

    [Dinofizz] is almost done with his vertical LED blinds. The build makes use of 768 diffused white LEDs (10mm size), at a resolution of 48×16, and it only requires one 16-channel LED driver (a MBI5026), which makes use of 3x 4-to-16 demultiplexers. Did we mention it has 16 shades of grayscale too?

    Making use of his high rise windows, he now has the ability to broadcast messages for the world to see. After the break check out the video of them in action!

    Reply
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