Could You Make A TV Made Of Smart Light Bulbs?

[Gizmo j]

Could each smart lightbulb be a pixel on a TV?

 

[BoomerD]

Sure...why not? Give it a try, let us know how it works for you.

 

[Fenixgoon]

As long as you can switch the colors fast enough (or adjust the brightness), sure.
At the very least you'd have a picture display. A very, very big one.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Yeah. but I wouldn't want to try and get it working. Well, maybe if you paid me. But I can't imagine network management for the thing. Ugh.

 

[dullard]

Sure, but you wouldn't want to do so.

• If you consider 480i standard definition TV (708 x 480) as a reasonable goal, then you would need 337,920 smart light bulbs.
• At $50 a Philips Hue bulb, that would cost $16,896,000 before any of the networking or wiring costs. Sure, you could probably get a large discount for buying in bulk. Lets make that $6 million to $10 million instead. Even if you go with a no-name brand bulb, it'll be easily $2+ million.
• Power wise, lets assume a 8 W smart LED bulb (equivalent to a standard 60 W bulb). For full white screen, that would be 2.7 MW of power. That would cost you probably a minimum of $150 and up to $1,000 per hour to run depending on where you live. Just for a white screen. A dark scene would be less expensive but still costly.
• How are you even going to cool a 2.7 MW screen? Would you be able to hear anything from that TV over the massive hurricane force wind you probably need?
• Then the thing would be huge, roughly 140 feet by 96 feet (170 ft diagonal). Where are you putting that? A sports arena? Are going to wow people with standard definition images in a sports arena?
• Now consider 337,920 wi-fi signals (or Bluetooth or similar) signals not interfering with each other. I'm no networking expert, but that would be a nightmare.
• Multiply all those numbers by ~24 if you want to display something remotely modern like a 4K picture.

Why not just put in individual LEDs instead of complex smart light bulbs? That would avoid the cost, size, power, and networking issues of smart bulbs. You know, like Samsung has done: https://www.samsung.com/us/business/displays/direct-view-led/the-wall/

 

[nakedfrog]

Have you seen this, OP?

IHTFP Hack Gallery: Tetris on the Green Building

hacks.mit.edu

 

[Red Squirrel]

It would be doable but you would need a LOT of bulbs and the screen would be huge. Consider a bulb is around 6cm wide so for 1920x1080 which is pretty much the minimum res now days, the screen would be at minimum 115m wide and 64m high. To put it in perspective the CN tower is 553.3m high. Most smart bulbs also require apps, so there would be no easy way to interface with them via custom code without reverse engineering them.

If you did pull it off though, it would be super illegal to watch the Superbowl on it since it's bigger than 55".

 

[BurnItDwn]

Could each smart lightbulb be a pixel on a TV?

Yes, that would be called a Smart TV.
You should trademark that name before somebody steals it and tries to market a "Smart TV."

 

[pete6032]

It would be doable but you would need a LOT of bulbs and the screen would be huge. Consider a bulb is around 6cm wide so for 1920x1080 which is pretty much the minimum res now days, the screen would be at minimum 115m wide and 64m high. To put it in perspective the CN tower is 553.3m high. Most smart bulbs also require apps, so there would be no easy way to interface with them via custom code without reverse engineering them.

If you did pull it off though, it would be super illegal to watch the Superbowl on it since it's bigger than 55".

The world's HD screen in the Dallas Cowboys Stadium is one of the largest in the world at 160 feet wide so this would be more than twice as large.

You would also need 2 million bulbs at 7 watts each equaling 14.5 million watts for the bulbs alone so it could not be done at HD resolution.

 

[Muse]

Watch enough TV and you can just stick the antenna wire into your skin and see it fine.