If you didn’t know, I love technology. Both in the entertainment business and in my personal life. What I really get excited about is when I can marry my love of lighting with my personal life.  I love bringing entertainment technology into my home for “home automation”. By that, I mean running my home lighting by DMX and controlling it by my mobile device. With all of the great products out there, it is easy to do, but costly. Let’s face it, professional grade equipment comes with a professional grade price tag.

Doing some research online, I came across an interesting KickStarter project, LIFX. The concept behind LIFX is to take control away from hub or control distribution some where in the home and put it right inside the lamp. All of the lamps are controlled wirelessly over WiFi and on a mobile device.  The LIFX lamp is an RGB LED that looks very similar to an Edison lamp and some other big name consumer grade LED replacement lamps.

It is an interesting concept of taking away all of the control wires and just feeding the lamp power as normal. This idea got me thinking, would this be something practical for the entertainment industry? Think of it, rather than replacing all of your Source Fours with either the new LED version or some other manufactures LED profile, why not create an HPL style lamp that runs off LEDs and is controlled wirelessly? Same goes for Fresnels or PAR fixtures.  Keep your old fixtures, buy the new LED replacement with wireless control.

Sure, there is the whole debate about to much wireless control and reliability, but like the LIFX, you can still over ride the control the same way you do currently with switches or cutting power to the fixture via a dimmer or relay.

Just something to think about on the fine fall Wednesday afternoon. Let me know what you think either in the comments or on twitter.