I had a thought recently… “What if light bulbs could provide us with information, and not just light?” And so, I sketched up the “InfoLight”.

The idea is basically a pico projector in a bulb form factor. I simplify it to an LED, an LCD and a lens here, but really, that’s a pico projector. The bulb would be connected to Wifi or smart phone via Bluetooth LE 4.0 and display simple information and data on demand or ambiently all the time.

I want one. So I made a very crude version for weather, shown in the above video. I have little need for weather info, since I have a smart phone and windows in my house, but the idea still intrigues me.

Here are the guts. An Arduino, a Bluetooth LE module, an LED and a weather icon mask cut from cardboard. An iPhone app rotates the mask to project weather based on the forecast.

I wrote up an Instructable as well:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Bluetooth-Weather-Lamp/