popular logistics

Inhabitat reports on a clever improvement on the basic - and  basically underpowered - solar-powered walkway light:

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But because of its size, a group of these could easily be used as traffic-calming signals during power failures, evacuation route markers, or in other ways.

Inhabitat post here.  Inhabitat credits these to designer Stefano Merlo - but I can’t find them on his website (but lots of other beautiful stuff).

So we don’t know if these are available for purchase - or if there’s an open-source recipe available. We’ll put the Popular Logistics R&D team on it.

From Inhabitat:

Designed by Kennedy & Violich Architecture (KVA MATx), the beauty of the Portable Light Project is its merging of high-tech industry and local craft-based economies, not to mention the fact that it delivers usable light to demographics and regions that are either off-the-grid, mobile, or in locations with little daily sunlight. “Portable Light is based upon the principle that global needs for technology development are inevitably interconnected. Knowledge, techniques, market solutions and data produced by the project benefit the “third” world and the “first” world where the need to imagine, design and develop energy efficient alternatives to the centralized and increasingly costly electrical grid is becoming ever more important,” says KVA.

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The materials themselves and attention to the design process prove that Portable Light is not just functional, but thoughtfully constructed with sustainability and humanity in mind. It combines high-brightness LEDs from pedestrian walk signals, water-resistant tactile switches from dishwashers, and rechargeable batteries from the cell-phone industry, all sourced from consumer appliances and standard technologies.