Lamps are too smart if they can do this

Seriously. Why can’t they be just lamps?

A Hungarian engineer decided to challenge himself to make a video game run on some off-the-shelf, cheap consumer device, without adding any extra component. He basically succeeded with… this Ikea “smart lamp”:

Lamps are too smart if they can do this /img/smart-ikea-lamp.jpg

Yes, it does seem that a $14.95 “smart lamp” from Ikea really has enough electronics and computing power inside to run a classic PC game:

Lamps are too smart if they can do this /img/doom-on-ikea-lamp.jpg

And this means two things:

  1. human beings are very, very clever
  2. sometimes too clever for their own good

That [lamp] exists to let humans, at last, “choose between 9 colours - and dim so you can adapt the light to different activities, for example a warmer light for dinner and a brighter, colder light for working… without a wired-in installation”.

Cool. But is it cool enough to:

As a micro game console, that Ikea LED bulb may be a smart purchase. As a smart lamp, it’s not so smart.