The Future Is Near: Light Up Cereal Boxes

When inductive power meets the grocery cereal isle, you get light up cereal boxes. These prototype boxes built by Fulton Innovations use embedded, inexpensive electronics to draw power from the shelf they’re sitting on, and then power light up displays. In relation to other recent products, it’s like “Powermat” or “Energizer Inductive Charger” inductive power technology meeting old school “Timex Indiglo” (EL) backlighting plus Esquire Magazine style mass produced embedded Eink displays (which I have a working copy of at home). Now, we just need an NFC/RFID scanner embedded, and product packaging will be able to know who you are when you walk by, by reading your ID from the embedded NFC chip in your cell phone. Then, let the product packages change to suit your individual buying habits, as you walk down the isle. Health food shopper? The product packaging you see will tell you about how healthy it is. Shopper on a budget? Let the labels rearrange themselves to tell you about their value.

Then, set the product down on your inductive power kitchen countertop, and let the product packaging tell you how to cook it, with an animated demo, and audio played through your smartphone’s speakers.

Found on the Adafruit Blog.