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  • Santa Monica builds solar powered ferris wheel lit by 160,000 LEDs

    Greg Kumparak

    Greg Kumparak is the Mobile Editor at Techcrunch. Greg has been writing for the TechCrunch network since May of 2008. Greg was born just outside of San Jose, and now lives in the East Bay of California. → Learn More

    Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

    Santa Monica’s famous Pacific Wheel is gone, having lost the fight against new fangled technology – and man, the new wheel is blinged out. Sure, the it might not be the biggest. It’s probably not the fastest, either. However, it might just be the LED-iest.

    Over 160,000 LEDs were used in this $1.5 million dollar refresh, all powered by the same solar panels that juiced the Pacific Wheel up until it was dismantled and tossed on eBay. The LED array is all hooked up to an imaging controller, allowing for all kinds of visual treats: hearts on Valentines day, snowflakes in December, and a picture of John Stamos whenever a Full House rerun is airing.

    On a side note, studies show that the ferris wheel would be 20x cooler if it looked like the above photo without the need for long exposure.

    Photo Credit: Inhabitant

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