One of the most talked about textile displays or light emitting textiles since it's first showcase in September 2005 is Lumalive from Philips.

 Demonstrations have been shown on Trade shows (mainly by Philips itself), on furniture shows and fashion show from Anke Loh end of 2006.

 But what is it? How does it work? Checking the Website of Lumalive brings some light on Lumalive:

 Lumalive technology enables everyday garments or soft furnishings to instantly light up with vivid colorful patterns or animated images. By generating light from within the fabric itself, they offer a totally different and much more magical user experience than existing sewn-on display panels. Lumalive technology transforms fabrics as if the fabric itself has come alive.

 Philips developed a proprietary integrated light-emitting diode (LED) technology, together with comprehensive drive electronics, battery pack and content creation solutions that can open up new applications in areas such as the promotions & event industry, apparel, interior design & safety.

 How does it work?

Lumalive fabrics incorporate arrays of LED pixels mounted on a flexible lightweight substrate, with each pixel containing closely spaced red, green and blue (RGB) LEDs. Electrically conducting tracks on the plastic substrate connect these pixels into a matrix display configuration, allowing each pixel to be individually addressed and the light intensity of its three LEDs varied in order to produce any desired color.

 Standard Lumalive panels measure 20 cm square and contain an array of 14 x 14 pixels, spaced a little over one centimeter apart. The panels can be inter-linked or scaled up to cover large areas.
 
 Layers of translucent material covering the LEDs diffuse the light such that adjacent pixels merge into one another, allowing the display of vivid daylight visible colored patterns, dynamic images, short text messages or even full color animations. Cover materials with different light dispersion/diffusion characteristics can be used to create different lighting effects.

 The driver electronic for the display cell is connected to the cell via a waterproof connector that leads to a compact control unit, measuring around 11.5 x 6.5 x 2 cm and weighing approximately 150 grams.

 The control unit contains a Li-ion battery and 256 Mbytes of Flash memory for display content storage. This memory size is good for displaying of animated graphics sequences of up to ten minutes duration.

 Lumalive cells are encased in a translucent pocket of water-resistant material, allowing them to be used in applications where the material may be subjected to rain, snow or liquid spills. For hand, machine or dry-cleaning of the fabrics, the panels and their drive electronics/batteries can be removed from garments or furniture before starting the cleaning process.