Researchers adapt LED panel technology for secret message transmission.

A report from New Scientist has revealed that researchers in Japan have come up with a novel way to use an LED display to convey a hidden message that can only be revealed by a very interesting human interaction.

The team of scientists, headed up by Hirotsugu Yamamoto, has created an LED display panel which is able to output 480 images every second.

This means that each new image is put in place at a rate that is much faster than the average human eye can detect. Indeed, the 24 frames per second used for most motion pictures, gives the seamless illusion of motion to most viewers.

What the researchers have done is to alternate two different images on the LED display, one of which will be visible to the naked eye while the other will remain hidden when the panel is viewed normally.

In order to reveal the message, all a person has to do is wave their hand backwards and forwards quickly in front of the screen.

Doing this will obscure some of the frames which show the image that is normally visible, revealing the alternate frames that contain the hidden message.

While the hand waving method of message viewing may seem a little primitive, it is something that the researchers are going to develop into a new form of digital signage further down the line.

The idea is that by viewing a single sign with two different high speed cameras, one viewer could see one image and one the other, without having to use two separate displays.

This could have applications in the use of a single LED panel for multiple simultaneous display tasks, which might help out in commercial applications, as well as in the home.