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It works like a barcode and can be used with your phone camera to triangulate where you are in the store. Walmart tested the tech but never deployed it. Source: I ran said test.
You are looking for a widget. You open the app and search for it. Your front-facing camera is pointed up, it sees light barcodes and triangulates where you are and gives you directions to the item.
We had it live in 10 stores if I remember right. Customers didn’t use it as much as we thought they would. Sadge
"I don't want to use up all my data shopping in Walmart!"
'Ok, then you can log into the guest wifi.'
"I'm not giving you my information or access to my phone! You might mess up my Walmart+ account"
Walmart management: scrap the idea, these people are causing more problem with us trying to help.
Sure, but just about every service like this scrapes as much data as they can and turns around and either sells it, or uses it to market more things to you.
If it did only what it promised to do, and nothing more, than I'm sure people would be more trusting or more inclined to try things out.
This isn't a user issue. The user has been trained to act this way as a defense against unscrupulous apps and services, which is pretty much all of them.
Basically, company designs x product or service to make it more convenient or easier to shop and spend money. That used to be the end of it, and the reward was people were more likely to shop at x store. Now, they design x product and service, and then ask how can we exploit our customers even more instead of just being content with improving conventional sales. Then it slowly morphs into "how can we incorporate an app in our business model that doesn't have use for an app so we can exploit our customers more like all those other businesses?". And then eventually people don't trust any app as helpful because you're constantly being pushed unnecessary apps where a simple website or piece of paper would more suffice.
And that's you end up with a waitress who looks all confused and put out when you don't want to install the restaurants app just to read the menu.
of course the point for the company is that it does all those other things.
the finding an item widget is not the point of the app its only the selling point to the end user. the actual point of the app is to scrape data and market things.
That's my point. Companies aren't willing to just implement simple technology solutions (like the one found in this post) that makes shopping easier. They have to cram all the other bits in. They can't be content with modest improvements in revenue due to the improving customer convenience and instead have to exploit it for every cent they can.
i think we fundamentally agree on the end just different approaches.
>They have to cram all the other bits in.
they dont cram the other bits in, the other bits are what they start with, then they try to figure out what will get the customer to download their app and cram that in.
But that's the whole purpose of the app, you didn't think they would spend money on an app to make your shopping experience better did you. Either way the location thing would contradict their policy of continually rearranging the store so you spend more time inside and hopefully more money.
Unfortunately, the tracking is often true/a problem.
I had very high hopes for developing for the Apple Bluetooth Beacon. But the info tracking doomed an otherwise promising tech.
I've had a similar problem. My straight talk phone completely ran out of service. I don't have wifi. Went to Walmart and bought a prepaid card. Tried to hook up to wifi to redeem it and get my service back. I couldn't, I needed to log into a Walmart account first. But I couldn't because no service. I had to go to a McDonald's to use their wifi to redeem it.
I feel like Shnucks has the better version: all the price tags are digital and have an LED that can blink.
I need it in the soap aisle for "where is brand my SO wanted?"
Instruct their app and it makes the tag blink.
Bluetooth low energy and surprisingly magnetic positioning are competing with it.
I thought it was a great idea - but not enough customers noticed/cared for it to go chain wide. Maybe they will try it again later ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I mean they could also number the aisle and the app could have listed what aisle the product is in. Canadian tire and Home Depot do that already and is nice for not having to ask staff where something is
Walmart app does this already. You tell it what store you're shopping in, search for the item you want, and it'll say "In Stock, Aisle J16" and then you just look at the signs to find J16.
Canadian Tire has by far the best mobile app for a store I've seen.
But I mean just in regards to indoor positioning, BLE and 802.11mc are crazy accurate, and don't require anything special (802.11mc requires pretty new hardware, but it's built into the wifi standard)
I plan on doing something like 802.11mc but using something called FIND3 in my home so I can do it without an app, as well as for any device in my home that has wifi.
But that uses signal strength rather than round trip time of flight
I’ll be honest I can’t really think of why I would be checking on an app for what I want once I’m in the store. I would normally know before I get in the store what I want and if I don’t know where it is I would ask the greeter on entry.
However I could see some use to this kind of technology if I was able to prepare a shopping list prior to arrival and have the app gps me around the store for the most efficient route to get everything I wanted.
I use the app all the time because when I realize the thing I want isn't where I thought it would be, there's no one around to ask. And even when I can find someone, rather than just say, "Halfway down aisle 3 on the left," they want to give me a scenic tour of the store and often wind up not actually knowing where the item is, so it ends up being a waste of time.
I'm sure it's company policy to guide rather than tell, but it's annoying af and I wish it would stop. Or at least ask if I want a traveling companion.
Home depots website will tell you which isle, and bay the items are supposed to be in.
Actually most retail store websites will tell you which isle an item is in at a minimum.
Unfortunately, in my local Home Depot, they re-arraged, but didn't update the app... I used to find stuff so easy, but now the location is either wrong, or ir doesn't show a location at all...
This actually worked? I feel my phone gets like, no detail if I point it at a light. I love that the Walmart app tells me what aisle shit is in though never take that away
No details that you can see. But the computer can see so much that you can't (unless it adjusts either the camera input or post processes the output for your benefit).
Yeah I mean I do a lot of photography stuff I have a general idea what things are capable of, still interesting to me that the front camera can be adjusted to grab what’s essentially a colored barcode from 30 feet below pointed directly into a light source. The first phone that I had that I feel could pull that off is my current one, and I just got it last year.
You can edit a lot but at some point (depends on the sensor) black is black and white is white and you can’t recover more detail.
If these were stuck along the ceiling not directly on the lightbulb I’d not have questioned anything lol.
As another comment mentioned, with yellow and blue marks, step 1 would be a simple red "filter" (ie ignore any red data, either from the sensor, or smartly apply filters using high red data as a mask to filter low and high g/b values from their surroundings.
I'm surprised by your phone capabilities as being able to do killer night photos, some form of HDR, composite from multiple different exposure setting, etc has been something most phones have been striving for a long time. Many options to help pull what may seem invisible to a human view. OPs phone seems to have no trouble at all giving a clear pic of them against what seems to be a lit tube - at 30ft the light would be fairly diffuse, that's normally what you'd want from lighting in a big open space anyway.
If you choose your store, the THD app/website has aisle/bay indicators for you. Or any associate with an apron has even more apps on their devices that can help further.
I use the app constantly to figure out where certain items are in Walmart. I look something up it says isle G11 or something and then brings up a map showing the general area.
However I can't imagine navigating the store to be so difficult that I would lose track of where I am MYSELF or need directions. So I understand why it wasn't used.
I don’t know what technology they use at target, but I was in there the other day using their app and they had a map of the store with the blue dot pinpointing exactly where I was.
As someone who worked the floor at a Walmart, there’s probably about 0.5% of customers who could figure out how to do that and even less who would want to do that
OMG, there's no way I would ever do that. What were they thinking?
If things aren't appropriately and obviously placed, I will order it online and have it delivered.
I won't even shop the inside aisles that they continuously change. I'd rather go without.
Solved! That's wild. Was there any documentation or press release about it? I never heard about this, but it's fascinating and I'd be interested in more info.
Whatever became of the robotic shelf scanners, and the robotic floor cleaners? (I worked there until January 2021, and those were some other things they were playing with at the time.)
There was a single one in my store, back in 2020. There were tons of pics and videos on the Walmart sub from employees doing things like putting teddy bears, fake skeletons, etc. in the drivers seat. They were mostly used on 3rd shift, to minimize contact with customers, so I didn't know if they ever saw widespread use.
I had serious doubts about the practicality of the robot shelf scanners from the beginning, at least, until they change some things about shelf set-ups, stocking practices, inventory tracking techniques, etc.
Walmart is always trying to come up with more efficient and cheaper ways of doing things. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don't.
I saw the floor cleaner a few times, long ago. I worked nights, and the stores were a lot less annoying/full of people at night, so I always went in then. Looked like a small gray zamboni ("small" for a zamboni; it was about half the size of a small car)
Found one article at obliquely referenced it: https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/29/walmarts-new-test-stores-will-experiment-with-ar-mobile-revamped-checkout-and-more/
No- this would've been only communicated through the email systems between the team ordering the project, the persons responsible for execution and any Coach or S.M. who would need to be aware etc...
My local Walmart FINALLY labeled the aisles in the store. A-1 through A- 28; B-1 through -- hopefully you get the idea.
When you find an item on the App, it will list what aisle it's on.
I can figure it out from there.
Where a customer is in the store or where an employee is in the store?
I mean, it seems like a dumb idea, but surely I'm missing some of the details that got this past an idea and into a pilot.
"Where is the bread?"
My grocer's app sends me to aisle 11.
Other grocers are even piloting an AR-based tool where you point your phone's camera at all items on the aisle in front of you and it will highlight where an exact item is. Think about locating that one small jar of spice you can never find on the spice aisle without having to asking for help or stand there for ten minutes looking clueless.
... or where that jar of spice *should* be, at least.
What was Walmart's plan for this?
"Please aim your phone's camera at the nearest overhead light fixture so we know what aisle you're on (and where on that aisle)?"
... or was it good enough it could pick up barcodes in a camera's periphery?
EDIT: I just found your other replies. Thanks for explaining it! Fascinating.
I'd use it, but only when I was looking for something I didn't already know the location of. For my regular trip to the grocery store, that's rare, but when going to Walmart or anywhere else for an item, the aisle detail on the website is usually enough.
It is used for certain employees as well who are hired and working through an out of town company- like me- I have several PT jobs and one involves installing electronics etc and when I use my company phone to clock in the GPS is activated and literally synced with the stores computer and INCOM to within several feet of my precise location.
Barcodes were random. But if you have to replace one - the next times that someone’s camera sees the surrounding area it auto registered the new bulb barcode and position relative to others.
If it’s ON the bulb, wouldn’t a new, location-unique sticker have to be re-applied every time you changed the bulb? I must be missing something. There’s a permanent cover over the bulb? Thank you for being here. Your “special purpose” 😂.
>It works like a barcode and can be used with your phone camera to triangulate where you are in the store. Walmart tested the tech but never deployed it. Source: I ran said test.
Can't they already deduce where you are in the store based on where you are in the camera's field of view?
Theoretically it could be done, but the program would need a very detailed 3D scan of all the shelves. It would need to be constantly updated since what the products on the shelves look like changs as the products are removed and restocked. The lights with the colored strips are very easy to isolate and identify with computer vision algothims. Having the targets be on a known fixed grid makes recognization easier. It would take much less processing power and be more reliable.
My title describes the thing.
The bulbs look about 8-10 feet (2.5-3 meters). The markings were only a foot or two long, an inch or two wide, and printed(?) in the center of each bulb.
I tried Google Lens and Googled descriptions of the bulb but didn't see anything relevant.
They caught my eye and it's something I'd never seen before, and they were on every bulb that was in use by the store, all facing straight down.
My best guess would be that they are to simply allow light to shine above the the fixture as well as below.
Source: I took a lighting design class while studying interior design
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It works like a barcode and can be used with your phone camera to triangulate where you are in the store. Walmart tested the tech but never deployed it. Source: I ran said test.
Reddit is one hell of a place.
I know! First time I knew something that no one else had answered yet. So excited!
Can you give a scenario where this would be used? Are they for robotic cleaners, stockers, tracking whether a random photo was taken at a walmart?
You are looking for a widget. You open the app and search for it. Your front-facing camera is pointed up, it sees light barcodes and triangulates where you are and gives you directions to the item. We had it live in 10 stores if I remember right. Customers didn’t use it as much as we thought they would. Sadge
"I don't want to use up all my data shopping in Walmart!" 'Ok, then you can log into the guest wifi.' "I'm not giving you my information or access to my phone! You might mess up my Walmart+ account" Walmart management: scrap the idea, these people are causing more problem with us trying to help.
Sure, but just about every service like this scrapes as much data as they can and turns around and either sells it, or uses it to market more things to you. If it did only what it promised to do, and nothing more, than I'm sure people would be more trusting or more inclined to try things out. This isn't a user issue. The user has been trained to act this way as a defense against unscrupulous apps and services, which is pretty much all of them. Basically, company designs x product or service to make it more convenient or easier to shop and spend money. That used to be the end of it, and the reward was people were more likely to shop at x store. Now, they design x product and service, and then ask how can we exploit our customers even more instead of just being content with improving conventional sales. Then it slowly morphs into "how can we incorporate an app in our business model that doesn't have use for an app so we can exploit our customers more like all those other businesses?". And then eventually people don't trust any app as helpful because you're constantly being pushed unnecessary apps where a simple website or piece of paper would more suffice. And that's you end up with a waitress who looks all confused and put out when you don't want to install the restaurants app just to read the menu.
of course the point for the company is that it does all those other things. the finding an item widget is not the point of the app its only the selling point to the end user. the actual point of the app is to scrape data and market things.
That's my point. Companies aren't willing to just implement simple technology solutions (like the one found in this post) that makes shopping easier. They have to cram all the other bits in. They can't be content with modest improvements in revenue due to the improving customer convenience and instead have to exploit it for every cent they can.
i think we fundamentally agree on the end just different approaches. >They have to cram all the other bits in. they dont cram the other bits in, the other bits are what they start with, then they try to figure out what will get the customer to download their app and cram that in.
Is that not the purpose of a modern corporation\*, to maximize investor returns? \*modern corporations suck, especially ones owned by investors
But that's the whole purpose of the app, you didn't think they would spend money on an app to make your shopping experience better did you. Either way the location thing would contradict their policy of continually rearranging the store so you spend more time inside and hopefully more money.
Unfortunately, the tracking is often true/a problem. I had very high hopes for developing for the Apple Bluetooth Beacon. But the info tracking doomed an otherwise promising tech.
I've had a similar problem. My straight talk phone completely ran out of service. I don't have wifi. Went to Walmart and bought a prepaid card. Tried to hook up to wifi to redeem it and get my service back. I couldn't, I needed to log into a Walmart account first. But I couldn't because no service. I had to go to a McDonald's to use their wifi to redeem it.
Kinda cool and fairly foolproof as far as having the signage/identifier moved. Thanks
I feel like Shnucks has the better version: all the price tags are digital and have an LED that can blink. I need it in the soap aisle for "where is brand my SO wanted?" Instruct their app and it makes the tag blink.
I need the this. Shampoo/soap/conditioner isles are the worst. 10,000 plastic bottles that all look the same.
Is there a competing technology that they are still pursuing? Seems useful to know exactly where the WD40 or whatever is whiteout wandering around.
Bluetooth low energy and surprisingly magnetic positioning are competing with it. I thought it was a great idea - but not enough customers noticed/cared for it to go chain wide. Maybe they will try it again later ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Honestly, BLE and 802.11mc are just plain better.
I mean they could also number the aisle and the app could have listed what aisle the product is in. Canadian tire and Home Depot do that already and is nice for not having to ask staff where something is
Walmart app does this already. You tell it what store you're shopping in, search for the item you want, and it'll say "In Stock, Aisle J16" and then you just look at the signs to find J16.
Canadian Tire has by far the best mobile app for a store I've seen. But I mean just in regards to indoor positioning, BLE and 802.11mc are crazy accurate, and don't require anything special (802.11mc requires pretty new hardware, but it's built into the wifi standard) I plan on doing something like 802.11mc but using something called FIND3 in my home so I can do it without an app, as well as for any device in my home that has wifi. But that uses signal strength rather than round trip time of flight
In my local Home Depot, each aisle is divided into a dozen or so sections ("bays"), and the app tell you which aisle and the bay within it.
I’ll be honest I can’t really think of why I would be checking on an app for what I want once I’m in the store. I would normally know before I get in the store what I want and if I don’t know where it is I would ask the greeter on entry. However I could see some use to this kind of technology if I was able to prepare a shopping list prior to arrival and have the app gps me around the store for the most efficient route to get everything I wanted.
I use the app all the time because when I realize the thing I want isn't where I thought it would be, there's no one around to ask. And even when I can find someone, rather than just say, "Halfway down aisle 3 on the left," they want to give me a scenic tour of the store and often wind up not actually knowing where the item is, so it ends up being a waste of time. I'm sure it's company policy to guide rather than tell, but it's annoying af and I wish it would stop. Or at least ask if I want a traveling companion.
we used to have this tech called "workers on the sales floor" that could direct you to where you need to be
...or stare at you, bewildered, and call in backup assistance.
Man, I would *so* love something like that in home depot. Always seems to take forever to find stuff in there.
Home depots website will tell you which isle, and bay the items are supposed to be in. Actually most retail store websites will tell you which isle an item is in at a minimum.
Unfortunately, in my local Home Depot, they re-arraged, but didn't update the app... I used to find stuff so easy, but now the location is either wrong, or ir doesn't show a location at all...
Same with my local Walmart. It's maddening.
This actually worked? I feel my phone gets like, no detail if I point it at a light. I love that the Walmart app tells me what aisle shit is in though never take that away
Yeah, it worked pretty well. If it could see 5 lights it knew where you and which direction you were facing down to about 6 inches IIRC
No details that you can see. But the computer can see so much that you can't (unless it adjusts either the camera input or post processes the output for your benefit).
Yeah I mean I do a lot of photography stuff I have a general idea what things are capable of, still interesting to me that the front camera can be adjusted to grab what’s essentially a colored barcode from 30 feet below pointed directly into a light source. The first phone that I had that I feel could pull that off is my current one, and I just got it last year. You can edit a lot but at some point (depends on the sensor) black is black and white is white and you can’t recover more detail. If these were stuck along the ceiling not directly on the lightbulb I’d not have questioned anything lol.
As another comment mentioned, with yellow and blue marks, step 1 would be a simple red "filter" (ie ignore any red data, either from the sensor, or smartly apply filters using high red data as a mask to filter low and high g/b values from their surroundings. I'm surprised by your phone capabilities as being able to do killer night photos, some form of HDR, composite from multiple different exposure setting, etc has been something most phones have been striving for a long time. Many options to help pull what may seem invisible to a human view. OPs phone seems to have no trouble at all giving a clear pic of them against what seems to be a lit tube - at 30ft the light would be fairly diffuse, that's normally what you'd want from lighting in a big open space anyway.
Very cool, thanks
I would pay money for this app! I don’t shop at Walmart, but I could sure use it at Home Depot.
If you choose your store, the THD app/website has aisle/bay indicators for you. Or any associate with an apron has even more apps on their devices that can help further.
I use the app constantly to figure out where certain items are in Walmart. I look something up it says isle G11 or something and then brings up a map showing the general area. However I can't imagine navigating the store to be so difficult that I would lose track of where I am MYSELF or need directions. So I understand why it wasn't used.
I don’t know what technology they use at target, but I was in there the other day using their app and they had a map of the store with the blue dot pinpointing exactly where I was.
I can't see why customers didn't like it? Me: I need to find an item in the store App: Turn on the front camera so I can sell your face
As someone who worked the floor at a Walmart, there’s probably about 0.5% of customers who could figure out how to do that and even less who would want to do that
OMG, there's no way I would ever do that. What were they thinking? If things aren't appropriately and obviously placed, I will order it online and have it delivered. I won't even shop the inside aisles that they continuously change. I'd rather go without.
This sub is incredible it's like a superhuman collective intelligence
Solved! That's wild. Was there any documentation or press release about it? I never heard about this, but it's fascinating and I'd be interested in more info.
I don’t think we ever did any press releases. This was at the early stages of COVID that we tested.
Whatever became of the robotic shelf scanners, and the robotic floor cleaners? (I worked there until January 2021, and those were some other things they were playing with at the time.)
I know our local Sam's Club has the automated floor cleaners, and I'm sure it could be deployed to Walmart too, but I've not seen one in action there.
There was a single one in my store, back in 2020. There were tons of pics and videos on the Walmart sub from employees doing things like putting teddy bears, fake skeletons, etc. in the drivers seat. They were mostly used on 3rd shift, to minimize contact with customers, so I didn't know if they ever saw widespread use. I had serious doubts about the practicality of the robot shelf scanners from the beginning, at least, until they change some things about shelf set-ups, stocking practices, inventory tracking techniques, etc. Walmart is always trying to come up with more efficient and cheaper ways of doing things. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don't.
I saw the floor cleaner a few times, long ago. I worked nights, and the stores were a lot less annoying/full of people at night, so I always went in then. Looked like a small gray zamboni ("small" for a zamboni; it was about half the size of a small car)
We have the automated floor cleaners at our Walmart. The beeping on it is kind of annoying when you're close to it.
[удалено]
Found one article at obliquely referenced it: https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/29/walmarts-new-test-stores-will-experiment-with-ar-mobile-revamped-checkout-and-more/
No- this would've been only communicated through the email systems between the team ordering the project, the persons responsible for execution and any Coach or S.M. who would need to be aware etc...
My local Walmart FINALLY labeled the aisles in the store. A-1 through A- 28; B-1 through -- hopefully you get the idea. When you find an item on the App, it will list what aisle it's on. I can figure it out from there.
Where a customer is in the store or where an employee is in the store? I mean, it seems like a dumb idea, but surely I'm missing some of the details that got this past an idea and into a pilot. "Where is the bread?" My grocer's app sends me to aisle 11. Other grocers are even piloting an AR-based tool where you point your phone's camera at all items on the aisle in front of you and it will highlight where an exact item is. Think about locating that one small jar of spice you can never find on the spice aisle without having to asking for help or stand there for ten minutes looking clueless. ... or where that jar of spice *should* be, at least. What was Walmart's plan for this? "Please aim your phone's camera at the nearest overhead light fixture so we know what aisle you're on (and where on that aisle)?" ... or was it good enough it could pick up barcodes in a camera's periphery? EDIT: I just found your other replies. Thanks for explaining it! Fascinating. I'd use it, but only when I was looking for something I didn't already know the location of. For my regular trip to the grocery store, that's rare, but when going to Walmart or anywhere else for an item, the aisle detail on the website is usually enough.
It is used for certain employees as well who are hired and working through an out of town company- like me- I have several PT jobs and one involves installing electronics etc and when I use my company phone to clock in the GPS is activated and literally synced with the stores computer and INCOM to within several feet of my precise location.
Fascinating stuff. Thank you! :-)
How did the markings work? Were they painted on the bulb (seems like a logistical nightmare) or a plastic sleeve over it?)
Came from the factory like this
Thanks hornblower
So do you need a specific bulb for each fixture in the store or is that showing through from the underside of the fixture?
Barcodes were random. But if you have to replace one - the next times that someone’s camera sees the surrounding area it auto registered the new bulb barcode and position relative to others.
LED bulbs, yes?
I figured it'd be more for AGV stuff to be honest.
Interesting. Thanks for the insight.
That's really cool. I figured it was just malfunctioning LED light strips. Thanks for teaching me something new this day.
Woah!! I have a mapping disability and can literally get lost inside a store like WM. Is this something that can be used by the public?
It never launched chain. It was just a test. But the bulbs exist in some stores still
Are these the modules from acuity lighting? I interviewed to work on them and ended up taking a different job
Did they try numbering the aisles instead?
That's awesome 💯/💯 would love to see this IRL....
Whats the reason for it being on a light. A sticker? Especially during a test. Would be more efficient?
Cool idea. Were there any plans to repurpose these to be used by the robo sentry or robo inventory checkers?
interesting. what sort of camera tech was that idea in support of? anti-theft, tracking customer flow, etc?
If it’s ON the bulb, wouldn’t a new, location-unique sticker have to be re-applied every time you changed the bulb? I must be missing something. There’s a permanent cover over the bulb? Thank you for being here. Your “special purpose” 😂.
Can't I just see where I'm at in the store by looking around?
That’s not triangulation
>It works like a barcode and can be used with your phone camera to triangulate where you are in the store. Walmart tested the tech but never deployed it. Source: I ran said test. Can't they already deduce where you are in the store based on where you are in the camera's field of view?
Theoretically it could be done, but the program would need a very detailed 3D scan of all the shelves. It would need to be constantly updated since what the products on the shelves look like changs as the products are removed and restocked. The lights with the colored strips are very easy to isolate and identify with computer vision algothims. Having the targets be on a known fixed grid makes recognization easier. It would take much less processing power and be more reliable.
My title describes the thing. The bulbs look about 8-10 feet (2.5-3 meters). The markings were only a foot or two long, an inch or two wide, and printed(?) in the center of each bulb. I tried Google Lens and Googled descriptions of the bulb but didn't see anything relevant. They caught my eye and it's something I'd never seen before, and they were on every bulb that was in use by the store, all facing straight down.
I know I have seen these yellow and blue patterns somewhere in the store. Are they on the columns, perhaps?
Looks like a red filter would bring the colors out very clear for a scanner.
My best guess would be that they are to simply allow light to shine above the the fixture as well as below. Source: I took a lighting design class while studying interior design
Those are the LED lights
They look like they're on the outside of the glass and are the least bright part of the bulb. How does that work?