Solution to A Bit of Light

• First, ignoring the bottom row gives 2×3 Braille cells. The first few letters say USE BRAILLE ASCII TO GET HEX. followed by more Braille, but as specified, using the ASCII Braille format to encode numbers. The rest of the Braille message is the hexadecimal string 696E743D3E6865783D3E535344 which says int=>hex=>SSD.
• Following the electronic color code for resistor colors, each cell gives an eight-digit decimal number.
• These decimal numbers are converted to base 16, as indicated. The base 16 strings are actually 1337-ified, where A is replaced by 4, B replaced by 8, E replaced 3, and G replaced by 6. Reverting this, we find that the numbers are a subset of the string ABCDEFG.
• The clue "SSD" means seven-segment display: the letters indicate which LED's of a 7-segment display should be illuminated. Thus each of the SSD LED's gives an unambiguous hexadecimal letter.
• The initial segment of the 7SD gives DA7E 1919 07 22 CA5E 1310719A (with the spaces!) followed by another hex string 432221707726202b7e7b1d076e.
• The initial segment is the date and United States patent number issued to Gilbert Vernam for the one-time pad, so this is just a roundabout way of saying to XOR the two hexadecimal strings (which both have equal length). Doing so gives another hex string 2A4C554D494E455343454E542A which then decrypts to the string *LUMINESCENT* which gives the answer LUMINESCENT.

Here is a complete breakdown of the puzzle.