Wave Illumination is a startup spun out of Ocean Optics that is launching a handheld wireless photo-spectrometer paired with a smartphone app. Costs $2000.

If lighting companies want to push narrowly-defined quality of light metrics into the market to charge high prices and avoid commodization (cough, cough….looking at you Xicato), then the lighting industry desperately needs their customers to be able to quickly and routinely validate that product samples and installed systems are actually delivering on those promised specifications. The lighting industry is simply flooded with no-name commodity producers dumping product into the market with specs that are dubious in the best of times. Big lighting companies should give away these units to their best customers, if they really want to claim the high-ground in the market.

The price point is a bit steep. I wish they would offer a version that trades a bit less accuracy for a significantly lower price point. I also wonder what use case scenarios may develop if they can drop a spectrometer into an architectural sensor???

I wish Wave Illumination and Ocean Optics the best of luck. Go Scott!