LED Linear announced today that is has been acquired by Fagerhult for €40m initial payment and €21m conditional payout through 2018. The Business Wire announcement also discloses that LED Linear was founded 10 years ago, currently has 110 employees and revenue of €21m … Continue reading led linear acquired by fagerhult
Modcam is a Swedish startup that is using cameras for various architectural tracking applications. Interesting that it is led by folks with a strong background in mobile phone development. Shows some of the same power of camera-vision systems such as … Continue reading modcam
Terasel is an EU-backed research consortium studying flexible electronics. According to their site: The TERASEL project envisions a world where non-intrusive electronics are integrated everywhere. To achieve this twenty-first century dream using reliable and economical techniques, the TERASEL consortium targets … Continue reading terasel
amBX is a UK based lighting controls company that was “spun out” in from Philips in 2008. According to their site: amBX is radically changing architectural lighting through powerful control technology that eliminates the need for complex and expensive programming. … Continue reading amBX
To all my friends in the lighting specification world, I strongly urge you to include language in your boilerplate specs for your project clients that reserves ownership of any data generated by the lighting system, privacy of that data, and … Continue reading data ownership
A hugely successful show for Philips Lighting and our Philips Luminous Patterns launch. We had great placement in the booth and it was busy — 20,000 people visited the Philips booth just on Tuesday! The design we had at the … Continue reading philips luminous patterns @ light+building 2016
Igor-Tech is yet another Iowa-based startup launching a Power-over-Ethernet lighting solution. Not much yet in the way of details on their site, but it looks like another commercial office-focused system design. Continue reading igor tech
Innovative Lighting is a startup based in a small town in Iowa that is developing a PoE lighting system they are branding Genisys (Iowa of all places…where my dad goes for antique John Deere meet ups!). I’m impressed by their progress – … Continue reading innovative lighting
Xenio is a San Francisco spin-off from Bridgelux lighting that is positioning itself as a “smart” lighting system — firmly in the trendy IoT field. Their beginning product line is pushing a DC-based system, basically adding intelligence to Bridgelux modules. Curious … Continue reading xenio
Very creative supermarket design with lots of distinctive, signature lighting features. Check out Retail Design Blog: Fantastiko Supermarket Continue reading fantastiko supermarket
An interesting development in applying the Internet of Things to an urban scale: A low-cost, low-power, low-bandwidth but wide-range network that is so cheap, volunteer groups are setting up city-wide test networks. And even right here in my home city of Amsterdam! Via the LoRa Alliance: LoRaWAN™ is a Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) specification intended for wireless battery operated Things in regional, national or global network. LoRaWAN target key requirements of internet of things such as secure bi-directional communication, mobility and localization services. This standard will provide seamless interoperability among smart Things without the need of complex local … Continue reading LoRaWAN
According to the NY Times, apparently the US government killed the Lumileds deal over potential military applications of gallium nitride (GaN), one of the key ingredients in LED technology. At the center of the committee’s concerns on the Philips deal, according to Mr. Lewis, was a little known but increasingly important advanced semiconductor material called gallium nitride. Though not a household name like silicon, gallium nitride, often referred to by its abbreviation GaN, could be used to construct a new generation of powerful and versatile microchips. It has been used for decades in the low-energy light sources known as … Continue reading GaN killed the Philips Lumileds deal
Nice interview with Bernd Voelpel, my colleague from Philips Lighting who heads the Luminous Carpets venture team. Shot at the 09-December global media day event in Eindhoven. Continue reading philips luminous carpets – interview
A nice article on in ArchLighting provides more detail on Ketra’s technology and product strategy. Specifically: Like audio speakers, which can act as both loudspeakers and microphones, LEDs can both emit and receive light. Ketra designed a module in which … Continue reading ketra in archlighting
Density is a startup trying to make it easy and cheap to get anonymous counts of people in a physical space, which is valuable information for merchants, customers and even city planners. Such a system inspires some interesting ideas for lighting control … Continue reading density
Via Dezeen. “What is fashion missing? Micro-controllers.” Some wild fashion concepts by Dutch designer Anouk Wipprecht that combines 3D printing, embedded lighting, projection mapping, sensors, etc. (not to mention some crazy insane 3D modeling skills!) into some very futuristic ensembles. Gorgeous … Continue reading anouk wipprecht
Via The Verge: Sony is adding the guts of a smartphone into a residential ceiling light, copying some of the concepts of Amazon’s Echo voice-controlled product. If 2016 is the year of connected gadgets doing all the things smartphones can’t, … Continue reading sony’s smart home lighting
Via Dezeen. MX3D is a new research and development company co-founded by Joris Laarman and Tim Geurtjens, which plans to use robots to produce the world’s first functional 3D-printed steel bridge over an Amsterdam canal by 2017. Continue reading MX3D
I’ve been searching for data on funding and revenue for high-growth, VC-backed lighting startups. Here’s a spreadsheet of data I found via web and anecdote. Update 1: Added Ketra to the list. Continue reading lighting startups funding and revenue (updated)
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