Detailed discussions of lighting related technologies.
The global pandemic has driven video communications to the forefront…and also the need for good lighting for photography and videography. In my office I recently upgraded 4 ancient fluorescent 2’x2’/60×60 troffers (so ancient they still had magnetic ballasts and starters!) … Continue reading using a LED panel as a photography softbox
In case you want to get serious with the science of light guides, I found this excellent document from Agilent Technologies dating back to 2001. A thorough yet approachable technical explanation to the science of designing light pipes or light … Continue reading lightguide tech application brief
LumenCache Lighting is an another interesting entrant to the DC-power revolution, focusing on residential lighting applications. LumenCache has developed a solution with a patch-panel style configuration that can accept a variety of driver or control modules – at the panel … Continue reading lumencache lighting
Microsens is a German company that supplies industrial automation and smart building communications and control equipment. One piece of hardware especially caught my eye, and that is their Central Smart Lighting Controller. I actually think that is a bit of … Continue reading microsens
Copenhagen-based BurnBlock offers an environmentally safe flame retardant additive for wood materials. BurnBlock has achieved a Gold rating for the Cradle-to-Cradle standard and is the first fire retardant to receive a C2C rating. Cradle to Cradle CertifiedTM at the Gold … Continue reading burnblock
GVA Lighting recently launched their Infinity series, which capitalizes on the inherent system-level benefits of using 380V DC-power for long runs of LED fixtures. GVA claims they can achieve over 300m/1000ft long runs from a single power/data connection, which is … Continue reading GVA lighting embraces high voltage DC power
Live rendering technology, originally developed in the gaming industry for achieving photo-realistic interactive gameplay, is sweeping through both Hollywood content creation and the AEC/development industries. Live rendering technologies offer profound technical opportunities in design visualization, collaboration, and innovative use of … Continue reading live rendering in 2020
Thanks to James McHale and the team at Memoori for hosting a great webinar! If you missed it live, listen to it now at your convenience at this link. Really, I should have picked a different title, because the 6 … Continue reading 6 disruptive lighting trends: recorded webinar
Conductive ink continues to offer tremendous creative promise, but it seems industrialization has been slow in coming. Although a few years old, I found a couple of beautiful and creative videos showing off conductive ink: Apparently this video below was … Continue reading conductive ink videos
What happens when your Christmas lights become “smart”, “connected” and “lifi”? Continue reading happy holidays 2019!
Acuity Lighting is launching Modulus, a centralized DC-power system option for their LED lighting fixture lines. The first offering is the Peerless Renna linear pendant line. Acuity stepping into the fray is a great sign for DC power in commercial … Continue reading acuity launches DC power options
DecoChrom is an EU Horizon 2020 funded R+D consortium focused on commercializing color-changing electrochromic materials for a variety of applications. Electrochromics are a printed electronics technology, which opens up opportunity to use these low-fidelity but ultra-low-power displays across applications where … Continue reading decochrom
I’ve been writing now for many years about the importance of adopting a DC infrastructure as a necessary foundation to drive further innovations in architectural lighting and media systems. DC power infrastructure efficiently ties together solar and battery storage in … Continue reading 48 vdc power components
SmartEagle is a Dutch-based spinoff of IoT-development company Evalan that uses camera-based sensor systems and AI to accurately detect and analyze desk usage in office environments. They never blatantly say they use cameras, but it is pretty obvious by the … Continue reading smarteagle sensor solutions
We are at the inflection point of a new revolution: DC-power infrastructure is set to replace AC-infrastructure in many, if not most, commercial buildings. The case is simple: Almost every device in a modern building uses direct-current (DC), including LED … Continue reading the efficiency advantage of DC electrical infrastructure
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 … Continue reading wave illumination
As usual, last week’s Integrated Systems Europe 2019 had some stunning large-scale LED screens on display. For those of you not familiar, these are direct-view LEDs, typically configured on panels that can built up into large-scale, seamless video walls. These … Continue reading ise 2019: the big LED walls
bGrid is an Amsterdam-based startup developing a “smart building” sensing platform based around the Bluetooth Low Energy standard. According to their site: bGrid develops, markets and sells smart building products and services that use state-of-the-art communications technology, with focus on … Continue reading bGrid
Energie IP is a Paris-based startup that is developing a building management system (BMS) based on Power-over-Ethernet technology (PoE). PoE holds promise in architectural projects to accomplish three key objectives: Distribute DC power with inherent IP-connectivity to the thousands of … Continue reading energie IP
Limbic Media is a startup based in British Columbia that is developing real time, interactive lighting controls. Their first product is a sound-activated, predictive control system called “Aurora” with intelligent “AI” learning functions. Beyond their initial product based on audio … Continue reading limbic media
