Detailed discussions of lighting related technologies.
Disney Parks’ Blog just released a video tour of the soon-to-be-opened Maurice’s Cottage character meet-and-greet attraction at the Magic Kingdom’s new Fantasyland Expansion. The video starts with a seemingly innocent construction site tour…and then WHAMMO…one of the most stunning special effects … Continue reading disney’s magic portal
If you are a specifier trying to sort through “good” LED fixtures from “junk” LED fixtures, many of the design + engineering trade-offs in the product are often obfuscated. Heatsink design is one of those areas. Sometimes “good” LED fixtures require big-ass heatsinks; sometimes they have no apparent heatsink. Why? There was a smartly written post explaining the need to balance thermal conductivity of materials versus the convection rate of the overall heatsink design. In sum, a highly thermally-conductivity material (i.e. aluminum) does not necessarily help if the overall convection rate of the heatsink does not match the flow rate of … Continue reading thermal conductivity vs. convection rates
Acuity seems to be making slow but steady progress on OLEDs (see my previous posts): Acuity’s OLED Lighting Design Center is showing an interesting new product design called the “Canvis” series. Although I did not attend, Acuity has posted to its … Continue reading acuity’s OLED canvis + lightfair presentation
TouchDesigner by Derivative looks like an amazing piece of software, used for a wide range of video manipulation. TouchDesigner’s list of applications include interactive art production, architectural + environmental projections, engineering and research visualization, user interface prototyping, live show control, … Continue reading touchdesigner
There are several new communications standards being employed by various lighting tech startups. I found many of them to be confusing, so here is my best “I’m a designer, not an engineer” summary survey of what they mean. I highly … Continue reading current and forthcoming control standards
OnChip Power is another lighting tech startup that is currently flying low under the radar. A spinout from MIT, OnChip has only a placeholder website for now, but there is a great Boston.com article detailing the company’s plans to miniaturize … Continue reading onchip power
Most people I speak with have little understanding of how an LED backlit LCD screen actual works. Via Engadget, iFixit performed a teardown of Apple’s newest MacBook Pro with Retina Screen, showing clearly how the optical system is put together. … Continue reading how LED LCD monitors work
Interesting conference coming up in San Francisco: Collaboration – The Art and Science of Building Facades. Very interesting Speakers list highlighting who the technical innovators are for architectural building facades. Continue reading collaboration conference
modeLab is the applied research effort of Studio Mode, a design firm based in Brooklyn, New York. According to their website: Studio Mode/modeLab is a Brooklyn-based design studio and research collective founded by Ronnie Parsons and Gil Akos. As a studio committed to design as a form of applied research, Mode engages in practices that have a requisite and deep connection to material and the processes by which it is formed and informed. While we are interested in intense iterative design processes, we believe the evolution and contextualization of these procedures in a broader social and cultural domain is both … Continue reading modeLab: Screening Workshop
LEDs have jumped many hurdles over the past decade. Output, quality and price have all hit the marks needed for widespread adoption. Socket and module standards are quickly evolving. So what’s next? The next great revolution in the LED business will be miniaturizing the driver components and lowering the cost of advanced control and communications features. As the industry adds a glut of LED capacity, the price of the actual LED chips continues to plummet. This is increasing the percentage of total fixture cost that is related to the driver and power conversion components and, as they say, “the sharks are … Continue reading lucept roundup: 5 tech-focused lighting startups
There is clearly a huge disparity in what control system developers consider valuable — proprietary ownership of technology — versus what specifiers and owners consider valuable — open spec, interoperability, and selecting industry-best components as they please. This is especially acute within the North American architectural lighting industry, but certainly it is not exclusive to that geography. For example, if I wanted to buy an excellent Crestron touch panel, a Lutron wall station with custom finish, and a dimming panel from Lightolier, then I am out of luck. Each of these common manufacturers wants to “control” the whole purchase order and … Continue reading control system disconnect
Apple likes shiny toys. They’ve figured out that hundreds of millions of people also like shiny toys. In the process, Apple single-handedly unleashed glossy screens back onto a world that had effectively rid ourselves of such glare bombs about a decade ago, via high performance anti-glare coatings on LCD screens. Such wonderful coatings freed lighting design for offices to once again include beautiful luminous elements and natural daylight, restoring a wonderful feeling of brightness that had been systemically eliminated to prevent veiling glare on older style CRTs. So now everyone “happily” lives with seeing their own reflection brighter then the … Continue reading thanks MIT, for fixing Apple’s glaring problem
Tridonic, the components division of Zumtobel, launched a couple notable products at Light + Building. They showed a unique LED linear module for direct/indirect lighting. Looks like an edge-lit glass arrangement with the LEDs running along the perimeter. They also … Continue reading l+b: Tridonic
Panasonic and its acquired Vossloh-Schwabe division had a very strong component and module showing at Light + Building. Two products especially caught my eye, a linear Zhaga compliant module and a socketed OLED module. Panasonic and VS were showing a … Continue reading l+b: Panasonic & Vossloh Schwabe
CeramTec is a German company that makes ceramic-based moldings, extrusions and sheet products. Ceramics have two great characteristics: Electrical isolation and thermal conductivity. Circuit traces can be silk-screened right onto the ceramic parts and electrical components like LEDs can be … Continue reading l+b: CeramTec
It looks like my industry colleagues in the Zhaga Consortium have made significant progress (see also my previous post “gaga for Zhaga” back in 2010). The Zhaga group has started it’s official promotional activities, including adding significant content to its website (including the new official … Continue reading zhaga’s debutante ball
It is sad; tragic really: I now have to file the color of light known as “purple” into the same folder as Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. I recently attended a seminar by Joe Bokelman of ETC, who made … Continue reading purple
No wonder James Bond likes Aston Martin cars: It must be the lighting when you pick up the car. Wired has a great post about how Aston Martin builds their $1.7m One-77 supercar in a laboratory-clean facility. But the part I … Continue reading aston martin’s OLED room
Acuity’s OLED Lighting Design Center launched a couple products at Lightfair 2011, most notably the Revel fixture. There’s quite the parade of OLED fixtures being “launched” these days. “Launched” is a somewhat dubious term for many of these, as they … Continue reading acuity’s revel OLED fixture
OSRAM launched a stylish combination OLED + LED pendant fixture called the “Airabesc” at the recent iSalone/Euroluce show.
OSRAM has been experimenting with OLED technology for well over a decade now (I personally saw back in 1999 an early OSRAM prototype OLED while at Harvard’s School of Design ). Its nice to see OLEDs finally reaching the output levels needed for general illumination. And the fixture is definitely following the du jour architectural trends of biomimetic, swoopy styling enabled by digital design and fabrication.
Lucept 