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TECH-TALKS
BREGENZ
Horticulture lighting

David Schmidmayr, General Manager at SANlight Research GmbH and SANlight Solution GmbH

Two friends and passionate hobby gardeners, David Schmidmayr and Martin Anker, founded SANlight immediately after studying Mechatronics at the University of Applied Sciences, Dornbirn. The two innovative entrepreneurs with their small company quickly caught attention because of their sound knowledge of both LED lighting technologies and the requirements for growing plants. The company works together with scientists from botanical institutes to provide adequate solutions in horticulture lighting. David Schmidmayr talks about challenges and opportunities, how the company was founded and how it evolved, cooperations and future prospects.

LpS Best Papers
White LED digital communication

VLC Luminaire – Visible Light Communications

As part of a funding project, the Institute of Electronics at NTB has developed an intelligent luminaire system that is capable of organizing itself, controlling brightness and optimizing power consumption using presence detectors and Visible Light Communication (VLC). The LEDs allow information to be modulated into visible light without additional electronics. The information is received via an integrated photodiode and requires little additional hardware. With this setup, a communication without radio and without special modules can be realized. As part of this project, a system with a working range of 20 meters was developed.

Research
Medical applications, surgery

Scientific Partner Paper: Tissue-Specific and Biodynamic Control of Surgical Lights

JA modern surgical light needs to offer surgeons the opportunity to control both the optical components and the light spectrum. One of the main challenges for the visual task of a surgeon is the distinction of different tissues or tissue-conditions. Color perception, color differences, appropriate spectral power distributions (SPD) considering the reflection properties of biological tissues, the blue spectral range around 480 nm causing a non-visual effect on the operating-room staff needs to be managed. However, the technical term, color temperature, is not sufficient to describe this optimization problem. This article describes the challenges in detail and discusses a new method to evaluate the reflection properties of biological tissues.

Special Topic
Industrial application, strobe

LED Driver for High Power Machine Vision Flash

Machine vision systems use very short flashes of intense light to produce high speed images used in a wide variety of data processing applications. One challenge in all of these systems is creating the very high current and short-term (microseconds) LED camera flash waveforms. The drive currents for the LEDs may rise above 1 A while the LED on-times shrink to microseconds. An increasing challenge that most conventional LED drivers with high speed PWM capabilities may not efficiently master. A viable solution is proposed and discussed.

Special Topic
Horticulture lighting

Material Considerations for UV Optical Elements in Horticultural Lighting Applications

Advancements in UV LED technology have begun changing the horticultural lighting landscape. Research is still ongoing to discover the extent of benefits and best practices of using UV light in horticulture. Using optics in tandem with UV LED light systems can help reach performance goals and optimize growing. Although there are several UV- transmitting materials available, not all are equivalent or able to meet the requirements for UV applications. This article will discuss the performance considerations of various UV-transmitting materials and how application challenges are addressed by integrating optical elements.

Special Topic
Horticulture lighting

Combining Sunlight and LED Grow Lights for the Ultimate Growth of Plants

Modern day greenhouses combine the usage of natural and artificial light to improve both the quality and quantity of their produce. Plants need proper lighting in order to grow healthy. Using supplemental grow lights with natural sunlight may improve the results significantly. The article explains how relying on both natural and supplemental LED grow lighting improves growth rate and increases profit by adjusting the light according to the specific needs of each plant and its current growth phase.