Bluetooth Mesh Protocol as Applied to Lighting
Little more than one year ago, Bluetooth SIG released the Bluetooth Mesh standardization. Meanwhile, it has become widely adopted and is also one of the favorite systems for lighting controls. Russ Sharer, Vice President of Global Marketing and Business Development for Fulham, starts with an explanation of the Bluetooth Mesh protocol as applied to lighting control and defining its key elements. In a second portion of the article, he answers questions that lighting control evaluators could be asking their vendor.
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When Nights Are No Longer Dark: Effects of Artificial Light at Night on Agroecosystems
In recent decades, artificial lighting has become an integral part of the modern world. While the use of artificial light at night (ALAN) greatly benefits people, it often has unintended, negative consequences for wildlife and ecosystems. In particular, the increasing use of LED lighting raises ecological concerns due to its high content of blue light, to which many organisms are sensitive. Dr. Maja Grubisic, Researcher at the Leibniz-Institute and Guest Lecturer at Free University Berlin discusses how ALAN can directly and indirectly influence agroecosystems, with potential consequences for food production and biodiversity. Given the current lack of integrative studies on this important topic, the better understanding of effects of ALAN in agroecosystems is urgently needed.
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Hazard or Hope? LEDs and Wildlife
LpR 70 Article, page 52: The introduction and widespread uptake of LEDs as outdoor lighting has caused no small amount of concern amongst conservation biologists. The prevailing impression that LEDs are always blue-white is well founded as adoption of LEDs for streetlights were invariably high color temperatures and with the deterioration of phosphors the blue wavelengths penetrated even more. But LEDs do have characteristics that differentiate them from other light sources and may allow for the reduction of environmental effects of lighting on species and habitats: direction, duration, intensity, and spectrum. Travis Longcore, Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California's School of Architecture, sheds light on all these aspects.
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Lighting and Emergency Dept. Clinician Wellness and Performance Improvement
LpR 70 Article, page 38: Short wavelength ("blue") light is known for its strong impact on humans covering "visual" function, wellness and performance of humans. Lighting has been recognized to have an effect on clinician wellness and performance as well as the occurence of medical errors. In a pilot study, Octavio L. Perez, Ph.D, WELL Accredited Professional and Adjunct Researcher at the Department of Population Health Science and Policy, and his team of scientists and physicians, Christopher Strother, Richard Vincent, Barbara Rabin and Harold S. Kaplan, from the Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, systematically investigated if and how a radically new lighting concept could improve wellness and performance in an emergency department.
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User Evaluation of the OpenAIS Pilot Installation
The OpenAIS project (2015-2018) has developed an open IoT lighting solution to enable a wider community to deliver the smartness of light, allowing easy adaptability to cater for the diversity of people and demands. The project is a cooperation between seven leading companies in the European industry and two academic partners: Signify, Zumtobel, Tridonic, Johnson Controls, Dynniq Belgium, NXP, ARM, Eindhoven University of Technology. Thomas van de Werff, Harm van Essen and Berry Eggen from the Eindhoven University of Technology describe the evaluation results of the pilot installation in a real office building in Eindhoven (The Netherlands), a former Philips factory.
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Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Dr. Maja Grubisic, Researcher, Free University Berlin & Leibniz-Institute
Awareness of the ecological impact of technologies is becoming more important since climate change due to industrialization cannot be denied. LED lighting is one of the technologies that is deemed as a contributor in helping to reduce the impact caused by wasted energy. Unfortunately, light pollution, due to inefficient energy usage, is not the only problem. Besides the more recognized pollution from pesticides and chemical pollutants, light pollution also disturbs ecology and wildlife. Dr. Grubisic, Researcher at the Free University Berlin & Leibniz-Institute, has been working on this problem for more than five years now. She has written an article, also in this issue, concerning this. At the LED professional Symposium she was also good enough to grant this interview, providing some background information, explaining why light pollution is such an issue in biology and why this topic should be of concern to all of us.
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An Industry at a Crossroads
Commentary from LpR 70: We often hear grumbles about the lighting industry suffering under low margins and high costs. Primarily, this is true for most traditional luminaire manufacturers but not as much for innovative controls and driver manufacturers, and even less so for innovative newcomers who understand the semiconductor business that has taken over a share of the luminaire manufacturers' revenue.
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Materials, Manufacturing and Technologies for Designing Passive Cooling Devices
Until recently, incandescent bulbs and fluorescent lights were the dominant light sources. Today it’s the energy efficient, durable and, in the meantime, cost effective, LED. But to achieve these attributes appropriate cooling is still necessary and due to progress over the last few years the need for active cooling solutions is limited to a few high power applications as long as the material and technology is carefully chosen. John Broadbent, Managing Director at Columbia-Staver Ltd., describes the different technologies and materials and gives practical advice on how to find the right solution for an application.
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Additive Optics Design and Fabrication for Smart Lighting Systems and Tailored Project Solutions
Since its initial invention back in 2009, printed optics has come a long way in the lighting industry. Additive optics fabrication is a future proof methodology of rapid prototyping custom LED optics by means of digital manufacturing technologies. Marco de Visser, Luximprint’s Director of Marketing & Sales, breaks down the technology and explains how its features add value to the design and manufacture of smart lighting applications. From one of Luximprint’s preferred optical design partners Physionary, Ramon van der Hilst, Founder and Business Development Manager, and Suresh Christopher, inventor of the state-of-the-art “target-to-source” optics design software, explain the benefits of an optimized design process.
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Qualified Bluetooth Mesh – Making Lighting Controls Future-Proof
LpR 69 Article, page 88: At Lightfair USA, Siegfried Luger met with Patrick Durand, Worldwide Technical Director at Future Lighting Solutions. One of Mr. Durand’s striking statements was: “Basically, what we need is to future-proof lighting control.” This was the first time that this important aspect was so clearly addressed by a representative of the industry. This led us to asking Mr. Durand to provide LED professional with a technical article to clarify the current situation, explain the technical background that led him to making that statement and to give an idea of which requirements a controls solution must fulfill to be truly future-proof.
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Interactive Lighting Control is Opening New Doors for LED Applications
LpR 69 Article, page 98: Advancements in lighting control technology are allowing for sophisticated interactivity in LED mapping. These new technologies are bridging the gap between lighting control and AI, with the ability to analyze and map data input (such as audio) in real-time. Installations driven by interactive LED control technologies have their place in a variety of application spaces. Manjinder Benning, Founder and CTO of Limbic Media, explains how this new technology works, what its applications are, and what the future of interactive lighting control looks like – not only for end-users, but also for lighting designers and technicians.
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Rethinking the Photometric Data File Format
With increasing computing power, engineering disciplines cannot be imagined without simulations anymore. In lighting, photometric data and electronic processing of this data has become one of the most important tools for luminaire design and lighting design. This data is today provided in IES LM-63 format, a format that meanwhile has come to its limits. P. Eng. (Ret) Ian Ashdown, Senior Scientist at SunTracker Technologies Ltd., explains why the time for a change to a new standard has come and discusses the newly proposed standard and its properties in detail: ANSI/IES TM-33 respectively UNI 1603054.
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Optical Designs to Improve LED Lighting Efficiency of Medical Endoscopes
Lighting efficiency for endoscopic instruments has been deemed very poor, at only about 20%. While laboratory tests demonstrate that fiber optics bending is not problematic, optical simulations clearly show that lighting efficiency is strongly limited by the Étendue. Because of strong geometrical constraints in the light coupling area of an endoscope system, only a radical new optical design can provide significant improvement. Alexander Gaertner and Paola Belloni from the Faculty of Mechanical and Medical Engineering and the Steinbeis Transferzentrum Lichttechnik und Beleuchtungsoptik at the University Furtwangen discuss these issues and propose possible approaches.
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Smart Design of Freeform Micro-Optical Elements for Thin Direct-Lit Luminaires
LpR 69 Article, page 64: Direct-lit LED luminaires consist of LED arrays. In order to achieve homogenous light distribution a diffuser sheet is placed at a certain height above the LED array. Usually the distance between the LEDs and the diffuser has to be greater than the distance between the LEDs on the array. To overcome this limitation, additional optical elements like freeform lenses are necessary. Christian Sommer, scientist at the Institute of Surface Technologies and Photonics of the Joanneum Research Forschungsges.m.b.H and his colleagues, Claude Leiner, Ladislav Kuna, Paul Hartmann and Franz P. Wenzl propose a smart design concept for an extremely flat, direct-lit lighting system, making use of mask-less laser direct write lithography.
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Evaluating Performance of LED-Based Luminaires
LpR 69 Article, page 48: The wide spread of performance data supplied by manufacturers make it difficult for the professional user to reach an “apple-to-apple” comparison, especially if the data is not based on standardized metrics. This is however critical for the preparation of lighting projects or tender specifications. Experts from LightingEurope have therefore developed a guidance document which recommends a fixed set of performance data for LED based luminaires, with particular emphasis to the useful life and the data which is necessary for lighting application design.
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