Interviews & Tech-Talks BREGENZ (TTB)
LiFi Communication Interview
For over a decade, research in LiFi has been intensified with amazing results. When Musa Unmehopa, an authority in the lighting industry, took on the position of Head of Ecosystems and Strategic Alliances for LiFi at Signify, it was clear that LED professional would have to report what he has to say about the status of LiFi and his future plans. We have known him since he was appointed Secretary General at Zhaga at the beginning of 2014. Since then he was always in charge at Philips Lighting, now Signify, in some capacity, also representing the company in the Connected Lighting Alliance. In addition, his resumé marks him as a specialist in standardization and a technology advisor.
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Kenneth Martin from Zumtobel about Comfortable Lighting
Kenneth Martin has been specifying, qualifying an developing components and characterization setups for LED light sources within the Zumtobel Group since 2006. With his expertise on spectral measurements and applications, he supports integrative lighting solutions topics. He gathered valuable knowledge in physics and optical system engineering while studying at the University of Applied Sciences RV-Weingarten, during the internships at a quality assurance department of a reflector aluminum manufacturer and the optical development department of Zumtobel. He combines his enthusiasm for lighting and sustainable construction engineering with a DIY philosophy.
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Paradigm Changes in Lighting Are Challenging Lighting Companies
Fabien Bubendorff has a Master in Electronic Engineering and has 10 years' experience in the lighting industry. He has spent more than 13 years living in China. He worked as a Product Manager for a Retail Lighting Company, for the Last 5 years he was responsible for Wever&Ducré as the Head of R&D in China and for the last years Head of R&D at XAL in Austria. Now he has founded an independent consultancy to support European Lighting Companies to deal with these future challenges. He specialized in finding the optimal balance between function and cost to increase product profitability.
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TechTalks BREGENZ - Dr. Christoph Wächter, Senior Scientist at Fraunhofer IOF, Germany
Research topics have become more important with LEDs and LED lighting micro optics and freeform optics. A new approach based on an IP for a fly's eye condenser from 1928, filed by Zeiss Ikon AG that extends possibilities and allows for new applications was presented ‚at LpS 2019. The jury was so impressed with the paper that it won the Scientific Award 2019. Dr. Guenther Sejkora and Arno Grabher-Meyer from LED professional talked to Dr. Christoph Wächer, co-author and presenter of the paper about his approach, his career and work. Dr. Christoph Wächter is a senior scientist at Fraunhofer IOF.
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Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Prof. Ruairí O'Brien, Founder of Ruairí O'Brien Lighting Design
Ruairí O'Brien, associate professor and head of the Architecture and Visual design department at the German University in Cairo and CEO of Ruairí O'Brien. Architektur. Licht Raumkunst, surprised and delighted the audience with his lecture at LpS 2016 when he talked about allowing darkness. He expressed the same sentiments in a caption for a figure in the proceedings booklet: "The future in Dresden is not lighting excess - the future is Re-Darkness with intelligent SSL concepts." This year, Ruairí held two lectures at TiL in which he emphasized how important a thorough application of light is in respect to culture, ethics, and environment. In addition to his work, these interesting statements made it made a Tech-Talk Bregenz with him a top priority.
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Personal Lighting Profiles Might Be the Key to Creating a Natural "Work Light Balance"
Commentary from LpR 76: Henrik Clausen has been involved in lighting for over 30 years in both commercial and academic positions. In 1996, he became the Managing Director of Fagerhult Lighting in Denmark, and held that position until 2004, when he founded the Fagerhult Lighting Academy. In 2015 he also became Head of Research for Fagerhult. He holds a position as professor in Lighting Design at AAU in Copenhagen. He guest lectures at various Universities around the world. He speaks worldwide, primarily addressing the human and emotional aspects of light and lighting design.
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Providing Better Light Should Still be the Focus of the SSL Industry
Commentary from LpR 75: As President of Bardsley Consulting, Norman advises industry, government and academia on solid-state lighting, flat panel displays and energy efficiency, with special emphasis on diffuse lighting and organic electronics. He is a member of the Technical Advisory Team for the Solid-State Lighting Program of the US Department of Energy. Dr. Bardsley also acts as Chief Analyst for the International Solid-State Lighting Alliance (ISA) and is a member of the UNEP Expert Task Force on LED Lighting and Controls.
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Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Wilfried Kramb, Interior & Lighting Designer, a∙g Licht
TTB from LpR 75: The value of lighting design and light planning has always been underestimated, despite it becoming more important with the rise of Solid-State-Lighting. This is a fact that the public doesn't realize, even though the industry does. Digitalization, compared with the special properties of LED lighting and the aim of the lighting industry to establish their IoT hubs, is a new challenge. This is even more apparent when trying to integrate light sources directly in building structures. Responsibilities and tasks are no longer clearly separated between the different disciplines of architect, lighting designer, IT planner and electro planner. Guenther Sejkora and Arno Grabher-Meyer talked with Wilfried Kramb, owner and CEO
of a·g Licht, about these tendencies and topic.
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Selecting the UV LED Wavelength for Purification Applications
Patrick Durand is the Worldwide Technical Director at Future Lighting Solutions (FLS) with over 15 years of experience in the solid state lighting industry. Patrick leads the FLS Technical Marketing teams and FLS laboratory teams located in multiple regions around the world with the objective of providing world-class support to lighting OEMs in developing luminaires with the latest SSL technology from the light source to the complete system incorporating the LED driver, optic, thermal management and intelligent control solutions.
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Care, Caution & Awareness Are Needed When Using LED Lights
Kyra Xavia is a researcher, educator and investigative journalist based in New Zealand. Her roles as general secretary of the Light and Lighting Research Consortium (LLRC), delegate for the International Dark Sky Association (IDA), New Zealand Ambassador for Women in Lighting 2019, and co-leader of the Dunedin Dark Skies Group, involve educating decision-makers and the public about the importance of responsible lighting, nocturnal placemaking and the value of darkness. Recognised in New Zealand and abroad for her advocacy in these matters, Kyra has co-authored research papers and published articles specific to this subject. Kyra has recently been awarded with The Dark Sky Defender Award.
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Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Julian Carey, Marketing Manager at SLD Laser
In 2016, Nobel Laureate, Professor Shuji Nakamura held a key note speech at LpS. As the founder of Soraa and SLD Laser, he named laser lighting as the next, innovative step and disruption in lighting. He emphasized the need to focus on light quality and the tailoring of LED lighting to the natural needs of humas, providing light that mimics sunlight as closely as possible. It was therefore self-evident that LED professional would invite Julian Carey, the Product and Technical Marketing Manager at SLD Laser, for a Tech-Talk when he was at the LpS 2018 in Bregenz. We asked him for an update on the status of laser lighting, business strategies and future prospects and how laser lighting has developed since Professor Nakamura's statements in 2016.
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Commentary: Providing Better Light Should Still be the Focus of the SSL Industry
J. Norman Bardsley, PhD -
As President of Bardsley Consulting, Norman advises industry, government and academia on solid-state lighting, flat panel displays and energy efficiency, with special emphasis on diffuse lighting and organic electronics.
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Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Dr. Scott Wade, Technical & Certification Manager, DiiA
Dr. Scott Wade has been the Technical & Certification Manager for DALI/DiiA since 2013 and has been an industry expert member of the IEC62386 standardization team for about 14 years. He was invited to hold a lecture at the LpS 2018 about the founding of DiiA for the purpose of taking over the DALI trademark from ZVEI and discussed measures that were taken to further develop the standard and its certification process and make the DALI concept future proof with DALI-2.
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What the Heck Is Future Proof?
Commentary from LpR 72: The first time the question about future proofing LED systems came up seriously, was at LightFair 2018 when Siegfried Luger interviewed Patrick Durand. Since then, it has been the buzzword throughout the industry. Discussions concerning future proofing are often limited to wireless communications, IoT and some type of AI. But isn't there more?
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Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Dr. Octavio Perez, Adjunctant Researcher, Mt. Sinai Hospital
Dr. Perez received the LED professional Scientific Award 2018 for his paper on "Light and ED Clinical Wellness and Performance Improvement", which was published in LpR 70. The evaluation jury had the following to say about why they selected his paper: "The paper is based on the clear definition of the research question, hypothesis and objective of the research. The methodology of the screening study is described in detail and both subjective and objective parameters have been measured. Although Emergency Department lighting is a very special application, the paper provides interesting results." This interview provides background information on Octavio Perez, his work in general, his opinion on human centric lighting risks, opportunities and applications and how he became involved in this interesting research topic. Dr. Perez also provides additional details about the presented paper.
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Well-Being, Light and Exhibition Lighting
Commentary from LpR 71: Well-being is the state of feeling healthy and happy, a good or satisfactory condition of existence, including the emotional and psychological sphere. In 1810, Goethe published a theory based on a human-based approach, combining visual appearance with harmony, culture, sensations and psychology. His color wheel was entitled "allegorical, symbolic, mystic use of color" and was composed of six hues, i.e. red (the beautiful), orange (the noble), yellow (the good), green (the useful), blue (the common) and violet (the unnecessary). The position on the wheel was harmonically relevant and in particular the colors in opposite position generated a strong psychological contrast and were called "opposite colors". Primary colors were yellow, blue and red, and the opposites were green, violet and orange, respectively. Goethe's wheel and the particular matching of opposites soon became popular and was used by the Impressionism movement, especially by Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet. In this artistic movement, the special impact given by the combination of opposite colors were deliberately aimed to create special psychological effects and sensations.
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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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A New Lighting Scene
Commentary from LpR 69: I wouldn’t be telling you anything new if I said that technology is changing at an ever-increasing rate. But in the lighting industry there is a lot more happening, which makes these times truly disruptive and perhaps even inconvenient for some people ... but not for me.
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UV-Light for Plant Development
Commentary from LpR 68: Since the development of the incandescent lamp, greenhouse farmers have been using electric light sources as a supplement to natural sunlight. Initially, light intensity was the major concern. Later, growers learned to manipulate plant development by altering the power distribution of the light spectrum for added value such as taste and appearance.
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Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Rico Kramer, Inventor, Founder & CEO, esave ag
In recent years there has been a strong focus on safe communication and controls in the lighting industry. The success story of esave ag, however, started much earlier, when Rico Kramer, the founder and CEO of esave, travelled to Taiwan due to his dissatisfaction with the quality of early LED replacement bulbs. What the former Apple employee learned there led to the development of the esave concept and its technology. In the interview he talks about his intentions, the beginning of esave, wireless technologies in general, system security, commissioning, system incompatibilities, markets and their peculiarities.
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Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Ken Munro, Partner & Founder, Pen Test Partners
Today, hardly a day goes by that we don’t hear about security breaches, hacker attacks or comprimized data; often as a result of insufficient security measures. IoT does not really improve this situation and it is therefore necessary for the industry to take this threat seriously. This is especially true for the lighting industry, whose aim is to become the IoT enabler. Ken Munro, founder and partner at Pen Test Partners, is an ethical hacker whose passion is to hack any technical product he can get his hands on. Unfortunately, he succeeds way to often. LED professional talked with him about ethical hacking, where he sees the risks in various products, where the risks are hidden and what can be done to minimize them.
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Blue Light Hazard - How Dangerous Is SSL Lighting?
Modern Solid State Lighting (SSL) technology has long since found its way into our normal working and living environments. In the early phases, consumers were most concerned with lifetime, pricing and light quality of the new LED-based light sources. Now they have become almost ubiquitous, a focus has been placed on safety. At the recent Light+Building exhibition topics such as photobiological safety and blue light hazard (BLH) were highly ranked among both visitors and exhibitors.
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International and Cross-Industry Projects such as OpenAIS are Absolutely Crucial to the Success of Connected Lighting
Interview with Jens Herter, Coordinator Alliances & Funding at Tridonic.
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Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Fred Maxik, Founder & CTO, Lighting Science Group
LED light in combination with advanced controls, and here especially IoT capabilities, opened several
new options in lighting. In this context, the term Human Centric Lighting, and more recently, the term
Biologically Active Light have become trendy. Fred Maxik, founder and CTO of the Lighting Science
Group, who held the keynote speech at LpS 2017, recognized these opportunities in a very early stage
when most other manufacturers were still struggling with the challenges of the new technology. In the
interview he explains what his perception of light is and its importance in our lives. He gives insights into
his philosophy and ideas on which criteria artificial lighting has to fulfill in order to live up to the promising
terms „Human Centric Lighting“ and „Biologically Active Light“.
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On Smart Luminaires
In the time up to 2010, conventional
luminaires with low or high-pressure
discharge lamps with a luminous efficacy
of about 80 lm/W were developed.
The electrical power was dependent on
the electrical power of the lamps built in
the luminaire. From 2008 and likely until
around 2020, luminaires with phosphorconverted
white LEDs with one fixed color
temperature, a constant luminous intensity
distribution and a maximal luminous
efficacy of about 140-160 lm/W are
developed with an electrical power
between 10 W and 300 W for different
applications and dependent on the
manufacturer. Therefore, a relative
increase in luminous efficacy of 80 -100%
in the context of the discussions on
“energy efficiency” is being achieved.
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Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Ken T. Shimizu, Research & Development Director, Lumileds
QDs have been a hot topic in lighting for a while already, but up until now they haven’t been adopted on
a large scale in lighting. The adoption began in display devices because some of the technical issues
were of less concern in this application. With continuing development, QDs are now also becoming
interesting for general lighting applications. Ken Shimizu, Director of Novel Technologies and Devices,
Research and Development at Lumileds, attended the LpS in Bregenz and made a presentation about
the company’s QD technology. In this interview he gives some background information about the QD
program and future steps.
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Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Julia Frohleiks, Researcher, University of Duisburg-Essen
In his commentary on technical progress and innovation, Dr. Sejkora said: “In the early stage, in the first
phase of its life cycle, technology is mainly driven by fundamental research.” He went on to say that we
can never predict how a technology will develop. Researchers from the University of Duisburg-Essen,
working in the Nano Energy Technical Center (NETZ), worked on this type of fundamental technology
and their submission received the LpS 2017 Scientific Award. Ms. Julia Frohleiks, a Ph.D. student, was a
major contributor to this research in the group led by Dr. Ekaterina Nannen and accepted the award in
Dr. Nannen’s name. In the following interview she gives some background information and discloses
future research possibilities.
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Can You Show Me the Next S-Curve, Please?
The evolution of technologies is often
described using the “S-curve” model.
In the early stage, in the first phase of
its life cycle, technology is mainly driven
by fundamental research. Only a few
players are active at that time and
innovation steps are quite large. In the
second phase, early adopters start to
develop products and bring them to
market. This phase is characterized by
huge investments. In the third phase,
more and more players enter the
technology field, competition becomes
important and development speed of
the technology decreases. In the last
phase, the technology is mature,
(nearly) everybody can use it, there are
fewer margins and the technology
should be replaced by a new one.
Many of the SSL technologies have
meanwhile reached maturity. Where are
the upcoming technologies, what will be
the next S-curve? Looking at technology
discussions and lectures at LpS 2017
I tried to find answers to these questions.
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The Value of High-End Labs for High Quality Lighting
With the relocation to the Augsburg
site in 2015, the Osram laboratory
equipment includes a number of
integrating spheres of different sizes up
to 3 meters in diameter, several goniophotometers
A/B/C types, a rotary mirror
light distribution meter and a hemispherical
goniometer with a measurement radius of
2.65 meters, optical bench measuring
systems with up to 35 meter measuring
distance, corresponding high-quality
photometric receivers and spectral
radiometers as well as the necessary
components for the electrical operation
of lamps - according to customer or
standardized specifications.
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