Fabrizio Ferri: LED Lights for Digital Capture

Photographer and studio owner Fabrizio Ferri first became interested in experimenting with LED (light-emitting diode) lights as a way to address the needs of photographers working on motion projects. “Moving photographs,” as Ferri calls them, which are essentially stills that come to life and have no narrative, have become increasingly popular for online and tablet usage, especially with fashion clients. However clients rarely have the time or the budget to retouch the motion projects frame-by-frame. “When you are doing video particularly, you need to have control [of the light] so you don’t have anything to fix after,” Ferri says. “That’s a big thing.”

Diamond Jo Casino Hits the Green Jackpot with Cree Lighting

Iowa-based Diamond Jo Casino, a gambling establishment located on the popular Port of Dubuque, recently installed energy-efficient LED (light-emitting diode) lighting by Cree, Inc. The casino upgraded its existing lighting to Cree’s LRP-38™ LED spotlights throughout the 188,000 square foot entertainment facility, including the gaming floor, hallways, reception and meeting rooms.
Diamond Jo Casino replaced 750 of its existing incandescent down lights with Cree LRP-38 LED lamps. Since the casino lights remain on at all times, installing LRP-38 lamps, which are designed to last 35,000-50,000 hours (depending on application), can result in significant energy and maintenance savings. By eliminating the need for regular bulb replacements and associated labor costs, Diamond Jo anticipates reducing maintenance costs by nearly $23,000 a year while providing high-quality lighting throughout its facility. According to Chad Darter, Director of Facilities at Diamond Jo Casino, the long lifetime and high color quality of the LED lighting is a great match for the 24/7 operation of the casino.
According to lighting contractor Crescent Electric Supply Company, switching to Cree’s LRP-38 lamps, which consume only 11 watts of power compared to 100 watts from the original PAR-38 incandescent lamps, can save Diamond Jo Casino more than $46,000 in electrical costs annually. These savings, combined with anticipated maintenance savings result in a payback calculation of nearly one year for the installation with an ongoing annual savings of almost $70,000.
The casino was built in 2007 specifically to achieve “carbon neutral” certification under the Clean Air Conservancy's NetZero program. In addition to the energy-efficient LED lighting, the casino’s other green features include: a white roof designed to reflect heat and conserve energy, bar floor of reclaimed wood and a central plant heating and cooling system. In its partnership with the Clean Air Conservancy, Diamond Jo initiated the “Go Green Challenge” for Dubuque residents and businesses, as well as the Diamond Conservation Fund, including an annual commitment from the casino to help fund conservation efforts within its community.

More tough LED business: Cree slumps

LEDs may represent the energy efficient future of lighting, but for the second time this week a leading manufacturer has demonstrated that it’s a rocky business at present. Durham, N.C.-based Cree Inc. reported that first quarter sales ending Sept. 25 sales nudged up a mere 0.2 percent to $269 million, compared to the same quarter a year ago, even though this year’s results include sales from Ruud, the Racine, Wisc. outdoor LED specialist that Cree acquired for around $525 million in August.

Optogan Opens New LED Chip Production Site in Europe

Optogan’s new production location has been opened by the German Federal State of Bavaria’s Minister of Economic Affairs. Landshut’s LED chips have been considered to be important for this century’s lighting technology. Significance of LED lighting will be more in future as green technology is gaining importance. The energy usage should be more efficient for this green development, which can be done by utilizing high-performance LEDs that save up to 80% of energy. The operating life of a LED lamp is up to 50,000 h. Lack of mercury and lead is an added benefit of LEDs.

Cooper Lighting Introduces the Next Generation LED LightBAR System

Cooper Lighting has announced it has upgraded its outdoor LED LightBAR technology. Internally developed at Cooper Lighting's accredited state-of-the-art LED Innovation Center and integrated in multiple product lines, the new system's unmatched optical performance delivers improved lumen output and efficiency, while continuing to offer up to 75% in energy savings over traditional High Intensity Discharge (H.I.D.) outdoor lighting sources.
Designed to meet today's demanding energy and environmental needs, Cooper Lighting's LightBAR technology features the company's patented AccuLED Optics, which sets the industry benchmark for reliable photometric performance, scalability and energy efficiency. The system's unique application-specific design allows lumen and energy output to be customized to fulfill the exact needs of the outdoor space--eliminating wasted energy and obtrusive spill light. Designed for both new construction applications or to replace inefficient luminaires, the next generation LightBAR technology is available in two versions (7 LEDs and 21 LEDs), three standard color options (3000K, 4000K and 6000K correlated color temperatures (CCT)), and offered in 13 different optical distributions, providing versatility for every outdoor need, including street lighting, area/site, floodlighting, wall mount, parking garage, canopy and pathway solutions.
The updated LightBAR technology offers an increase in efficiency in all optical distributions without degrading optical performance, lumen depreciation or lumens per watt (lm/W). Boasting more task lumens per watt, the high efficiency 21 LED LightBAR optical fixtures deliver up to 100 lm/W or 2400 lumens per LightBAR, which outperforms the original 21 LED LightBAR fixture (1800 lumens) by 600 lumens - (using the same number of AccuLED Optics) -, while the 7 LED LightBAR optical choice (1900 lumens) also increases its lumen output over the original 21 LED LightBAR.
The efficiency and performance improvement roadmaps of LED technology guarantee the availability of improved lm/W packages in the future. To address future retrofits of higher performing packages, Cooper's unique LightBAR design is backwards compatible or future-proof both electrically and thermally, meaning there are no changes to the driver or the heat sink, making future LED upgrade replacements to its fixtures simple.
Cooper Lighting also expanded the color options to include a 3000K and 6000K CCT as standard in addition to the preferred color choice, warm white color of 4000K CCT. While typical LED outdoor solutions are standardized on a cold blue color temperature (6000-6500K CCT), Cooper Lighting LightBAR-equipped fixtures, by comparison, provide specifiers and end-users a desired color choice.
Cooper Lighting's LightBAR technology provides energy savings between 30-75% over standard H.I.D. systems while also providing a 50,000+ hour rated life-six times longer than the traditional metal halide sources found in most outdoor commercial applications.
The LightBAR technology, integrated into the industry's leading portfolio of outdoor product lines represented across four of Cooper Lighting's company brands - Invue, McGraw-Edison, Lumark and Streetworks, - offers lighting solutions that qualify for many local utility rebates.

Church refuses to change light bulb due to 'overzealous health and safety rules'

Health and safety rules mean scaffolding is required whenever a bulb needs replacing in the 30ft internal roof at St Mary's Church in Cottingham, Humberside. The church says the rules mean they cannot simply use ladders to change the bulb. The staggering cost of performing the basic task means the church has to wait until a number of lights have popped before using scaffolding to replace the bulbs.

Lighting Science Group upgrading Villa stores with LEDs

Lighting Science Group is performing an LED lighting upgrade for Villa, the Philadelphia-based urban-inspired apparel and footwear retailer. Villa estimates the lighting upgrade will pay for itself in one to two years, with energy and maintenance savings continuing to shave costs from its bottom line going forward. The project kicked off at Villa’s store in Toledo, Ohio, where Lighting Science replaced traditional 75-watt PAR halogen bulbs with its 15 watt PAR LED bulbs.

Grant secures light upgrade

Things may be a little brighter on campus after the sun goes down. The University of North Dakota was recently awarded a grant from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which gives the university $1 million to redo some of the lights around campus. This grant will mainly be put into use installing eco-friendly lights around campus. The bulbs used in this project are more efficient than the current bulbs. "Each light bulb will be using about 1.8 megawatts less than the high pressure sodium that are in place," said Randy Bohlman, an industrial electric systems analyst for UND. The new lights will be placed mainly near the campus parking lots. These parking lots include the parking ramp, by the Memorial Union, and residence hall parking lots, in addition to the city's street lights.

LED Grid Luminaire features frameless design

Sealed to protect integrity of optical system, 22GP LED Premium Grid Troffer performs well in both open areas and corridors. Solid state lighting platform combines color rendering index of 80 with 50,000 hour rated life. Illumination can be customized from offering of lumen packages ranging from 2,300-3,800 lumens. Since frequent switching does not affect life LED life, luminaire is suited for use with controls.

Diodes Incorporated's LED Driver Reduces EMI in Low-Cost Lamps

Diodes Incorporated, a leading global manufacturer and supplier of high-quality application specific standard products within the broad discrete, logic and analog semiconductor markets, announced the AL8807 buck LED driver. Switching at a frequency of up to 1MHz and ensuring closely controlled rise and fall times, the AL8807 reduces EMI issues in the lower cost MR16 LED lamp market. To achieve required higher output powers, the driver can operate at input voltages between 6V to 30V and provide up to eight series-connected LEDs with a constant 1A current.
The driver's current accuracy of 5% means it will meet the requirements of most general low-voltage lighting applications and lead to an improvement in inter-lamp luminance matching in 3W LED lighting systems. The driver is up to 96% efficient and its output current is simple to set using a single external resistor.
Dimming control is via the application of either a DC voltage or PWM signal on the driver's control input, which also protects against any over-driving of the LED current. The AL8807's 1000:1 PWM dimming ratio and DC dimming range from 16% to 100%, provide users with flexible and wide-ranging lamp brightness control.
The AL8807 is available in the small footprint SOT25 package and will soon be available in the MSOP-8EP package. For further information, visit the Company's website at www.diodes.com .

Curtiss-Wright Controls Introduces Family of Rugged High Definition Dual LED Backlit Displays

Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing (CWCEC), a business group of Curtiss-Wright Controls and a designer and manufacturer of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) VME, and OpenVPX products for the rugged deployed aerospace and defense market, has announced the availability of its new enhanced family of Skyquest rugged displays for use on airborne platforms. The new family of Dual LED Backlit Skyquest Displays, available in configurations from 10.4" to 20", provides a new way of delivering Night Vision Goggle (NVG) filtering, and features LED illumination with wider color range, less heat dissipation and less light performance degradation than experienced with older cold cathode tube displays.
Traditional NVG filtering is achieved by fitting a filter to the full display area, which dims the image and adds an undesirable green tint that is visible in both daytime and nighttime operations. With CWCEC's Dual LED Backlit Skyquest Displays, this filter is removed from the front of the screen. Instead, the filtering occurs in the backlight located behind the LCD. A simple toggle switch enables the selection of either white daylight LEDs or green NVG-filtered LEDs integrated in the backlight within the display, providing complete control over the type of light emitted from the screen. The result is a very high brightness, full color image readable in direct sunlight during daytime operations, and a fully filtered display ideal for NVG operations.
"Our new Dual LED backlit Skyquest displays provide a high performance upgrade to older cathode tube technology and a truly unique way of achieving Night Vision Goggle compatibility," said Lynn Bamford, vice president and general manager of Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing. "We are introducing new LED displays across our product range, that can be used by system integrators as standalone displays or as part of an intelligent, centralized Skyquest multi-display video management system."
The new LED displays provide a number of significant advantages over older cathode tube technology. Because they use solid state devices instead of glass tubes, the LED displays are much more rugged as issues associated with the mounting of glass tubes and shock breakage are eliminated. LED displays, which offer highly precise brightness control, enable the system integrator to create different lighting regimes for different application areas.
About Skyquest VMS systems The Skyquest VMS surveillance system uniquely delivers video switching, recording, and display capabilities. It provides extensive, flexible video management capability including touch screen control, multiple video sources on any display, and direct control of recorders all from any of the on-board rugged video displays. The Skyquest VMS is currently fielded with leading law enforcement and military customers throughout the world, including UK Ministry of Defense (MOD), most UK law enforcement operators, and the U.S. Army Air National Guard.

Sharp to Introduce High-Power LED Lighting Devices

Sharp Corporation has developed and will introduce a high-power LED lighting device that features the industry's highest luminous efficacy of 93.3 lm/W (lumens/watt) in the 50W input power class as a light source for applications such as downlighting in retail stores.
LED lighting is rapidly increasing in popularity based on its superior characteristics such as long service life and low energy consumption. In the future, lighting sources for applications such as downlighting and spotlights in retail stores are expected to shift to higher-power LEDs.
This newly developed device, the GW5DME30MR5, incorporates an LED chip with high emission efficiency combined with a proprietary blend of phosphors. As a result, it achieves a luminous efficacy of 93.3 lm/W, the industry's highest in the 50W input power class, at the 3000K color temperature commonly used in downlights for retail stores and with a color rendering index (Ra) of 83. It achieves high energy-saving performance. In addition, proprietary package technology provides for greater color consistency, contributing to higher quality in the design and development of lighting fixtures.
The lineup also includes high-performance models that feature a color rendering index (Ra) of greater than 90 to meet the need for light sources which require higher color rendering properties.