LED Luminaries

Linear's LT3596 drives up to 30 LEDs in a display

By Alun Williams - Electronics Weekly.com on July 30, 2010 8:36 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Linear Technology has a 60V, 1MHz step-down DC/DC converter which is designed to drive up to 30 LEDs in a display, writes Richard Wilson.

From a 48V input, the LT3596 can drive up to three strings of LEDs, each with up to ten 100mA LEDs in series, delivering efficiencies of over 90%.

Continue reading Linear's LT3596 drives up to 30 LEDs in a display.

LED driver integrates PFC and isolated step-down AC-DC power conversion

By Alun Williams - Electronics Weekly.com on July 29, 2010 6:32 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

ON Semiconductor has an LED driver that integrates power factor correction (PFC) and isolated step-down AC-DC power conversion in a single stage, writes Richard Wilson.

Intended for LED-based street lighting and architectural lighting applications of between 40W and 150W, the NCL30001 is designed to operate in continuous conduction mode (CCM) and can be configured as either a constant current or fixed output voltage driver.

There is an adjustable operating frequency of 20 kHz to 250 kHz and a multi-function latch-off pin able to implement an overtemperature shutdown circuit.

Another feature is a high voltage start-up circuit, voltage feed forward which is designed to improve loop response.

Continue reading LED driver integrates PFC and isolated step-down AC-DC power conversion.

University of Strathclyde spinout to exploit micro-LED arrays

By Alun Williams - Electronics Weekly.com on July 28, 2010 6:26 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

The University of Strathclyde has spun out a company to exploit micro-LED arrays developed at its Institute of Photonics.

mLED, as it will be known, has kicked off with a £150,000 round led by Braveheart Investment Group, investing via both the Strathclyde Innovation Fund and the Alpha EIS Fund.

Scottish Enterprise's Scottish Seed Fund also participated.

"This is a very exciting international area of technology but there are only a few companies in the world which have recognised the opportunity and demonstrated capability in this area," said mLED CEO Dr Jim Bonar.

Continue reading University of Strathclyde spinout to exploit micro-LED arrays.

Bridgelux adds neutral white LEDs - up to 3,400 lm

By Alun Williams - Electronics Weekly.com on June 28, 2010 8:27 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Bridgelux has introduced neutral white versions of its ES and RS multi-die lighting LEDs.

Set at a colour temperature of 4,100K, ES devices offer 400, 800 and 1,200 lm.

"These new products deliver an increase of more than 40% in energy efficiency over previous neutral white product generations while reducing the price per lumen," claimed the firm.

The 4,100K RS device delivers 3,400 lm, expanding the existing 3,100 lm warm white and 4,500 lm cool white RS range.

Steve Bush

Life cycle and energy costs of street lighting

By Alun Williams - Electronics Weekly.com on June 24, 2010 1:40 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

changes in efficiency of lighting x 200.jpg

By Steve Bush (click on image to expand)

The city of Pittsburgh is replacing all of its streetlights, and a friend drew my attention to a report from the University of Pittsburgh on life cycle and energy costs of street lighting, including with LEDs.

The report is a year old now, but still valid as it assumes efficiencies of up to 90 lm/W for lighting LEDs - still a reasonable figure.

It concludes that LED lighting is the best, but induction lighting - where induction fields energise a gas mixture in a sealed glass cell - comes a close second.

Continue reading Life cycle and energy costs of street lighting.

Sharp starts second LED fab this year

By Alun Williams - Electronics Weekly.com on June 24, 2010 11:31 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Sharp will start mass producing blue LED chips at its plant in Fukuyama City during 2010, following a €137m investment, writes Steve Bush.

"Growth in demand for LED backlights for LCD TVs and LED lighting fixtures has led to a rapid increase in the demand for blue LED chips," said the firm.

Sharp only began the production of blue LED die, the chips inside white LEDs, at its plant in Mihara City this January.

XMOS powers LED cube art

By Alun Williams - Electronics Weekly.com on June 18, 2010 2:32 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Time for some culture. Check out this "Swarm Light" art installation, based on the dynamic display of LED cubes, courtsesy of some XMOS processors.

The light sculpture, by rAndom International, is being displayed at Design Miami/Art Basel. Each of the three cubes consists of 1000 LED modules, each containing three LEDs, organized in a 3D grid measuring 81 x 81 x 81cm.

Continue reading XMOS powers LED cube art.

Piccolo microcontroller DC/DC LED dev kit

By Alun Williams - Electronics Weekly.com on June 15, 2010 2:11 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Texas Instruments has introduced the TMS320C2000 Piccolo microcontroller DC/DC LED developer's kit, writes Technology Editor, Steve Bush.

The LED controller kit will allow lighting system designers to incorporate dimming, colour tone adjustment, power line communication and fault detection.

Continue reading Piccolo microcontroller DC/DC LED dev kit.

Super-bright LED Bazooka

By Alun Williams - Electronics Weekly.com on June 10, 2010 11:27 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

This one caught my eye recently. And if the real thing caught your eye, you would be blinded. An LED Bazooka torch, comprising 500 5mm super-bright white LEDs... Just 50 Watt power consumption at full power!

Thanks to Techeblog for flagging this one.

Diodes LED driver switches to tight current control

By Alun Williams - Electronics Weekly.com on June 7, 2010 4:24 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Diodes has employed new forms of current control in its latest LED driver ICs which it said is designed to increase the reliability of high brightness lamps, writes Richard Wilson.

The ZXLD1370 LED driver controller operates in buck, boost and buck-boost topologies.

Continue reading Diodes LED driver switches to tight current control.

LED keyboard types the light fantastic

By Alun Williams - Electronics Weekly.com on May 19, 2010 11:43 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Errm. Not sure about this one...

I spotted this on the ThinkGeek website - the Luxeed Dynamic Pixel LED Keyboard.

According to the website:

With 430 LEDs the Luxeed is capable of individually lighting each key in your choice of color. What's more it can do some amazing tricks like an animated rainbow across all the keys, or make each key light when you press it.

Apparently, the U5 model requires no driver software and works with any OS. All the controls for setting the color of keys, modes and storing key presets are part of the hardware.

It will set you back around $150. If you are tempted, check out the video of the keyboard in action:

Continue reading LED keyboard types the light fantastic.

The missing (wireless) link for LED lighting

By Alun Williams - Electronics Weekly.com on May 17, 2010 5:19 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Guest columnist Stephen Page, v-p engineering at Cyan believes it is time to consider the benefits of adding wireless control to LED lighting fixtures.

He begins:

Rising energy costs and government funded green initiatives are driving operators of public lighting systems to look to new technologies.

The move to LED technology will require a redesign of a lighting fixture. At this redesign stage, for a very small incremental cost it is also possible to add wireless control to a lighting fixture.

Read the full article >>

LED lighting circuit design idea

By Alun Williams - Electronics Weekly.com on May 13, 2010 12:01 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

One for designers seeking ciruit inspiration, maybe. We have uploadeed an LED-related Circuit Design idea to the site - Create LED-lighting patterns without a controller

This Design Idea describes a simple LED-lighting-effects circuit comprising only five chips and costing only a few dollars. The goal is to create hundreds of patterns with a few timers and logic gates.

The circuit design was created by Jeff Tregre of www.BuildingUltimateModels.com

He begins:

Continue reading LED lighting circuit design idea .

LED vs fluorescent tubes - survey

By Alun Williams - Electronics Weekly.com on May 6, 2010 1:57 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Check out the results of a recent LED-related survey...

"We recently asked our blog readers and other industry professionals to participate in a short survey on LED vs fluorescent tubes. The survey was part of our article, "Are LED Fluorescent Tubes Ready for Prime Time?" We wanted to find out if LEDs are becoming the standard replacement for fluorescent tubes."

The three questions asked by SoftwareAdvice.com were:

Continue reading LED vs fluorescent tubes - survey.

Sharp adds to DoubleDome high CRI lighting LEDs

By Alun Williams - Electronics Weekly.com on May 5, 2010 1:19 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Additions to the DoubleDome series of lighting LEDs from Sharp incorporate three white light diodes and achieve a colour rendering index (CRI) of 85, writes Technology Editor Steve Bush.

The light conversion layer is based on a two-phase production procedure.

Continue reading Sharp adds to DoubleDome high CRI lighting LEDs.

LED display comes to Vodka bottles

By Alun Williams - Electronics Weekly.com on April 26, 2010 8:43 AM | 2 Comments | No TrackBacks

We've had LEDs in Samsung fridges and now Medea Vodka bottles feature a customisable blue LED scrolling display...

I've already blogged about a tongue-in-cheek campaign to hack this display, on Gadget Freak, but the original post from Hackaday is worth highlighting again on LED Luminaries. Check out the official instructional video for programming the display.

LEDs take over Frankfurt

By Gordon Routledge on April 22, 2010 5:15 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Last week I attended the Light + Building trade show in Frankfurt and found myself thinking that it should be renamed the LED + Building show.

LEDs were everywhere. It was actually a struggle to find a stand without LED products at the show, although in many cases they'd been simply shoehorned in to existing product lines. It's clear that the larger, market setting OEMs are starting to innovate and the vast amount of their R&D activity is now geared towards LED products. I've picked out a few key themes and trends.

All street lighting manufacturers had an LED solution at the show. A number of optics providers have dedicated street lighting optics kits - in short it's very easy to design and make an LED street lighting solution. I discussed the transition of HID to LED with a contact within Philips - they predict that the Cosmopolis HID lamp has a lead in the market for at most the next 5 years, so what they are saying is they expect the majority of new street lights to be based on LED within 5 years.

Continue reading LEDs take over Frankfurt.

LED-lighting systems with RF control

By Alun Williams - Electronics Weekly.com on April 22, 2010 2:16 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

An interesting feature article has been loaded on the site - see LED-lighting systems with RF control require range of network types

The article originally appeared on EDN and is written by Mike Claassen of Texas Instruments. It begins:

Continue reading LED-lighting systems with RF control.

Seoul aims for 150 lm/W mains LEDs

By Alun Williams - Electronics Weekly.com on April 19, 2010 8:53 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Seoul Semiconductor will be mass producing 150 lm/W mains voltage 'Acriche' LEDs by the end of the year, claims the firm.

It is putting 100 lm/W devices into production this month, writes Steve Bush.

Continue reading Seoul aims for 150 lm/W mains LEDs.

Cree announces XLamp XM lighting-class LED

By Alun Williams - Electronics Weekly.com on April 16, 2010 3:50 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Cree has announced another lighting-class LED, the XLamp XM.

"This single chip LED delivers 160 lm/W at 350mA" claimed the firm. "The LED also delivers 750 lm at 2A, which is equivalent to the light output of a 60W incandescent light bulb at less than 7W."

160 lm/W is expected from cool white variants, said Cree, which will also produce 160 lm at 350mA.

Continue reading Cree announces XLamp XM lighting-class LED.

LED Luminaries

LED industry insiders, from Dialight, Carclo and Farnell, join the Electronics Weekly team to share their
insights on the issues shaping the development of LED technology in general and LED lighting in particular.