The popularity of LED lighting has come on leaps and bounds recently as the sophistication of advancing technology makes the use of LEDs much more affordable, effective and attractive. Here in an interview with Electronics, Lumonic, a relatively new company to the lighting industry discusses a new LED lighting solution that put the company and its recent technology innovations in the spotlight as a newcomer with some very bright ideas
Lumonic, a relatively new ‘start-up’ with a high level of hard- and software engineering experience, has developed and built a world-class LED lighting solution, from design concept through R&D to reality, in just ten months, which includes development of a revolutionary Colour Crossfade Engine. Support from EBV Elektronik, with product supply and applications advice helped make possible the company’s ‘ilumo ZOOM LED Spot’.
Created just recently back in August 2011 in the Manchester Science Park, Lumonic has a team set up to design & develop and bring innovative lighting products to market. These are initially under their new ‘ilumo’ brand, and target the global entertainment, architectural and retail/commercial sectors.
As an ‘innovation and market’ led company whose design philosophy is to develop future-proofed LED lighting units, the products incorporate cutting-edge software, LED applied technology and unique physical form characteristics that offer impressive functionality and control combined with modular versatility, optimised ergonomics and aesthetic appeal.
Modular design concept
Their unique modular design concept will enable them to bring additional innovative LED lighting products to different markets in the next few months.
“We think outside the box and involve external, unbiased professionals from our industry to ensure that we design a lighting unit that satisfies the industry’s needs in every way,” said Mike Edwards, Sales & Marketing Director of Lumonic.
Edwards continued: “We aim to continually challenge the status quo and set the industry bench-mark in producing technically superlative, cutting-edge LED lighting products, offering ‘wish list’ levels of functionality and control for professional users in entertainment and architectural lighting.”
Experienced lighting engineers and riggers were involved in the design of the ilumo ZOOM LED Spot. The Lumonic design started with a blank sheet of paper on which they detailed the ‘wish list’ of features that industry experts ideally wanted.
They continually refered back to these experts throughout the development process and knew, even at this stage, that the result would more than exceed the expectations of the experts.”
Design & development team
Underpinning the company is a team whose complementary and individual skills & experience in the LED and allied software & mechanical design arena, is in the process of bringing exciting new products to market.
A key member of the team, Dr James Powell, holds a Doctorate in Laser Physics and has built a formidable reputation over the last ten years, particularly in the Entertainment LED Lighting Industry.
James has developed control systems for a diverse range of uses from entertainment lasers to high-end medical and military applications. And it is his ability to combine LED technology, electronics and software that has largely enabled the creation of some of the most iconic lighting products to hit the LED Entertainment/Live Event market in recent years.
Other key members of the team, including Ian Rothwell and Rich Nichols have responsibilities for software design, instrument & control engineering, mechanical engineering, industrial product design and skills in both digital & analogue hardware domains.
Leading light development
Development of the ilumo ZOOM LED Spot has been a complete success. The ilumo is a high power, high efficiency LED soft edged Spot with full colour mixing optics and remote motorised zoom featuring 12 High Brightness Osram LEDs controlled by market leading software. It provides an ideal compact solution for high power spot & wash lighting for touring, television and theatre applications.
The device satisfies the needs of the professional user, with unparalleled levels of functionality and control, combining remote adjustable beam angle that maintains optical efficiency for spot & wash colour effects; innovative software with in-built effects engine, colour pallet and correction and a quick-choice matrix of ‘personality’ to make set-up quick and easy.
The yoke is ergonomically designed and balanced for ease of use and the colour LCD display can be ‘flipped’ to ensure control of visibility at whatever angle the unit may be clamped.
The ilumo range of high power LED light units for professional users features a powerful colour control engine with features never before seen in the industry. In addition to offering the end-user the de facto standard DMX channels to control the individual LED colours within the fixture, the ilumo spot family features a calibrated colour engine based on the industry standard CIE x y colour co-ordinate system. This allows the end-user to precisely select a required colour by sending CIE co-ordinates to the fixture through DMX channels.
Within the development of the ilumo ZOOM LED Spot, the Team has also been working on trying to solve a significant problem identified in one of the industry experts’ wish lists – that of how to improve the unattractive handling of colour palettes by colour engines.
The Team has now successfully achieved its goal and developed a unique solution and ‘industry first’ in how the ilumo colour engine handles colour palettes. The Patent for this discovery has now been applied for and the ‘breakthrough within a breakthrough’ now has a name – the COLOUR CROSSFADE ENGINE.
To briefly explain how it works; it is common in LED fixtures to define a palette of fixed colours that are assigned to one or more control channels. Although this allows easy colour selection there is an inherent problem when changing between colours in the palette.
As a control desk fades from one colour in the palette to another, all intermediate colours in the palette will be outputted by the LED fixture during the fade, which has been an unavoidable and very undesirable effect.
The innovative palette engine now allows the user to select ‘current’ and ‘next’ colours using separate control channels. These colour selections can be from the same or different palettes defined within the fixture.
A ‘transition’ channel then allows a virtually seamless fade between the two colours, with the transition being calculated in real time by the colour engine. For the ilumo ZOOM LED Spot, which already has plenty of key features and benefits, the newly incorporated COLOUR CROSSFADE ENGINE is the icing on the cake!
EBV Elektronik provides light support and industry expertise
Projects such as this invariably require specialist external support, for example with component supply and applications advice. EBV Elektronik was chosen to provide much of that support because of its significant expertise and experience in LEDs and their broad ranging applications.
EBV’s help in selecting the best components for the application was invaluable, and it was able to provide comprehensive support at all stages of Lumonic’s supply chain, starting with in-depth application know-how via value-added services up to logistics and full supply-chain management solutions, if and when required.
“EBV is excited to support such a visionary company and pleased to see the deserved results of their engineering efforts. As well as supporting established companies, we strive to support young and growing companies as part of their virtual team to advise best on component selection and semiconductor logistics,” commented Richard Hurst, Vertical Segment Manager – Lighting, EBV Elektronik.
EBV has also demonstrated particular willingness to support companies, both large and small, who are developing lighting products and controls. Arguably, it is the leading specialist for optoelectronics in EMEA semiconductor distribution and it is certainly the first company to provide customers all over Europe with access to a new light laboratory.
In the EBVLightLab at its headquarters in Poing, Munich, the EBVLightSpeed team offers customers the opportunity to perform radiometric and photometric measurements across the entire light chain; from individual LEDs or LED modules, through comparative measurements of light sources, e.g. light bulbs versus CFL or LED solutions, right up to the complete measurement of entire luminaires.
This gives all companies access to exclusive, high-precision measuring technologies, that otherwise might have struggled to do so.
First order and spot appearance
Sonoss, a French company based in Lille has specialised in providing services to the Entertainment & Events market since 1984, particularly TV, Theatre and Live Stage events. With its experienced team of professionals, Sonoss sells and hires major brands within its chosen market, which include Colombus McKinnon USA, ChamSys UK and Kinesys.
Five years ago, Sonoss became a shareholder and partner in Luminex, a Belgian company specialising in lighting networking solutions, which is now rapidly becoming a global business.
With more than eight years involvement with LED lighting, Sonoss made a positive decision in August 2011 to add design input into Lumonic’s ilumo project to bring the new and innovative ilumo ZOOM LED Spot to the European market place, with a first order for 500 units.
The first ilumo ZOOM LED Spot appearance as a production unit was at the Prolight + Sound 2012 Exhibition in Frankfurt between March 21 and 24, 2012, where its impact was significant and its success assured.
Looking to the future
The key members of the Lumonic team have clearly developed a winner in their range of ilumo LED products. The immediate success of their unique concept will allow them to bring additional innovative LED lighting products to both the entertainment and architectural markets in the next few months and beyond. Already, the ilumo is being updated with a ‘world first’ Colour Match feature.
The company’s ethos is summed up simply as: “Experience has taught us to think outside the box and continually challenge the status quo.”
Lumonic
