Welcome to the LEDs Magazine News & Insights newsletter for Nov. 10, 2021. It’s the time of really short days. The calendar conspires with the artificially created dates for daylight savings time, and on the Eastern edge of a time zone darkness falls before 5:00 PM. I sure would like to see daylight savings time remain in effect year around. It would make writing these newsletter columns a bit easier. Somehow I don’t find it difficult to sleep some through morning sun. But I digress.
What I’m really saying above is that there really isn’t a lot happening in the LED and solid-state lighting (SSL) sectors as the calendar speeds towards Thanksgiving. We have plenty to do in getting the issues out. The annual Industry Guide published as the Nov/Dev issue is in fact just out. And we are fast at work on content for the Jan/Feb issue.
I will call your attention to the column that I wrote for the Industry Guide issue. And believe me that the timing is completely ironic as we write issue content well before the publication date. My subject in this column last week was the supply chain. The issue column also focused on the supply chain and the conclusions stand in contrast a bit. Of course I heard from a few experts after I wrote the issue column and before I wrote the newsletter intro. I’m as prone as anyone to the psychological impact of recency. But boy, this supply chain issue remains a mess and the exact cause a mystery.
In news this week, we do have another packaged LED upgrade from Lumileds. The company has a new version of the Luxeon 5050 LED in the 5050 HE. The efficacy gain is slight but might help quicken the pace to return on investment (ROI) for product developers offering SSL products.
Also in that news article we have a new tiny driver IC from Cuvée Systems, a company that is closely tied to LED maker Luminus. Those companies supply their products paired together in many cases. And here the driver IC can be supplied with a COB LED for compact applications such as downlights and the pair carry a five-year warranty.
In the lighting for health and wellbeing area, we had some new research from Seoul Semiconductor regarding the SunLike LED family. Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital located at Harvard University found productivity and ambient benefits among students working under the uniform SunLike spectra. The results did lead me to look back at the article I wrote on a few of the Strategies in Light presentations. Professor Kevin Houser of Oregon State University said that spectra and light level were far more important than tunability in SSL for day workers.
I should also tell you that we decided to leave the Strategies in Light archives available a bit longer. You can still register and fully access the content.
In closing, I will challenge you to tell me off the top of your head exactly what a vivarium is. I had to look it up. It’s an unusual application for LEDs. But the packaged LED story featuring Lumileds that I mentioned previously had a brief note about Seoul SunLike LEDs in a vivarium. Have a look.
Also I have a UV-C LED story I will discuss in more detail in tomorrow’s newsletter column. I only mention it here because we have a webcast coming on Nov. 18 in which we will learn more about taking UV measurements. Register to hear from experts at Intertek and Vektrex.
You will find many more stories of interest in the body of today’s newsletter. And always feel free to contact me to discuss content we post or to pitch a contributed article.
- Maury Wright, (858) 208-9442, [email protected]