Making a Start with Calibrated LED Lighting

Date: 25/6/2010

- Calibrated Light Starter Kit fully helps fill the knowledge gap and demonstrates a progressive approach to using LED clusters in lighting applications

Nowadays most types of lamps require specialized power electronics. Ismosys partner Inverto BV  has 15 years of experience in the development of lighting lamp ballasts and lamp drivers, including research and development in advanced fluorescent lamp ballasts, energy saving lamps, UV lamp ballasts, inductive lamp ballasts, HID ballasts, UHP ballasts, automotive lamp ballasts and professional studio lighting ballasts.

Today, all lighting companies are rushing towards LED lighting, encouraged by governmental initiatives and concerns for the environment but they are not finding it an easy transition: In many cases these companies simply don’t have the required colour rendering, colour and brightness reproduction, power supply, thermal characteristic, EMC, safety, optic or light control expertise.

The Calibrated Light starter kit, featured in the Ismosys on-line store, has been is specifically designed by Inverto BV to streamline the learning process. The kit comes pre-loaded with an application that fully demonstrates a really progressive approach to using LED clusters in lighting applications.  Based around Microchip’s PIC24HJ16GP304  high-performance 16-bit MCU, which offers ample processing power to drive Inverto’s cluster of 16 high efficiency surface mount LEDs in large-scale lighting applications, the kit also includes a PIC18F14K50 to provide a USB interface and extra non-volatile memory, together with a temperature sensor, control buttons and an LCD display. .

 

Compared to conventional white LEDs, which do not have the ability change colour temperature and are generally limited to warm white or cold white, Inverto’s RGW LED cluster is able to seamlessly change the colour temperature of its output, easily mimicking the soft warmth of candle light, the blue note of a halogen bulb, sunlight or moonlight.  In addition to fully demonstrating this colour changing technology the Calibrated Light starter kit also demonstrates how the Inverto approach eliminates the special, narrow light output and tight colour binning required by conventional white LED-based ambient lighting solutions. The company’s proprietary and groundbreaking RGW (Red, Green and White) LED cluster is driven by a set of constant current drivers: The application pre-installed in the E² memory of the PIC24H loads the individual characteristics of all LED junctions, applies ‘colour’ algorithms to these values and converts them into the digital PWM values used for driving each individual junction, so ensuring that every LED in the cluster lights up with exactly the same brightness and colour rendering.

The Calibrated Light starter kit is ready to use out of the box, and includes a starter PCB, AC adapter, a CD with software and manual and Microchip’s ergonomic and easy to use programming hardware and software.