LightTrades™–The Best Products
Launched in 2017

Every year, our team of judges picks the Top 10 Best Products from the too-many trade shows in our industry.  

This year we considered products from LIGHTFAIR, LEDucation, Strategies in Light, the IES Annual Conference, Hong Kong Lighting Fair and London’s LuxLive.  Our 2017 judges were Howard Wolfman of IEE, Paul Pompeo of The Pompeo Group, and Randy Reid, Editor of the EdisonReport. 

Receiving detailed access to much of the technology that powers our industry’s future is one of the most gratifying benefits of being your humble editor.

In no official order, we chose the Top 10 products launched in 2017:

Crestron Zum
At LIGHTFAIR Crestron launched the Zūm, which offers all the essential “building block” devices (wireless dimmers, switches, sensors, etc.) needed for dimming and automation that are thoughtfully engineered to work together wirelessly. Setup only requires a few taps on a keypad, dimmer, or mobile app. Scaling from standalone systems to centralized building-wide control and network management is literally a snap. The Zūm Network Bridge simply snaps onto the Zūm Load Controller to add remote setup, daylighting, time clock scheduling, temporary overrides, and other advanced capabilities.

Eaton WaveLinx
Another LIGHTFAIR favorite was the Eaton WaveLinx Wireless Connected Lighting System is a simple-to-install, cost-effective wireless lighting solution that eliminates the complexity of code compliance and system commissioning, while providing a flexible and reconfigurable wireless topology for future space changes through an intuitive mobile application. The system lays the foundation for future data analytics by providing a connection to the building’s network and collecting data through a small light fixture integrated sensor.

Gooee
At LuxLive, which is probably the best global show to learn about new technology, we witnessed Gooee, the pioneer of Internet-connected lighting technologies.   Gooee allows for asset and people tracking, space utilization, inventory control, proximity services and marketing and environment monitoring.  It is a complete echo system that brings together technologies, software and lighting.   The Gooee lights at LuxLive were able to count the number of people at specific booths real-time. 

OSRAM Opto OSCONIQ P 3737
Another great new product launched at LIGHTFAIR was the OSCONIQ P 3737 (3W)  from OSRAM Opto Semiconductors.  The OSCONIQ P 3737  provides versatile opportunities for high-quality and cost-efficient outdoor lighting. Until now, costly ceramic-based LEDs have been used for professional exterior lighting applications. With this series, OSRAM Opto Semiconductors is offering epoxy-based packages that provide superior lumen/$. In addition, these same LED’s grant uncompromising reliability and performance. The series provides maximum light output with a minimized 3.7 × 3.7 mm package size, enabling very compact luminaire designs with a best-in-class performance of 473 lumens and 164 lm/w. This is achieved by transferring their special automotive experience in combining competitive lead frame technology and high-power chips in the field of high volume products for General Lighting. 

Key Features include:

• CRI 70+, from 3000K to 6500K
• Luminous flux, forward voltage and color binned at 85 °C
• Low thermal resistance < 2 K/W
• Superior reliability and corrosion robustness2)
• Long lifetime of more than 100,000 hours2)
• Lambertian emission pattern fitting well with standard optics

Silvair Bluetooth Mesh Stack
At LuxLive, we learned about Bluetooth Mesh Stack from Silvair—which is different than the standard Bluetooth which we are all familiar.   As the name implies, Bluetooth Mesh creates a mesh network paving the way for smart lighting to work as a platform for digital services.  Commercial lighting is a natural grid for connectivity and Bluetooth mesh offers business the power to intelligently control processes such as lighting, temperature and air conditioning.  Mesh is non-connection-oriented.  Standard Bluetooth Smart is connection-based, which means that before any data exchange is started, a specific connection has to be established. Since this is a fairly long and resource-hungry process, a central device cannot usually maintain connection with more than 8-10 peripherals. Mesh has essentially no limits here, which is why a well-crafted Bluetooth mesh architecture can be scalable to thousands of nodes. EdisonReport predicts that Bluetooth Mesh Stack will have a transformative impact on our industry and become the standard, beating out WiFi, Zwave, and Zigbee.

Echelon InSight™ Cognitive Vision System
At LIGHTFAIR, Echelon launched The Echelon’s InSight™ Cognitive Vision System utilizing artificial intelligence in vision-enabled edge devices, optimized for Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) applications. With InSight, traffic data is collected and processed at the edge of the network instead of on a central server, and uses the Lumewave by Echelon® lighting platform to transmit traffic information, reducing response time and improving reliability.  This architecture enables faster action in response to changing conditions and minimizes network bandwidth requirements.

Seoul Semiconductor WICOP
Also at LIGHTFAIR, Seoul Semiconductor has developed Wafer Integrated Chip on PCB or WICOP which is 10% brighter than the best comparable “3535” and 20% less expensive than the best priced comparable “3535”.  It is completely compatible with existing optics designed for standard “3535” and now available in volume production now with over 10,000 hours of solid LM80 data.

WICOP is also enabling RADICALLY smaller, lighter, and less expensive luminaire designs – not just 3-4%, but 10% at 20% less expensive.

Filamento VALTO Hybrid LED
The VALTO Hybrid LED lamp from Filamento is an HID retrofit that is a combination lamp and fixture.  It offers unparalleled flexibility in that it is compatible with existing HID magnetic ballasts or can bypass the ballast and connect to the mains line voltage (120 or 277.)  Typically the editorial opinion of the EdisonReport is that entire fixtures should be replaced as most LED retrofits fail to work well with existing reflectors and fail to properly dissipate heat.   Because the VALTO is a hybrid, it already has the fixture portion designed in, so the light distribution and heat issues are solved.  If you are in the retrofit market, the VALTO Hybrid LED Lamp is a very strong option. 

LiFi from pureLiFi
LiFi debuted in London at LuxLive, and it is one of our favourite technologies. LiFi will be a complementary source to deliver the Internet—a really fast and dense wireless network opening up thousands of more channels for wireless communications compared to WiFi

pureLiFi builds the LED driver which turns luminaires into access points, where light actually transmits the data. Today, a simple dongle is installed into the laptop USB, but pureLiFi is ready to work with laptop, tablet and desktop makers to have it built in. Co-Founder Professor Harold Haas explained that it took about 15 years for WiFi to be the standard, and he expects devices to be LiFi compatible in about three years.

Radio waves like WiFi pass through walls and ceilings. Light does not. An intruder hacker outside a building can gain access, whereas data communicated via LiFi can only be accessed where the LED light illuminates.  Another huge benefit is to lower congestion. LiFi light waves are 1000 times more plentiful than limited WiFi radio frequencies.

There were some very exciting products launched in 2017 and we can’t wait for 2018, where we are already hearing about key products that will be launched at Frankfurt’s Light & Building in March.