The second day of my Frankfurt trip finished with some further food for thought. I had not been to Frankfurt since 2018, missed 20 and 22 because of Covid, so it is interesting to see the leap forward that manufacturers have made since then.

Yesterday I mentioned the big push towards greater sustainability in regards to the environment with TM66 features such as recycling, recyclable, repairable, interchangeable and modularity very much in focus for many manufacturers. Today I would like to highlight another trend that struck me that of the lighting control revolution.

It seems now that many lighting manufacturers are embracing the wireless control technology with quite a number of manufacturers now developing their own Bluetooth or Wi-Fi controls or adopting a certain technology under their own brand umbrella. It looks like Casambi is starting to get serious competition. One of the control systems currently being considered or already embraced by a number of manufacturers is the Matter control technology from Google. Yes, there you have it, the big data companies are entering our playground. We already had the Amazon’s Alexa’s, Apple’s Siri, Samsungs’ Smart Things and Google’s voice applications. Now they are physically entering the “our” space wireless lighting (and much more) control systems. Some manufacturers are seriously considering it but I suspect that parting with your data in the process may create some understandable reluctancy… 

I was also given a preview of the latest Summa control system. This latest and revolutionary colour control technology is driven by bright minds with Eldoled and Xicato backgrounds. This latest WiFi wireless control system works in combination with the latest White LED technology from Lumileds to allow very precise colour temperature control. Gone are the days where you specify a colour temperature and are stuck with it on installation with no colour correction possible. We all know that at times the colour temperature (even with excellent CRI) will give different visual impressions when it interact with certain colour finishes. Now this Summa technology allows you to adjust the colour temperature sideways along the black body locus or (and here comes the kicker) up or downwards from the black body line. This is achieved by using RGBW LED’s but not your traditional RGBW LEDS, these are specific white LEDS of high CRI with a hint of R, G or B. In other words, we could call it W-R, W-G and W-B, now a commercially available product from Lumileds. 

This triangulation allows you to precisely adjust the colour temperature by simply “dimming” the colour up or down until it visually looks good. Life made easy for the lighting designer, not only can we now adjust the intensity but now also the colour appearance…rest for the lighting manufacturers to adopt this White RGB LEDS to be adapted as a standard option in the light fittings….  

Little footnote: Is this not making the lighting designer’s life too easy? You could argue that you now don’t have to worry when designing as you can adjust it later on…? It sort of erodes a lighting designers skill set of being able to anticipate and select the exact right lighting systems, basically pushing that responsibility and costs to the end user / client…thoughts?