Stratalighting Group

Welcome to the

StrataLighting Group

StrataLighting was formed in early 2009 to provide LED lighting related components and expertise to consumers, designers and various other groups where lighting was playing a more important role that it had in the past. As we all know it was just several years ago when our options for lightbulbs were basically the incandescent varieties and now we have choices of compact flourescent, LED options and halogen. The fact is that nothing compares to LEDs, especially when you consider the growth in that technology.

CFLs are efficient light sources when compared to incandescent, LEDs have caught and passed CFLs in terms of efficiency (lumen per watt) and color. In addition, LEDs have no ill-effects on the environment whereas CFLs contain mercury-oxide which is extremely carcinogenic to humans (life in general). How are these lights being endorsed by the industry and our Government - money!

LEDs on the other hand are completely recyclable and in a year or two will be twice as efficient as CFLs but not at a cheaper price. LEDs are likely to remain expensive as manufacturing techniques are understood and streamlined to produce an efficient method of mass production. Let's hope the same fate that seems to have affected RFIDs does not impact LEDs.

Where are LED's?

My interest in LED lighting isn't as a replacement to existing lighting technologies, although that is important and will continue, I am specifically focused on LED lighting as a means of creating an intelligent light. What do I mean by intelligence? Here are some of the requirement I have defined for calling a light intelligent:

Must Be Dimmable

The light needs to be dimmable frmo 5% through 100% of its capacity, this should be controlled via user configuration settings either through the use of a physical control (slider for example) or from through sensor input.

Must Support Variable Color Output (at least 8 colors + white)

Obviously LEDs can support a multitude of colors, in fact over a million colors can be generated by mixing red, green and blue (RGB). An intelligent light should be able to represent at least 8 (+white) colors but the higher the number the better.

Must Support Light Shows

This simply means that the light should be able to support a few general patterns of lighting like blinking, cross-color fading and brightening are two examples.

Must React to Sensor Inputs

This is obviously a critical aspect of an intelligent light as the sensors allow the light to effectively interact with its environment based on these inputs. There are three sensors that should be supported and they include: light/dark sensor, motion sensor and a sound sensor.

Must be Configurable by user

Providing a simple way to control the intelligence will be a challenge, especially if its done exclusively through switches, sliders and buttons. Software is the only way to configure this type of lighting, switches and buttons can only go so far.

Must be Connected and Addressable

This is a key, in fact it is the major factor in making lighting intelligent since the control would then be handled via software instead of physical controls - that will change everything. Lights being connected simply means that lights are nodes on the internet wrapped in a service layer that controls the light.

Summary

Putting these six things together creates truly intelligent lighting that can benefit the world through better communications and lower power consumption (80% lower). This is what I am doing at StrataLighting, trying to build lights that can act in a traditional way as wel as represent intelligence. Check out the iTV article, it describes how I am using internet based triggers to control the lights.

We are still developing products that meet this definition, getting prototypes to work is one thing producing a consumable product is another. These efforts have led me in a more focused direction in terms of the underlying software that drives this intelligence, I have spent a fair amount of time designing and building the requisite software.

That said, I have created a couple standard LED lighting fixtures that can be purchased, these fixtures do offer a limited amount of customization in terms of the materials and the actual lighting used. See the LED Gallery for some of the history in terns of the development process in pictures.