Bright and Shiny LEDs!

Guest Post by Ginger Wilson

First, I’d just like to say that I’m not an electrician, nor do I play one on TV. But as a graphic designer, I’m attracted to all things bright and shiny. And when I heard that Philips Color Kinetics was presenting a hands-on pre-convention workshop on LEDs, I had to take a look.

Their room was set up with four boards with working samples of LED installations. After the Philips staff talked about the products, we got to see how things work up close. Eden and Scott, the workshop leaders from Philips, were nice enough to walk me through one of the boards, and I’m happy to say that bright and shiny can also be practical and energy-efficient…and really, really cool.

The first half of the board was set up with white lights. The eW Profile Powercore and Cove Powercore have white LEDs at the temperature you select. The lights come right on with no warmup time when you flip the switch, and there’s no annoying flicker. They can be strung together to light large areas or installed one-by-one to provide task lighting. That’s fun, but a white light is a white light.

So we moved on to the iW Cove Powercore. With this fixture, you can mix the cool and warm white lights to create the color temperature you want. It’s dimmable, too. Even better, when it’s attached to the iW Scene Controller, you can save different settings and then bring them back by just touching a button. You don’t realize how much of a difference choosing the right white temperature makes until the “shades” are right in front of you.

On the other side of the table were the lights that had attracted me in the first place: the ColorBlast Powercore. Big, bright RGB LEDs that can light interiors and exteriors and when hooked up to the ColorDial Pro, are programmable so you can save several light shows and play them again later by touching a button.

Finally, the ColorGraze Powercore uses the same RGB colors but in 12-inch sections so you can put them together to color wash a wall. They had a couple of sections hooked up to an iPlayer 3, which allows you to create light shows. Eden told me that Philips is working on lighting a bridge using the ColorGraze Powercore and the iPlayer 3. Stringing the lights together and programming the iPlayer, she said that Philips is going to “make the bridge dance.”

Now that you know how much I love the bright and shiny, you can understand how the notion that itty bitty light bulbs can make a bridge look like it’s dancing fills me with joy.

The boards used in the workshop are on display at Philips booth at the NECA Show. Come see the bright and shiny for yourself!