Archives

“Using Bluetooth control, we were able to simplify the lighting installation instantly, by providing only non-dimmable power to the lighting track. By reducing the amount of equipment and the extent of cabling we saved over £12,000 on a conventional lighting control system.” – Peter Fordham, DHA Designs

In celebration of Queen Elizabeth’s 60-year reign, Westminster Abbey has opened a new gallery in a space that has not seen visitors for over 700 years. The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Gallery contains more than 300 works highlighting the over 1000-year history of the Abbey and the United Kingdom.

Lighting the gallery was a non-trivial task. Xicato’s Artist Series was the clear choice for light quality, but the Abbey posed real challenges for the lighting control system. Drilling holes in the historic structure for wiring was unacceptable and the thick stone walls and heavy wooden beams made for a difficult wireless environment. Natural light streamed in through stained glass and clear panes, but ancient artwork had to be preserved. Lighting had to respond to both ambient light and occupancy, but also had to be controlled from a single point. Choosing Xicato’s Bluetooth Smart Controls and Control Software solutions became the clear and successful solution.

A partnership between two of the lighting industry’s most forward thinking companies, High Technology Lighting and Harvard, has led to the successful installation of an energy saving and CO2 reducing solution at the recently opened first direct Arena in Leeds. Over 300 fixed and adjustable downlights and track spotlights were installed in the arena, saving approximately 80% of energy compared to a conventional lighting solution. The combined solution incorporates Harvard’s DALI driver, part of the energy saving CoolLED range, placed inside High Technology Lighting’s Quartet fittings.

Both High Technology Lighting and Harvard are well known for their energy saving products. High Technology Lighting’s Quartet range incorporates Xicato’s market leading LED technology, renowned for its sustainable credentials. The company has also recently installed SolidWorks, a 3D software tool allowing product designers to create, simulate, publish, and manage data, to establish to Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) and Environment Product Declarations (EPD) for each product it creates.

Thomas Holgeth, joint managing director of High Technology Lighting said, “As a company we have a commitment to being energy efficient and sustainable. Sustainability is no longer simply about ensuring products are energy efficient when in use, but also about the components and processes used in manufacturing them. With our partners we have developed a sustainable strategy, as part of our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and our commitment to The Circular Economy.”

The Huntington Library, along with associated Art Collections and Botanical Gardens was founded by industrialist and philanthropist Henry E. Huntington in 1919 in San Marino, California. The Huntington, as it is known, is one of the largest and most complete research libraries in the United States in its fields of specialization, containing a substantial collection of rare books and manuscripts, concentrated in the fields of British and American history, literature, art, and the history of science. Spanning from the 11th century to the present, the library’s holdings contain 7 million items, over 400,000 rare books, and over a million photographs and prints.

Highlights include one of 11 vellum copies of the Gutenberg Bible known to exist, the Ellesmere manuscript of Chaucer ca. 1410, letters and manuscripts by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Abraham Lincoln, as well as an extensive research collection focused on the history of the American West.

In 2013, a renovation was undertaken for the Main Exhibition Hall, a space that first opened in 1920. The goal was to reflecting the building’s historic grandeur, while implementing an updated setting in which to display and protect the myriad of treasures. An important element in the restoration were three dramatic reproduction chandeliers which were to be custom-built and equipped with state-of-the-art LED lighting, to evoke the space as it looked in Henry Huntington’s day. Since the original chandeliers were not available, the plan was set to make use of archival photographs in order to custom design and re-cast nearly exact copies of the originals. With so much time and effort required for that effort, it was impractical to custom design light engines, of any type, to provide illumination from inside the chandeliers. A ready-to-integrate solution was required.

A major food retailer in Calgary, Co-Op, called on Senso Lighting to design a lighting solution for their produce department. The retailer required a solution that would provide greater energy efficiency and high-quality light on a track system with dimming capability. They have a building control system for all of their lights and they wanted to make sure, if needed, they could dim the lighting.

Leading the lighting project was Rolf Hurbin, President of Senso Lighting, an accomplished lighting professional. In lighting produce, it is important to light properly the wide variety of colors. If using 3,500K LED modules the red is lost, with 2,700K there is too much red and all of the whites and greens are lost, but with 3,000K LED modules there is a good mix of all the colors that can be seen. At a tradeshow earlier in the year, Hurbin learned that LED module manufacturer, Xicato, had invented a new form of light that has a higher color gamut index over most other light sources. This new light, called the Vibrant Series, enables the viewers to see colors, hues and tones, particularly for whites, reds and blues, that are real, but simply aren’t visible under halogen light. Hurbin determined that the new technology in Xicato’s Vibrant Series LED module would provide the best overall look enabling the retailer with a wide range of good color for its merchandise and to meet all of their lighting requirements.

Senso compiled the specs from the retailer and created a LED lighting mock-up. The specs included lighting at 3,500K for the fish, 2,700K for the bread and 3,000K for meat and produce. Senso displayed all the products with the original specs, and then compared all of them with its track-system luminaire, which included a 3,000K Xicato Vibrant Series LED module. After all of the comparisons, the unanimous feedback was that the Xicato Vibrant LED module made everything look much fresher than the other LED modules. The mock-up clearly showed that the Xicato Vibrant LED module does the best job not just for the produce, but for all of the merchandise in the store. While Senso was contracted to light only the fresh produce, the decision was made that all of the retailer’s future lighting projects will use the Xicato Vibrant LED module.

After the lighting installation was complete and due to the positive feedback from its customers and the retailer, Senso Lighting was hired to light the bread, fish, meat, and the rest of their merchandise at that store location with the Xicato Vibrant LED module. Also, because the retailer was very happy with the vibrant color and the lighting effect at that location, Senso Lighting is now re-lighting essentially all of its over 20 store locations.

The Museum in the Park is set in Stratford Park in the center of Stroud, Gloucestershire in the UK. Like many museums in the country, it uses tungsten halogen fittings to light its exhibition spaces. As a result, even with good tungsten halogen color rendering, the 296 lamps, each using 50W, were a constant thermal, energy and maintenance issue for the museum. Based on the poor experience with its current halogen lighting solution, the museum curator and staff were eager to find other lighting options. The right solution would first provide a high-quality light to properly illuminate the collection, and enable energy savings, while reducing maintenance time and costs.

In general, the museum and gallery curators are extremely well informed about the value of the correct light and lighting effect within their spaces. Unfortunately, curators increasingly have to manage a complex mix of cost and environmental issues that impact their very limited budgets. With so much on their plates, some naïveté has emerged

when it comes to LED lighting solutions which resulted in the early adoption of retro LED lamps. These solutions nearly always end in disappointment and an unwelcomed compromise in light quality.

Here, the challenge exists in that the museum has a very eclectic mix of spaces. The ideal solution for this situation includes high-quality LED light on a track mounted to the existing system that is dimmable and offers a range of changeable beam angles. To develop this LED lighting solution, High Technology Lighting leveraged its long-time relationship with LED module manufacturer, Xicato. Since 2008, High Technology Lighting has developed an extensive range of spot lights and accessories with Xicato’s Artist Series LED modules. Ultimately, High Technology Lighting’s UK range of Quartet LED spot lights with Xicato’s XSM were chosen for this project.

Once the project was completed, feedback was extremely positive and additional lighting projects are being planned due to this success. Kevin Ward, the museum’s development manager, said, “The LED spot lights have made visible new details in objects and paintings that were previously hidden. We have a wonderful large painting at the top of the mansion main stairs of a view across Stroud from Rodborough that was painted around 1848. With the new LED lighting, the sky now looks blue and the clouds are white without an orange tinge, and we even noticed that one of the Victorian ladies had a lovely green sun umbrella─not black as previously thought.”

With careful attention, it’s possible to select the right lighting solution providing high-quality light and energy savings and longevity. It’s no longer necessary to sacrifice one for the other. It’s clear from the experience at Museum in the Park that quality light can provide everyone with new perspectives.

Following a $135 million renovation that united three disparate buildings into one seamless museum, the Yale University Art Gallery opened to the public. Steven Hefferan of Hefferan Partnership Lighting Design (Boulder, Colo.) managed the lighting for 70,000 square feet of gallery space, and the illumination for more than 4,000 works of art in the galleries.

To facilitate the switch from incumbent halogen lighting, Hefferan needed to educate the curators, conservators, and staff from Yale’s different departments on the aspects of LEDs, including the specifics of color temperature and color rendering. For museums and galleries, quality of light and the experience of viewing the artwork are paramount. Hefferan teamed with luminaire manufacturer Lighting Services Inc, (LSI) ─ using Xicato’s Artist Series™ modules ─ to light the artwork in the gallery settings in a variety of ways, allowing the staff to experience firsthand the various LED lamp types. He was able to demonstrate how LED lighting displays truer colors, especially for reds and blues. As a result, the Yale departments chose to move in the direction of LEDs with color temperature of 3000K.

With almost a year allotted to install the galleries and select luminaires before the grand opening, the project greatly benefited from not having to specify exact track-mounted fixtures before the construction. This enabled Hefferan to choose from the latest in LED technology, which he was able to do by employing LSI’s luminaires equipped with Xicato modules for the gallery’s track lighting applications. Ultimately, Hefferan and the museum staff adopted a hybrid approach, combining the use of MR16 halogen lights and Xicato LED modules. LSI provided its museum-grade track lighting systems – surface, pendant, and flangeless profiles.

How do you plan, provision, program and verify the control of 220 networked lights from scratch in 2 days? Xicato XIM modules, Smart Controls, and Control Software proved to be the answer for this complex installation.

Greg Fukushima of GiCor Home Technologies worked with electrical contractor James Robinson of Wave Technical to design and implement a sophisticated, multi-application control system. Greg designed a complex, multi-vendor system.

Over a two-month period, they worked to implement a DALI system but were unable to get the system to function properly. After consulting with the luminaire provider, Senso, they contacted Xicato and started working with Xicato’s Bluetooth Control Solution.

“Thank you for all the great work and support with programming the lights at the Smed residence. In 2 days you programmed the lights via Bluetooth, after we had spent two months trying unsuccessfully to get the fixtures working using Dali and Control4. Plus, you programmed all the fixtures to a safe temperature! (this was my biggest concern).” James Robinson with Wave Technical Ltd.

For the full case study, click here.

“It was essential for the final result to work wirelessly and dynamically with the lighting design during commissioning.”
– Nikolaj Birkelund, Lighting Designer, Fortheloveoflight
The requirements set forth by Fortheloveoflight were clear: Great lighting and a lighting control system that could provide individual light control
with deep, smooth dimming that was simple to set up and simple to use. Xicato’s XIM and Bluetooth smart controls and software were key to realizing the designer’s vision. That XIM has integrated beacons made the choice of Xicato a clear winner.

The nation’s only complete collection of presidential portraits outside the White House, the Presidential Portrait Gallery lies at the heart of the National Portrait Gallery’s mission to tell the American story through the individuals who have shaped it.

In June 2017, the Smithsonian Presidential Portrait Gallery began deploying Xicato GalaXi to control both Xicato XIM and 3^rd party light sources in luminaires by Lighting Services Inc. (LSI). Xicato’s Smart Controls and interoperability with the Medialon Building Management System were critical to the project’s success.

Xicato’s XID was an essential control in the project. It is a compact, DC driver that delivers smooth, flicker-free dimming to 0.1% and is controllable using 0-10V or Bluetooth. XID can drive anything from a single LED to a 56W CoB or linear array, and can be flux programmed to operate at maximum current from 350mA to 1400mA. At the Smithsonian, XID is driving a single-LED point source and a framing projector based on a non-Xicato CoB, while the remaining luminaires are based on the XIM Artist Series.

The Smithsonian Medialon controller manages the lights through the open HTTP application programming interface (API) on the IP side of the Xicato Intelligent Gateway (XIG). It took the museum staff just hours to get started with the system, and the entire network was working within 3 days.