For consistency’s sake: a way to ensure that LEDs conform to the same color point

The previous post in this series discussed how a sorting process called binning can help ensure color consistency across LEDs – making it easier for professionals to complete lighting executions.

Binning minimizes chromatic variations in light by evaluating LEDs and grouping together those with similar characteristics. Color Kinetics' Optibin™ technology is a particularly advanced form of binning, exceeding industry standards for chromaticity and guaranteeing that the hue and flux for Color Kinetics lighting products are highly uniform and consistent.

But binning by itself isn’t enough, especially when it comes to dynamic color LED luminaires used in the biggest public lighting projects. White-light LED luminaires vary, but color ones do so to a greater extent. Even with binning, RGB luminaires’ color consistency can waver by as much as 10-to-15-step MacAdam’s ellipses (which indicate color precision). Such imprecision is easily noticeable.

Enter Color Kinetics' Chromasync™ technology. Chromasync enables color-changing luminaires to offer high color consistency. Variation is as low as a 2-step MacAdam’s ellipse, which is the same color consistency as a white LED chip product.

Chromasync’s algorithm automatically adjusts the luminaire’s gamut to make sure that it’s achieving the same one as its peers in the installation. The result is another leap forward in consistency, one that eliminates the need to adjust the color of individual luminaires during project commissioning.

A seamless technology, a public benefit

In summary, Chromasync offers five main benefits:

Consistency: It allows Color Kinetics’ IntelliHue family of luminaires to achieve high color precision with minimal color variation – of less than two MacAdam’s ellipses across multiple luminaires.

Color accuracy: It lets lighting designers pick a specific correlated color consistency using Color Kinetics software and ensure that it’s accurate – helping them achieve their vision.

Flexibility: Chromasync is controller-agnostic. It works with 3-, 4-, and 5-channel controllers – controllers that Color Kinetics makes, but those from third parties as well.

Maximum output: In addition to ensuring consistency, Chromasync also optimizes luminaires for maximum output at the chosen color point, and ensures high output for specified colors.

Speed: Chromasync speeds commissioning by replacing time-consuming adjustments with an automated process that’s integrated into the lighting solution and controller.

The bottom line is that lighting designers, building owners and managers, artists, and others get a faster, more flexible, and more accurate way to work with color LED light. Municipalities get seamless technology. The public gets to see beautiful color illumination.

In the next post in this series, we’ll take a look at a third Color Kinetics technology, IntelliHue, which makes it possible to get high quality white light and dynamic saturated color from a single fixture.

Colleen Hufford

Product Manager – Color Kinetics

High-quality white and dynamic color, in one smart luminaire

The previous posts in this series discussed two technologies that have made color consistency in large-scale lighting installations easier to achieve: Optibin™, Color Kinetics' smart binning process, and Chromasync, which algorithmically adjusts each luminaire’s gamut to ensure that it’s hitting the same one as its peers in any installation.

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Better binning: A crucial first step to color consistency

When it comes to high-end architectural lighting installations, achieving the best possible color consistency is crucial.

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