Crestron Debuts Smart Lighting Fixtures - Electronic House ​​

Electronic House

Lighting, Smart Home

Crestron Debuts Smart Lighting Fixtures

Crestron's Illutube, Illucube and recessed LED fixtures dim smoothly to 0 percent.

While the rest of ISE 2013, the huge electronics tradeshow held recently in Amsterdam, went gaga over Crestron’s new 64×64 DigitalMedia switcher, my eyes naturally wandered to the little things that were brand new for the residential market.

Crestron introduced its first light fixtures ever – not just in Europe, but anywhere (although Crestron did introduce its own LED drivers in the U.S. a couple months ago).

The LED fixtures come with Crestron’s DALI (Digital Addressable Lighting Interface) driver pre-installed.

The move was important for the European market, where fixtures are typically sold with drivers built in.

On the contrary, in the U.S., “The fixture is traditionally selected by the interior designer and the drivers to support it by the engineering team,” says David Silberstein, Crestron director of channel development.

The Crestron Illutube, Illucube and recessed LED fixtures feature smooth dimming to 0 percent, “meaning you can dim it all the way down without powering the light off,” Silberstein says. “This allows for the ‘smooth’ part of the dimming – there’s no flickering.”

The fixtures also produce a warm white color “very similar to incandescent, which is unusual for LED and halogen fixtures which tend to be very ‘cool,’” Silberstein says.

He also explains that Crestron can guarantee “color consistency” across fixtures: If you have to replace one, it will match the same warm white color as all the other fixtures still in place.”

And of course, like other Crestron systems, if you keep dimmers, gateways and controllers in the Crestron family, “we can guarantee the performance of the complete installation,” Silberstein says.

At ISE, Crestron demonstrated its RGB LED fixtures with an interface that controls colors and intensity.

Will Crestron introduce the fixtures to the U.S. market?

“With a change in voltage and form factor that could happen, but we have to start somewhere,” Silberstein says. “So we started in each market with the most common purchase method for that market.”

Related: 6 Unique Lighting Fixtures
Related: LEDs Make Bed Appear to Float in Automated Apartment, design and installation by UC Miami.

Julie Jacobson
Julie Jacobson

Julie Jacobson, recipient of the 2014 CEA TechHome Leadership Award, is co-founder of EH Publishing, producer of CE Pro, Electronic House, Commercial Integrator, Security Sales and other leading technology publications. She currently spends most of her time writing for CE Pro in the areas of home automation, security, networked A/V and the business of home systems integration. Julie majored in Economics at the University of Michigan, spent a year abroad at Cambridge University, earned an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin, and has never taken a journalism class in her life. She’s a washed-up Ultimate Frisbee player currently residing in Carlsbad, Calif.

Have suggestions or something you want to read about? Email Julie at jjacobson@ehpub.com

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