In just the past five years, LEDs have completely transformed the lighting landscape. Originally embraced for their energy-saving advantages, LEDs can now help create dynamic, personalized lighting environments. The next big thing is tunable white, and digital control is essential for making the most of white tuning technology.
When considering your options, digital controls far surpass the performance of analog control, and will often end up being both simpler to design and even less expensive than other control options such as 0 to 10V.
Benefits of Digital Controls
- Deliver consistency
- Drastically reduce risk of installation issues
- Improve reliability
- Provide precise control of correlated color temperature (CCT)
- Offer a scalable solution for basic tunable white or full color control
Digital Control Ensures Consistent Color Temperature
When light levels are just being adjusted up and down, it does not necessarily matter if a 0 to 10V control signal is not precisely matched across fixtures. However, when control of intensity and color temperature are combined, precision is essential. Humans are highly sensitive to changes in color, and the typical margin-of- error in a 0 to 10V system will cause fixtures on the same control to be a different color.
Digital Control Simplifies Installation
With 0 to 10V, it is rare that a project comes to fruition without at least one wiring issue. Add a second set of control wires for each fixture, and the opportunity for error increases exponentially. If the intensity and color temperature controls are crossed, this mix-up can easily be missed in a casual function check, and the result is often costly. Digital controls offer simpler, more robust wiring, and are also immune to noise–even if your control wires are near an electrically noisy area.
Digital Control Provides Precise Color Temperature
For comprehensive control of color in the space, it is essential to factor in ambient lighting entering a space via windows. Combining digital color temperature control with a precision shading system enables occupants to create the right lighting environment for their needs.
Digital Control: A Scalable Solution
Digital control enables a range of solutions from simple, two-color fixtures to high-performance, precision solutions with four or more colors employed to create the desired atmosphere. As the lighting design community continues to more effectively leverage the power of tunable white, lighting designers, architects, and engineers will demand reliable solutions that scale with their needs. Digital controls are the only way to guarantee desired results.
Need assistance with your tunable white project? Lutron can help you correctly specify, install and use tunable white successfully in any application.
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Related resources:Lutron offers CEU courses on a wide variety of LED topics, including tunable white.
Download “Color Tuning” application note
For more information, visit Lutron.com/tunablewhite
