Increased power, improved luminous efficiency, longer life and more space... Over the years, the miniaturisation of underwater lights has brought many advantages to the world of swimming pools! In this new special lighting saga, discover the history of the miniaturisation of underwater lights.
At the outset, it was hard to imagine lighting your pool with anything other than a PAR56 incandescent or halogen bulb, but now it's time for miniaturised LED bulbs! And when it comes to LED lighting, miniaturisation goes hand in hand with power at CCEI.
Design beyond form
Did you say design? Well, that's an understatement!
The arrival of LEDs has enabled underwater lights to move away from their familiar spherical shape. Moving from a curved glass pane to a flat glass pane with a streamlined design for perfect integration into the wall, LED lights will later be fitted with cable glands at the rear and malleable mounting brackets for integration into a very large niche. At this point, what LEDs were going to show us was that they were capable of holding the same power on a smaller electronic board. This discovery opens up completely new possibilities in terms of standards for sealed parts!
And in this blended family, the daughter is called first: 1.5", slim and for all installations. So, out of respect for her Majesty, the lighting units will first be integrated into the 1.5'' and fitted with a PAR56 shape, then displayed in a reduced form, the 1/16''.
Fitted with a sealed cable at the back, 1.5" lights are now firmly integrated into consumer habits. Increasingly integrated into the structure, they enhance the lighting of the pool by making it as discreet as it is diffuse, thanks to lighting angles of up to 160°, reducing shadows.
Flat glass, wider beam angle, 1.5" installation... the new light units have all the best features to make them stand out from the crowd: grey or sandy ABS covers, black covers or stainless steel covers for concrete and liner pools. Enough to delight all end users, even the most demanding!
Performance above all
Over and above the advantages in terms of design, the one that is most often highlighted is energy performance, in other words luminous flux (lumen) compared with power consumption expressed in watts. It's undeniable that LED technology offers real savings: while an incandescent bulb has a ratio of 20 lumens per watt (= 6000lm / 300W), the best LEDs have an output 5 times greater than 100 lm per watt! The adage that technological innovation is good for the environment is undeniable.
Another way of considering performance is to calculate this famous volumetric ratio. In terms of the volume of the light unit, the comparison is clear-cut: at the bottom of the pack is the PAR56 with 3.53 lm/cm3, which is hardly a match for a micro projector with 28.26 lm/cm3.
Buy small, shine bright
LED technology is still full of surprises. They can already be integrated into induction mounts without cables. But innovation is also hiding in the cables, with DMX control possible on 3 wires, for example, without any loss of reliability. So the new motto is quite simply "buy small, shine bright".
One thing's for sure, the LED technology we've now mastered, combined with our efforts, means that we can produce made-to-measure products to suit everyone's requirements: power, dimensions, colours, accessories and even assemblies! And it's thanks to these same advances that CCEI invites you to discover these 3 flagship miniature lights in a special lighting saga!
We also invite you to visit our website to try out our special BRiO projector lighting configurator!
