Hi Vitaliy.
Morten here, from RiftLabs. Why do you think it is a waste of time?
The idea is to develop a better light source, esp. for video. We are doing the development in the open and publishing all schematics and documentation. The reason is so other people can hack it, extend it, tweak the firmware, interface it to other systems, etc.
Making a complex piece of hardware means you have to commit resources to it. The hardware itself is tricky to build and I agree that very few people will want to make their own hardware from scratch. And unless you have your own CNC machine, your own 3D printer and your own PCB production tools capable of making 6 layer PCBs, it is probably going to be more expensive to build your own than to buy one.

But I'm thinking that making open systems that anyone can tweak or build upon is better than making closed proprietary systems like most other manufacturers.

LOL, cool

We are still in development. People are participating, talking about what features are important or not important to them. We're working our asses off trying to get this beast ready. I'll be sure to post a link in a few months when we have a product that people can actually play around with. :-)

hi mhjerde
are you at the point of telling us the lumen output of the continous lighting and the gn number of the strobe output? things like recharge rate for flash, angle of spread for continous, cri etc would also be useful.
or does this plug into something else that outputs the light.
cheers

@sparedog Yes, this thing outputs light, it is not just a controller. There has been some discussion about remote controlling these lights from an iPhone/iPad/Android App. Sounds intriguing, but we don't have Bluetooth or WiFi currently.

The lumen output is actually a late stage decision. It is basically a matter of how fast do you allow the batteries to discharge and how good is the heat dissipation of the final enclosure design. I can say it is quite a bit more powerful that the typical portable light panels out there. But if you do stills, a good speedlight will be more powerful that this.

The strobe recharge rate, the way strobing is currently implemented, is quite short. It is less that 1/2000 second. It also means that strobing is not that powerful. You get about one stop more light from the strobe compared to continuous light (roughly... insert lots of hand waving here...). But you start losing power fast when you shorten the strobe length. The short story is, I'm not sure how useful the strobing is, and you won't reach for this light when you need awesome stopping power.

maybe allow mains power also so high lumen output for continous during mains power
high lumen continous on battery for short period
medium lumen continous output for longer period

it's led right so can you just flick on the light when you want to roll, and flick them off once you cut, it's not like they need a cool down period, do they?

my view is if it is of use to video it should be at least the bightness of a redhead output (800 watts) so you use the tungsten ambience as fill. anyone else have a view on this?

@vitality I wrote a brief explanation on how RGB light works here: http://riftlabs.com/2010/09/how-rgb-light-works/
I think I'll try to make a video during the week explaining it in more detail.

@sparedog Light output equal to 800 watt halogen will require a different casing - we'll have to deal with more heat. And you are right, there is no cool down time. They are pretty robust.

The current design is intended for lighter work, run and gun, ENG, that kind of thing. So it is designed to be lightweight and really fast to work with. Adding a version with more muscle is definitely in the plans.

By the way, I forgot to answer your question about CRI. It is at 94 with the emitters we are currently testing.

@MrAnthony Thanks for you thoughts! There is no reason you can't use umbrellas, grids, softboxes. But the ones you currently have will probably not fit. I can see that that is not ideal. It will be possible to synchronize several units (master/slave).
This light won't replace all other lights overnight, and probably never :-) Needs are diverse and there is no one-size-fits-all. But you got to start somewhere, right? Our ambition is to take lights a big step further by giving them brains, making them more versatile, more efficient, and making it faster and easier to do really cool stuff.

@svart

You have exactly two comments with content that you could cite here.

I, personally, do not understand your concerns with light faloff as leds can be made quite focused, it is all depends on use leds or additional lenses.
I also do not share your complains about led lights quality, normally RGB led quality is worse compared with two different color temperatures and good quality white LEDs.
Right now it is pure concept with basis in the stage lighting that already has almost all attributes (RGB, adjustable color, programmability to some extent) for cheap.

I'd use something like:

http://www.luxeonstar.com/Cool-White-5650K-20mm-Star-Rebel-235-lm-p/mr-wc310-20s.htm

with

http://www.luxeonstar.com/v/vspfiles/downloadables/262.pdf

Those are better that T-type LEDs since the LEDs used in those units don't have focal lensing built in. They have flat dies that emit light relatively straight so no reflectors are typically needed. they could still benefit from minor collimating(refraction focusing).

They are much better than:

http://cgi.ebay.com/126-LED-Lighting-PANEL-HD-Video-DV-Camcorder-7D-D90-/220608752481?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item335d4e6b61

Types.

While I don't have the papers anymore, when I redesigned a robotic vision lighting system some years back, I researched using panels of LEDs similar what I linked above. I found that over 10ft(arbitrary testing distance) 1x 5w collimated(30deg focus) would illuminate a target better than 200x T-type.

So looking at:

http://blog.captive-aquatics.com/.a/6a010535f11c3d970c0133f2b133e0970b-pi

You'll see that a typical "white"(5500K) led has spectral peaks in blue(450nm) and green-yellow (500-600nm). Adding adjustable amounts of red (620nm) could help fill out the spectrum and adjust total color temp biasing hopefully being able to approximate tungsten spectrum:

http://www.chem.orst.edu/courses/ch361-464/ch461/oceanopticstungsten.gif

Here's a good comparison I found:

http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/lightandcolor/images/lightsourcesfigure3.jpg

True. I just wanted to throw some insight out there and hopefully they can use it to make their project better.

Hi Mhjerde, nice for you to do such an open project. I myself have been doing some DIY fluorescent fixtures because the price in those days and the cost is prohibitive in my small island. I did it maily for my photography with some big arrays (8-10 4 foot tube) to get the necessary light output for photography. I had to do some compromise (no dimming, one plug for each light) not really portable as the build was a bit difficult to move, but in the end with some high CRI tube the result was very good.

One thing I have been seeing lately is perhaps the perfect light. These are the LEP Light Emitting Plasma. They have cri of 94, about twice the output of HMI, good throw and are relatively small to fit existing PAR. They have been very well received in the latest NAB and cinegear expo. But the price are in the $ 3000 to $ 5000 range. The thing is that a company specialising in DIY projector is selling some kit from Luxim (I think most of the video light company are using the same module from luxim) at $ 600. As always in the video world price tend to be much higher. It could be an interesting system to investigate in the future.

For your LED project what would be nice, is for you to sell kits that people can assemble. Because as said before it will be of no use to the vast majority if it is only a set of schematics that the person has to build his own casing, solder the parts etc. I hope it materialise very soon and I pave the way for some other project like external monitors etc. with the same open-source concept.

I forgot one thing about the LEP is that it cannot work facing upward. I don’t know how the manufactures have been able to do it but for me very rarely do you point up and can use some reflectors to some extent.