Electronica: ISELED auto lighting alliance launched

At electronica 2016 Inova Semiconductors launched the ISELED Alliance to promote Inova Semiconductors’ ISELED technology for auto lighting.

At the heart of technology is a “digital” RGB-LED, with a controller inside the LED package.

The Alliance is committed to create a complete ecosystem around the ISELED concept including hard- but also corresponding software.

This approach reduces costs, simplifies control, and expands the functionality of LED lighting in the automobile significantly.

Initial ISELED products, including a standalone controller and development kits, are available, while more and more key semiconductor vendors, LED manufacturers, Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers support this pioneering technology.

At electronica 2018 Inova Semiconductors along with the recently announced new alliance members – Magna/OLSA, Melexis, Osram Opto Semiconductors and Microchip Technology reported on the status of the technology and presented their new solutions to further enhance the ISELED ecosystem.

These concepts and ideas today extend far beyond interior lighting ISELED was originally aiming for.

It now also includes exterior lighting, an intelligent dome light, a potentially new fieldbus for lighting and sensors, and even a sophisticated dynamic backlight system for LCD panels.

The next generation of in-car lighting will feature hundreds of LEDs, typically in the form of flexible light strips each comprising many single RGB LEDs, which need to be individually controlled to produce dynamic effects.

Each LED on the strip consists of a red, green and blue LED chip and the ISELED controller integrated in the same package.

The digital LEDs can be daisy-chained. Up to 4,079 of them can be connected via a differential bus at a speed of 2 Mbps.

They will be controlled by a single external master controller.

This will effectively make new applications and lighting controls possible for applications where the relatively slow LIN bus is not suitable.

With a data rate of 2 Mbit/s light effects at true video speed are possible with the ISELED system.

With application software developed by an Alliance member, fascinating lighting effects may be created and simply controlled by an app on a smartphone.