Recognizing the start of a revolution in lighting, Digilin had been increasingly turning its attention towards LED in the years leading up to the beginning of the new millennium. LED technology had advanced significantly and new LEDs were delivering substantially more light than their predecessors, which were commonly used as display indicators.
Having already developed expertise in the emerging technology through its work designing signalling systems for Queensland Rail, and boasting more than a decade’s experience in electronics and other lighting technologies such as halogen and fibre optics, Digilin was well positioned to lead LED’s entry into Australia’s commercial lighting market.
Digilin’s engineers began testing various offerings from Kingbright, Nichia and Cree, names that would go on to become dominant players in the worldwide lighting market.
Later in 1997, leading lighting designer Barry Webb (now retired) contacted Digilin to see if a maintenance free luminaire could be manufactured for installation in a record store in Brookvale on Sydney’s Upper North Shore – Mall Music.
It had to be ‘low heat’ as it would sustain high pedestrian traffic, but fibre optic was ruled out due to its minimum bend radius requirements. Additionally, the luminaire needed to be very compact, robust, water ingress resistant, oh, and most importantly, maintenance free!
Digilin knew it was LED’s moment to take the spotlight and got to work applying its expertise in the technology to design a solution. The product developed became not only Digilin’s first commercial LED luminaire, but also the first made in Australia. The Mall Music project went down in history as the first commercial LED installation in Australia.
The images shown here were taken more than 8 years after installation, during which none of the LEDs required replacing or servicing.
Like the hundreds of other clients who have experienced Digilin’s LED products over the past 20 years, Mall Music enjoyed their consistent and reliable performance.
The company’s owners, Geoffrey and Amanda Bonouvrie, made the following comments regarding the installation:
“We have lots of different lights in this shop, and these are the only ones that have never given us any trouble… if only all the other lighting was LED.”
Although LED has come a long way since then, Digilin’s commitment to pushing the boundaries of the technology’s capabilities to provide our customers with innovative, high performance, reliable lighting solutions remains the same. We achieve this by continually developing our technical expertise, experimenting and testing the latest technologies from the best suppliers in the world, and by seeking out the toughest lighting challenges.