The good news is that the Luminode now has some nice new packaging and a solid plan to reach production!
The less than good news is that UL testing began behind schedule and UL is just now requiring us to make some minor but important design modifications to satisfy UL standards. Specifically we need to increase the spacing between some components and circuits on the primary circuit board.
In order to make enough space on the board for these changes and to minimize the risk of additional UL concerns, we have made the decision to remove the on-board current sensing circuit. Although we regret having to remove that feature, we believe it is the right move to make in order to get the Luminode out into the world in a reasonable time-frame from now. Rest assured that the Luminode will still enable energy savings through minimizing when lights are on unnecessarily even without the current sensing circuit.
We expect to complete the necessary design modifications by early next week, have the changes reviewed by UL, modify the tooling, run new parts, and resume UL testing, all by mid March. Although this is an aggressive schedule we believe it is achievable and we hope to now ship Luminodes by the end of April. We understand this is a full quarter behind or original target ship date of January, and we are truly grateful for you continuing patience and support. UL approval is an important safety regulatory certification that we must comply with and we are dedicated to ensuring that you, our earliest supporters and customers are not only delighted by your initial experience with the Luminode but also have the piece of mind that it is thoroughly safety tested and approved.
Please accept deep gratitude from all of us at Think Automatic and the Luminode project!
That’s pretty sad that it will lose the sub-metering ability. Can’t you use a shunt that is coated or wrapped in heat shrink? Or is there really not a lick of board space left with the new HV/LV spacing? Stacked boards? Lutron dimmers are very densely packed with not much trace separation and they are UL approved.
We were also disappointed to lose the current sensing feature, but it was a move we felt was prudent. As a very small operation the potential risk of another round of UL driven modifications at this late stage would be devastating to us. So in an effort to minimize that risk we decided to free up a good chunk of PCB space that our particular implementation of the current sensing was taking up. In addition, our current sensing implementation was not using the latest and most accurate techniques. We hope to be able to reintroduce that feature in subsequent versions of the Luminode using newer chips and techniques that are more compact and accurate when hopefully we are not on quite so small a development budget.
Thank you for your thoughtful feedback!
If you lack writing skills, you always have a possibility to order good quality Literature Essay and all your troubles will disappear.
However, the new standard will look solely at performance, not operabilit.
essayswriters.org/dissertation