Posted on December 7, 2016
December 7, 2017
LIPA’s 2016 Annual General was held on November 17, 2016 at the River Terrace Inn in Napa, California. The event began with a welcome speech from Chairman, Jan Daem of Barco. Jan reminded those assembled of the reasons we were all there – to address the common issues and the more quickly bring the benefits of laser illumination to the market. He noted that the market is becoming charmed with LIPs for their higher resolution, higher contrast, brighter, have more colors, create brighter 3D movies, and are more energy efficient.
Jan reflected on the achievements from the past year, including:
- LIPA has a critical mass of projector companies involved in the organization: 12 leader level, 4 Participant level and 9 observer level. This ensures we are financially healthy and can maintain an aggressive level of activity. We have true international representation, including China-based companies to its membership and broadening its scope of activities.
- The new evaluation scheme under the lamp standard is getting adopted worldwide and manufactures are placing LIPs on the market under the new less burdensome classification scheme – except in the US. The new scheme provides overall cost reductions through fewer engineering requirements, reduced end user requirements, and fewer market barriers for laser devices
- LIPA has an active community in standardization and regulatory affairs that is capable of finding consensus within the industry. This should not be taken for granted and often difficult in other industry associations. Excellent examples is the recent work done in the Beijing IEC meetings on the interpretation sheets 1&2, consumer product standard and updating of the broadband standard.
- The speckle metrology working group under the lead and vision of Pete Ludé published their “Measurement of speckle in laboratory conditions” a real best seller as it has been downloaded many times. The group organized a Specklefest, 25 participants gathering a lot of feedback and improvement suggestion. Allowing the group to move further with the project.
- Energy efficient is getting more and more regulated www (EUROPE, China) Bill Beck did extensive research on existing LIP products and which are more efficient than their lamp equals. These numbers enable LIPA to confidently give regulators fact-based data.
- LIPA has received interest from nonmember manufactures to help explore Section 4.4 for laser pumped phosphor and direct lasers
- Blue phosphor devices were a bright spot and are driving the success of LIPs at intersecting total-cost-of-ownership points
- LIPA was invited to provide presentation and educational sessions at 13 different events in 2016.
- LIPA received – notable from the European Commission – feedback that LIPA has made a significant contribution to standardization and regulatory discussions.
- LIPA is successfully taking responsibility for its products and building consensus among the industry.
The Chairman also identified areas where the organization can focus in the future. These include,
- Provide FDA what it needs to adopt the international certification system
- Continue to monitor the European regulatory framework to ensure adoption of matching workplace and consumer safety limits. The EU will also soon amend the 60825-1 laser safety standard, update the AORD guidance, and LIPA should monitor the Low Voltage Directive Working Party and standardization group’s Advisory Committee on Safety and Health.
- Providing more information and education to our stakeholders with videos, handouts and articles, blog posts and newsletters. He tasked members with dedicating time and creating actionable plans to create this content together.
- Develop the channels that will help us communicate the regulatory changes we anticipate in early 2017.
- Create a document which assists LIP vendors, ProAV, fixed-installs, in understanding the engineering and end user requirements for RG2/RG3 in IEC 62471-5.
Jan concluded with a few thoughts on the future of LIPA. He noted that we need to take steps to ensure our mission is aligned as much as possible with our stakeholders’ interests, using tools like interviews and questionnaires for identifying trends. This will be most useful as LIPA becomes an organization that monitors the regulatory evolutions and ensures current and future products can be placed safely and efficiently on the market.
LIPA recognized several members for their strong support and leadership in the standardization and technical areas, particularly in our work with the FDA. He asked members to be active and participate to ensure your companies realize the full benefit of their membership investments.
