Strahlen

In the beginning...

I needed light. A lot of light. But I didn't want to plunk down two grand for a single light that only offered some of the features I wanted, nor did I want to risk my money on a $300 knock-off with a supposed "warranty."

So this was the result - an idea to create my own lights, which rapidly evolved into hours upon hours of brainstorming, designing, prototyping, failing, and starting over, until one day, finally, I had a product I felt was ready to share with the world.

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Putting pen(cil) to paper

I started in December 2012 by designing a 1x1' LED panel, but while I was researching components I found some awesome 100W LEDs the size of a potato chip. They were different from anything on the market and perfect for what I wanted. I scrapped my original plan and charged forward with this new concept.

Let there be light

All I had to do was learn about constant current power supplies, PWM controls, voltage step-up converters, high wattage LEDs, heat dissipation... the list was never-ending because, as it turns out, those little 5mm LED diodes I was used to working with weren't anything like these new high-powered LEDs.

Prototypes on prototypes

Once I had three working prototypes I was faced with the decision - do I commit to bringing this to market? Or do I call these good enough and move on? The answer is pretty clear - I started working with local manufacturers to develop legitimate prototypes. It took way longer than I expected.

Indiegogo a go-go

But one year and four major revisions later, I was ready to bring these to market. I lined everything up and launched the campaign on December 14, 2013 (with the help of several great people), and the lights received positive reviews from NoFilmSchool and Fstoppers.

The red wire goes... where?

The campaign wrapped on February 12, 2014 with just enough money to do a 25 unit production run. Six weeks later my parents flew out to San Diego, and we spent a long weekend assembling the lights. I shipped them out the following week (three went all the way to France!), took a short breather, and then...

Let's do it all again

I got inspired. Again. I looked at what I had created and realized that with all of my newfound knowledge and experience I could make a light 10x better. So I taught myself SolidWorks and went back to the same grind I started in 2012. Redesigned from the ground up to be stronger, lighter, and brighter.