Cypress Revolutionizes High-Brightness LED Intelligent Lighting Designs With New EZ-Color™ Controller Family

Cypress Semiconductor Corp. (NYSE: CY) today introduced a complete design solution for high-brightness (HB) LED intelligent lighting systems that offers unprecedented ease-of-use and performance. Cypress’s new EZ-Color™ family of HB LED controllers is supported by PSoC Express™, the industry’s first embedded visual design tool. For the first time, engineers can simply input the selected LEDs, choose a color, and the combination of the unique EZ-Color architecture and PSoC Express software delivers a complete design solution for growing applications such as architectural lighting, general signage, rechargeable flashlights, entertainment lighting, emergency vehicle lighting and more.

Today, LED design requires a complex set of calculations to deliver consistent color. The two biggest problems that HB LED engineers face today are having to account for differing LED performance specifications based on manufacturing bins and the LEDs’ degradation (such as output flux, wavelength etc.) over different temperatures. With PSoC Express, designers simply select a color from a gamut presented on-screen. Pre-loaded manufacturers’ bin specifications and temperature feedback algorithms are automatically applied to the selected design and programmed into the EZ-Color Controller. This can save anywhere from weeks to months of design time for a complex design.

“The EZ-Color solution truly presents a new design paradigm for HB LED systems,” said Norm Taffe, executive vice president of Cypress’s Consumer and Computations Division. “The combination of our programmable silicon expertise and the PSoC Express design tool makes designing with LEDs much simpler and faster, significantly speeding time to market for our customers.”

“The EZ-Color solution is a prime example of Cypress’s programmable solutions riding the leading edge of fast-developing markets,” said Babak Hedayati, senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing and Applications for Cypress. “High Brightness LED systems present a new opportunity for us as we continue our march to 20,000 customers.”

In addition to ease-of-design advantages, EZ-Color Controllers can support up to 16 LED channels, compared to four or five channels for competitive devices. The additional channels can mean a savings of dozens or even hundreds of controllers in very large designs, saving on design complexity, power consumption and board space. The EZ-Color controllers are also powered by Cypress patent pending PrISM™ (Precise Illumination Signal Modulation) technology. The PrISM modulation technology significantly reduces low-frequency flicker and radiated electro-magnetic interference (EMI)-common problems with HB LED designs. Designers also have the flexibility to add additional functionality to the EZ-Color controllers, including battery charging, motor control and other features.

“Applications for high-brightness LEDs are numerous and growing rapidly,” said Dr. Jagdish Rebello, director and principal analyst at market research firm iSuppli. “And versatile control solutions such as EZ-Color promise to ease the design process for these applications, potentially fueling additional growth.”

The EZ-Color family is supported by the CY3261A-RGB Evaluation Kit. The evaluation kit showcases EZ-Color’s flexibility and ease of use for high-brightness LED color mixing applications and employs temperature compensation for consistent color. Included with the evaluation kit is an interactive graphical interface enabling quick color mixing via a CIE diagram or by directly controlling each HB LED. The kit is available on the OnLine Store at www.cypress.com for US$149.

Price and Availability
The EZ-Color family includes devices that drive up to four (CY8CLED04), eight (CY8CLED08) and 16 (CY8CLED16) LEDs.“ All devices are available today with the CY8CLED04 priced under US$4.00 in high volumes. More information on EZ-Color, education materials on HB LED color mixing, and a free download of PSoC Express 3.0 software are all available at www.cypress.com/EZ-Color.” A high-resolution photo can be downloaded at www.cypress.com/EZ-Colorphoto.