Helia creates an intelligent environment providing a personalized, adaptive lighting experience with enhanced energy savings, convenience and comfort
Las Vegas, January 3, 2017 — SORAA, the world leader in GaN on GaN™ LED technology and illuminator of the world’s most famous historical buildings, museums, hotels, and luxury retailers, today announces their entry into the consumer market with Helia, the healthy light environment for homes. Helia, which was named a CES 2017 Innovations Award Honoree, is situated at the intersection of health and smart home. It combines healthy and beautiful full spectrum LED lighting with a secure, expandable network of smart home sensors. The result is an intuitive, energy-efficient lighting system that brings the benefits of dynamic, natural sunlight indoors.
Soraa is demonstrating Helia, its first direct-to-consumer business, at CES Unveiled, Tuesday, January 3, 2017 at Mandalay Bay booth #112, in Las Vegas.
Press Images Available: www.helia.com/press
Recent advances in science have unveiled the crucial impact of light on our sleep patterns and health. We evolved under sunlight, and specialized cells in our eyes respond to its blue light wavelengths to synchronize our internal clocks – and set a circadian rhythm. Natural sunlight is bright and filled with blue light in the morning to wake us up. As the sun sets, blue light recedes, signaling our bodies to prepare for sleep. However, in our modern world, we live under artificial lights and in front of LED screens – which are often packed with blue light content. Numerous studies now conclude that even common levels of blue light exposure in the evening, primarily coming from our artificial lighting sources, can negatively impact sleep and longer-term health. Today more than 60% of Americans report sleep problems.
Helia is Healthy.
Helia takes on these concerns with a unique, new approach – replicating the timing and visible spectrum of natural sunlight. Leveraging Soraa’s advanced LED technology coupled with an enterprise-grade networking and sensor platform, Helia adapts to your environment automatically, based on your home’s sunrise and sunset times, tuning for your habits and health. Helia bulbs provide plenty of blue light in the morning to wake you up. During the day, museum-quality light makes your surroundings come alive. And in the evening as you wind down, Soraa’s patented BlueFree™ LED technology removes blue light completely, while retaining a beautiful, soft white color.
“More than ever, consumers are becoming aware of the effect artificial lighting and screens are having on their sleep and health, “ says Jeff Parker, Chief Executive Officer of Soraa. “Helia creates the healthiest lighting system ever introduced, to make homes a place where the efficiency of modern lighting and health can coexist.”
Dr. W. Chris Winter adds, “paying attention to the amount and quality of the light you expose yourself to during the day and night is probably the single biggest modifiable factor for getting a healthy night of sleep.” Dr. Winter is a Sleep Specialist and Neurologist who consults for several NBA, NFL, MLB and NHL teams.
Helia is Beautiful.
Other smart bulbs can change color during the day and night, but since they are all made with standard LEDs, they emit up to 20 times more blue light and can make your rooms unnaturally yellow. Instead, Helia lights up your surroundings beautifully, without compromising color quality. Guided by Soraa’s expertise in color science, which has already benefited extraordinary places such as the Palace of Versailles and the Cartier Mansion, Helia emits a tailored spectrum, white light to render beautiful and vivid colors throughout the day and night.
Helia is Intelligent.
With Helia, smart home lighting finally becomes simple to install. Just screw in your Helia bulbs, turn them on and they will automatically connect to one another over the existing power lines in your house and start working together – before you even open the app. No wireless hub or internet connection is required to provide seamless integration with no wireless dead spots. You can then refine your lighting experience with the Helia app by providing information about where your house is located and when you usually wake up in the morning and go to sleep at night.
Helia goes beyond being app-connected to be truly intelligent and intuitive thanks to sensor technology that you find in today’s most modern, energy-efficient office environments – which know when a space is occupied and vacant. When you walk into a room, Helia knows to light the space, and when you leave, Helia automatically turns off the lights to conserve energy. Ambient light sensors conserve even more energy by knowing natural light levels and dynamically adjusting the brightness of the lights to maintain consistent, comfortable light levels. And, since it knows when you go to sleep and when you wake, Helia will only bring up soft night light when you walk into a room, such as a bathroom, in the middle of the night. Helia also learns your patterns to keep your home safe. You can simply tell Helia you are going on vacation and it will recreate your daily movement’s room-to-room while you’re away.
The Helia system was also designed to be able to keep pace with the latest innovations in sensors, connectivity and smart capabilities. The Helia Dynamic White BR30 bulbs feature an innovative Smart SNAP port that future-proofs the system and protects your investment. Smart SNAP Modules provide a simple, plug-and-play approach to adding and upgrading the Helia system. The initial Dynamic White + Presence Smart SNAP provides dynamic lighting control along with presence and ambient light sensing. Future Smart SNAPs from Soraa and partners will enhance the value of the Helia system over its lifetime.
“People like to talk about ‘smart lighting’ a lot when talking about IoT, but so far ‘smart’ has simply meant one can turn lights on and off using an app — which is not necessarily intuitive — and light quality has always been secondary.” says Phil Kearney, Soraa’s Vice President, Consumer Products. “We developed Helia to work just the way you think it would, and to also bring the same quality of light that was once reserved for museums and high-end retail into the home.”
For consumers who want to connect their Helia lighting system to popular IoT cloud services, Helia has created the Cloud Connect accessory. Simply plug the Cloud Connect into an outlet near your home Wi-Fi router. Your system will be connected to Helia’s secure cloud and ready for Amazon Alexa Voice commands, remote control when you’re away from the home and IFTTT compatibility. Additionally, Helia lighting systems connect seamlessly to popular IOT ecosystems.
Get Helia.
Helia will be available Spring 2017 at Helia.com and will initially be sold as Room Kits, allowing consumers to easily order the precise number of bulbs and Smart SNAPS needed to outfit an entire room(s) with healthy lighting. Dynamic White BR30 bulbs will retail for $49.95 each, Dynamic White + Presence Smart SNAPs (one per room) will retail for $29.95 and the Cloud Connect accessory is $49.95 (optional, one per home). You can follow Helia on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Media members interested in demos, images or more information regarding Helia may reach out to Jen Squilla at JenSquilla@maxborgesagency.com or 1 305 374 4404 Ext.191.
About Soraa
Pioneering lamps using LEDs built from pure gallium nitride substrates (GaN on GaN™), Soraa has made ordinary lighting extraordinarily brilliant and efficient. Soraa’s full spectrum GaN on GaN™ LED lamps have superior color rendering and beam characteristics compared to lamps using LEDs created from non-native substrates. Founded in 2008, Soraa is based in Fremont California, where it manufactures its GaN on GaN™ LEDs in the company’s state-of-the-art facility. For additional information, please visit www.soraa.com and follow the company on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.
Soraa, is a registered trademark of Soraa, Inc., Helia, Soraa BlueFree, and Gan on Gan are trademarks of Soraa, Inc.