Vineyards and grain farms can scan grapes and cereals with a smartphone equipped with infrared and LED to analyze food, water and sugar content, using spectroscopy.
Osram has improved its game in the LED agricultural market by adding another near-infrared chip that reads the content of crops such as fruit or cereal to determine when they are ready for harvest.
The new SFH 4736, which is part of Osram Black Osram line, is designed to fit a smartphone or tablet, and marks an improvement over the previous Osram SFH 4735 china LED flood light , which was positioned for the same horticultural niche.
Like the 4735 and other similar Osram chips, the new LED implements near infrared spectroscopy. In the case of 4736, the technology scans a grain or fruit to determine the amount of sugar, water and fat. Growers use this information to determine if the crops are ready or if they require more time before harvest.
Osram’s near-infrared spectroscopy chips illuminate a subject’s infrared light and measure the light it reflects. By inference, the rest of the light has been absorbed in a way that would be characteristic at certain levels of sugar, water, fat and other substances.
Amber spectroscopy waves, which use the infrared LED SFH 4736 from Osram for an agricultural test and measurement application. (Photo credit: Osram.)
Amber spectroscopy waves, which use the infrared LED SFH 4736 from Osram for an agricultural test and measurement application. (Photo credit: Osram.)
Using the reflected light readings, a database helps the smartphone or tablet analyze the composition of the crop at any given time.
Osram said that an inherent lens in the new 4736 focuses much more light on the subject than the 4735, which required a separate optics. Thus, the 4736 LED receives much more reflected light to measure.
“Compared to the SFH 4735 without a lens, we are achieving more than twice the performance with the SFH 4736 at a solid 80 ° angle,” said Carola Diez, senior marketing manager of the Osram Opto Semiconductors group at Osram.
Osram’s near-infrared spectroscopy chips make a blue emitter glow through a phosphor coating, which converts the wavelength into a range between 650 and 1050 nm, which corresponds approximately to the near infrared part of the infrared spectrum of the light. Near infrared has shorter wavelengths than short-wavelength, medium-wavelength, long-wavelength, and far-infrared infrared segments. All of them have wavelengths too long to be visible to the human eye, which ends in red.
Like other china LED street light companies, Osram, based in Munich, has identified agricultural and horticultural applications as a key market for LEDs, making it the only market in which Osram plans to continue offering luminaires.
The SFH 4736 LED chip marks the latest in what has been a wave of new Osram near-infrared chips this year, for various uses, including horticulture and many others.
In September, it introduced the Synios SFH 4776, positioned to help consumers identify the content of apples and other food products.
In July, with security cameras in mind, he added the SFH 4718A to his Oslon Black line.
That happened a few months after adding six new models to the Oslon Black family for use in automotive interior and exterior applications. And in February, it introduced a near-infrared 940 nm chip that helps face recognition systems unlock laptops, phones and other electronic devices.
The company is creating a solid portfolio of chips that emit light as it searches for new digital markets. In addition to the LEDs, the accumulation includes VCSEL chips, an area in which Royal Philips has maintained a great interest despite LEDs and general lighting.