Light flicker assessment toolbox

Function and application scripts associated with the light flickermeter specified in IEC TR 61547-1

This function implements a light flickermeter in accordance with IEC TR 61547-1 [1]. This light flickermeter can be used to evaluate the flicker severity of modulated light waveforms of lighting products (lamps, luminaires or drivers) in terms of the short-term flicker indicator PstLM.
Possible causes of light modulation of light sources, that may give rise to unacceptable flicker, are:
– The light source technology and its driver topology;
– Dimming technology of externally applied dimmers or light-level regulators applied in the lighting product;
– Mains voltage fluctuations caused by electrical apparatus connected to the mains or intentionally applied for mains-signaling purposes.
Modulation depth (MD) – also called percent flicker - and flicker index (FI) are often used to quantify flicker or stroboscopic effect. It has been shown, that both these metrics are not able to objectively score the level of flicker as actually perceived by humans [3]. Therefore, instead of MD and FI, for the objective assessment of flicker, use of the short-term flicker indicator (PstLM) is preferred [1][3].
REFERENCES:
[1] IEC TR 61547-1, Equipment for general lighting purposes - EMC immunity requirements - Part 1: An objective voltage fluctuation immunity test method, 2015-04.
[2] J.J. Gutierrez, P.A. Beeckman, I. Azcaratea, PROTOCOL TO TEST THE SENSITIVITY OF LIGHTING EQUIPMENT TO VOLTAGE FLUCTUATIONS, CIRED Conference 2015, Lyon, 15-18 June 2015.
[3] CIE TN 006:2016, CIE Technical note on Visual aspects of time-modulated lighting systems - definitions and measurement models