It began about 18 months ago. Initially I was curious about driving white LED’s because I had a project to create some garden lighting using COB LED filaments.

Don’t worry about all the tech terms, I intend to explain all of this in coming posts and you can get a much better idea. Alternatively, you can skip the technical discussions because in between there will be lots to see and read about how we’ve designed this range.

Those garden lights were called “Phobos-K”. They still light up our garden paths and remind me whenever I come home of where I started with all this. My natural inclination with any project is to start throwing more ideas around and working out new projects and possibilities. Very quickly the question of solar powering the lights arose. How do you store and regulate the available solar power? Suddenly questions of charging batteries and driving strings of LEDs had to be answered. Some simple prototype boards for charging a battery and driving white LEDs followed.

The history of Hikari is incomplete without these garden lights. Although they have never become a staple product for us, what we did build was a starting point for our first proper products.