Wireless Lighting Management Systems: A New Professional Trend in Lighting Control

In our current age, characterized as the information age, "networking" is lurking everywhere, with applications for almost every aspect of our daily lives. It was expected, as lighting product companies have been presenting smart and wireless control of lamps—usually LED—via smartphones, tablets, etc., for years.

Of course, to implement such wireless control, apart from having a suitably smart lamp with built-in or external communication interfaces (gateways), it requires:

• internet connection from a Wi-Fi router,
• available Wi-Fi (WLAN) network,
• smart devices with relatively advanced features, e.g., Android above 4.1.x or iOS above 7.x, equipped with the special activation and control application for the lamp.

Thus, even for controlling one lamp of this kind, some of the modern advantages of this control become apparent, such as maximum comfort and excellent energy efficiency. As a disadvantage, we could mention the separate control of each lamp that would participate in a lighting installation.

From the above, it is easy to understand that a new professional trend in lighting management should provide innovative solutions, be cost-effective, and finally, be user-friendly for the user of the electrical lighting installation.

A widely developing and utilized professional solution for wireless lighting management in modern electrical installations is one where all the lighting system data is "uploaded" to a central cloud service.

Access to such electrical installations is enabled remotely via the internet, from any location and at any time desired by the user/administrator, using their computer, smartphone, tablet, etc.

To connect an electrical installation (e.g., DALI, ZigBee, etc.) to the cloud, it requires the installation of a special communication gateway in it, corresponding to the lighting technique used, which forms the heart of the management system and connects to a WLAN router. In these cases, LED systems are used, such as lamps, strips, etc., of all kinds and types compatible with the aforementioned techniques.

With this gateway, it becomes possible to collect data from the electrical installation (e.g., from DALI or ZigBee devices), process them, and convert them into information via TCP/IP in the cloud, allowing for monitoring and management according to the user’s requirements.

In this lighting management solution, software is required for the parameterization/programming of the lighting installation via a computer, as well as an application for the activation and further control of all its pre-configured functions.

All lighting system data in the cloud! A widely developing and utilized professional solution for wireless lighting management in modern electrical installations.

source: Scientific and Educational Electrical News