I
n the not-too-distant future, the time may come
when electrical contractors entertain their
grandchildren with tales of lighting fixtures that
existed for the sole purpose of illumination. Moving
beyond novelty lamps that perform smartphone
tricks, connected lighting 2.0 has arrived, bringing
new notions of the role interior and exterior lumi-
naires can play in larger, building-wide (and even
city-wide) operations. For manufacturers facing a
need for new business models, these changes
cannot come soon enough.
Looking beyond the apps
Just a couple of years ago, tech reviewers were
wowed by app-controlled lamps that users could
dim and colour-shift using a smartphone touch-
screen. As such products have become more
commonplace, developers have begun looking at
lighting systems with an appreciation of a previously
overlooked fact: along with its accompanying power
sources, lighting is almost everywhere in today’s
built environment. As a result, the innovation of
solid-state lighting based on light-emitting diodes
(LEDs) has, in some ways, made individual fixtures
less important when compared to what a collection
of fixtures can offer as a networking platform.
Such rethinking is critical because manufactur-
ers need creativity to add value to long-living LED
products that rarely need replacing and could quick-
ly become commoditised. With features such as
zero-to-100-percent dimming and colour-tempera-
ture shifting into the mainstream, companies are
now looking at the large-scale lighting
upgrades going on in commercial
and office buildings, along with
city streets, as an oppor-
tunity to pivot their busi-
ness focus from manu-
facturing lamps and
fixtures to facilitating
data gathering and
communications. In
fact, some of the
most sophisticated
Teaching old lighting
systems new tricks
by Chuck Ross
15
LiD
MAY/JUN 2016