Lighting in Design May-June 2016

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

LiD

MAY/JUN 2016