Lighting has moved from traditional lighting based on tungsten filament lamps and gas discharge lamps to LED lighting based on semiconductor devices, which coincides with the era of mobile Internet leaping into the IoT of the Internet of Things. The combination of the two has generated endless beautiful reverie and innovation, creating a promising smart lighting era based on the Internet of Things for lighting people.
The Roadmap for Lighting Development is divided into five stages: traditional high-efficiency lighting, LED lighting, intelligent lighting, service-oriented and upgradable intelligent lighting, and human centered (HcL) lighting. The value and focus of lighting are: high energy efficiency, dynamic adjustability, IoT application and data analysis, circular economy, and user friendliness. It can be seen that the development goal of lighting is people-oriented lighting, which not only focuses on the visual effects of lighting, but also pays more attention to non visual effects. For intelligent lighting in the IoT era, more attention is paid to the application of IoT data, upgradable and interchangeable environmentally friendly recycling, as well as intelligent lighting that can provide services and operations. Below, combined with GLA’s lighting development roadmap, we will analyze several development trends of intelligent lighting.
Development Trend 1: The important focus of intelligent lighting is on people-oriented lighting
The core of intelligent lighting is to provide the correct lighting to the lighting target at the right time and place, including appropriate illumination, appropriate color temperature, appropriate color, appropriate lighting duration, through lighting switches, dimming, color adjustment, etc.. Different colors of light have different effects on the human body. Some colors can promote sleep, some colors can make people more calm, and some colors can make people sober. It is best to use different lighting in different environments, which can regulate people’s health and emotions. This is “people-oriented lighting”, which is the direction and goal of the development of intelligent lighting. Intelligent lighting should not only be what we see with our eyes, but also what we think with our hearts and emotions. Taking architectural lighting as an example, there is a shift from focusing on the development of green buildings to focusing on healthy buildings.
Development Trend 2: Appropriate Connection is the First Step of Smart Lighting
Intelligent lighting requires control of lighting. Firstly, a connection must be established between the lighting equipment and the control equipment. Connection is the first step towards intelligent lighting. In the era of the Internet of Things, there are many connection technologies, including bus based wired technology, short-range wireless connection technology, and wide area network wireless technology spanning thousands of meters.
Smart homes need to consider ease of operation, safety, and convenient full connectivity. The mainstream communication methods for smart homes now include Bluetooth, Wi-fi, e ZigBee. Bluetooth and WiFi have relatively low costs and can meet the needs of simple smart home systems, while the communication protocol used for complex smart home systems is ZigBee.
In the application scenarios of intelligent buildings, as intelligent lighting systems generally need to be linked with building automation systems, bus based connection methods have been widely used in building automation, such as KnX, BAcnet, or Dynet, which can be used to control lighting. No entanto, for lighting equipment, DALI has become the preferred lighting connection technology due to its simplicity, reliability, and ease of installation. Wireless networking does not require modifying building wiring, making the networking process simpler and greatly reducing installation costs. In today’s advanced wireless communication technology, many wireless communication technology companies have launched their own smart building solutions, and wireless communication technology is more important for the intelligent layout of buildings.
In urban road application scenarios, more attention is paid to the long-distance, reliability, and safety of connections. Power line carrier (PLC) or short-range RF can be used for local connections, converged in control cabinets or gateways, and then remotely connected with the help of the operator’s communication network. After 2017, the development of LPWAN technology, especially the flourishing development of NB-IoT technology in China, has made the connection of street lamps more convenient. NB-IoT, due to the use of nationally licensed dedicated frequency bands and the construction of reliable networks by operators, will become the preferred choice for road lighting connections. Other LPWAN technologies such as LoRa, sigfox, UnB, ZEtA, etc.. will be beneficial supplements. The improvement of mMTC in 5G may unify the world of outdoor road lighting connections.
The landscape lighting control application scenario, which is very popular in China, uses lighting to reflect the unique characteristics of each landscape or landmark, without emphasizing the lighting function. It requires real-time control of the dynamic changes of the lighting fixtures to create an atmosphere. The communication protocol for the connection of lighting is generally DMX512/RDM, or Ki Net, Art Net, etc..
Development trend 3: Upgradeability is an essential step in intelligent lighting
Society is developing towards a more civilized, environmentally friendly, and intelligent direction, with increasing demands for resource utilization. In this trend, the rational use of energy is crucial, and intelligent lighting is an important step towards social intelligence.
Taking intelligent road lighting as an example, intelligent road lamps include intelligent road controllers, sensors, power supplies, and light sources. Their modularity allows them to be reused, and the standardization of their connections and installation interfaces is a very important first step in supporting the circular economy. Modularity and interface standardization can make road lighting smart ready, especially standardized installation interfaces make it easy to install or upgrade IoT control technology in road lamps now and in the future, allowing components to be modified and replaced on site without dismantling the lamps, and supporting widely used dimming protocols such as DALI and 0/1-10V. Zhaoga has been making long-term efforts in the standardization of modular LED light sources. In order to support the development trend of intelligent lighting, the new Zhaoga strategy proposed supports the circular economy and defines the intelligent road controller installation interface (Zhaoga book18), which is small in size, low in cost, pluggable, and interchangeable. It will become a universal interface for the installation of street light controllers worldwide.
Development trend 4: Service oriented and operational intelligent lighting system is the core
By utilizing the communication connection technology of the Internet of Things, lighting equipment and related sensing devices are connected to collect data on human information, environmental information, and the operation information of lighting equipment, and control lighting equipment according to human needs or sensing information. In intelligent lighting systems, the human-machine interaction platform, data processing platform, and device control platform are the core of the intelligent lighting system, and they are also the operational platform for providing lighting services. This operating platform is generally built on cloud computing.
Taking intelligent road lighting as an example, the cloud based road lighting management interactive platform provides parameter settings, safety management, control management interfaces, and environmental information collection for road lighting fixtures. It can provide control management services for road lighting (switches, dimming, color adjustment, etc.), asset management services (equipment operation status monitoring, rapid maintenance), and data analysis services (reports, statistics, predictions).
Development trend 5: Beyond lighting is the leap from intelligent lighting to smart lighting
From a technical perspective, intelligent lighting mainly emphasizes rule-based control of lighting and simple automatic control based on environmental factors and human needs. Smart lighting makes lighting more intelligent, capable of thinking and learning like intelligent organisms, with emotions, making lighting smarter and warmer. It also needs to be combined with big data processing technology and wait for the improvement of artificial intelligence technology and industry, surpassing lighting itself and achieving the development from intelligent lighting to smart lighting.
From the perspective of the objects of connection control, in the era of the Internet of Things where everything is interconnected, anything is possible. Intelligent lighting not only provides people with a means of lighting, but can also interact and control with other systems. Light has become a new intelligent language, providing a wider range of services beyond lighting.
In smart home lighting, smart lighting can interact with other smart home systems such as security systems, entertainment systems (speakers, televisions, etc.) through voice interaction, and apply AI technology to make the system more intelligent. It can enable seamless interaction between people, lighting, and home devices (appliances), making people’s lives more convenient, rich, and safe; In commercial buildings and large supermarkets, ubiquitous intelligent lighting systems can be combined with Ethernet communication infrastructure to perfectly integrate intelligent lighting systems and Ethernet IoT communication systems through Power over Ethernet (PoE). Além disso, by combining visible light communication VLc, high-speed and secure LiFi wireless communication access can be provided, or visible light positioning services can be utilized to make your shopping more convenient and interesting.
Intelligent lighting not only provides human centered lighting in environments such as homes, buildings, and urban roads, but also extends to providing lighting for all things, such as animal and plant lighting. This is also a broad application field, but more research is needed on light formulas and new lighting measurement methods for different animal and plant lighting.
