Wireless lighting control

Wireless lighting control 

As LED smart lighting becomes more and more complex, wireless lighting control becomes more and more accessible and user-friendly over time. The core idea behind wireless smart lighting is to put electricity first and foremost by tailoring the working environment according to the needs of the workplace.

Wireless lighting control is usually controlled by an employee who can use an app (such as the Casambi iOS or Android app) or an external handheld remote control. As a typical office, meetings may need to be held in the board of directors, which requires everyone to look at the big screen. The lights can be dimmed to ensure that the glare of the screen is minimized, thereby maintaining the comfort of all participants. Similarly, lighting can focus on specific individuals, while smart lighting can create a variety of spotlights that provide proper attention at the push of a button.

It should be noted that the wireless lighting control is easy to install because it utilizes existing wires and power feeds. No need for professional businessmen to rewire the entire house, spend their time all the time, and turn the workplace into a construction site. Where you don't want to cut the wall for cable laying, wireless dimmers, switches and keyboards are the ideal control interface. Wireless lighting is usually beneficial for retrofit projects and is more cost-effective than retrofitting wired systems. A typical automatic lighting control application involves the interaction of input devices (such as photoelectric sensors) and power controllers (such as switches). Although these components can be integrated into the same device (such as wall-mounted room occupancy sensors), they are usually installed separately. To interact, the input device must send a control signal to the controller, and then the controller controls the load. The traditional main method is to send control signals along dedicated low-voltage wiring (usually called "hard wiring"). One of the newest methods that are rapidly becoming popular is to communicate using radio waves propagating through the air, eliminating the need for dedicated control lines.

The resulting advantages enable advanced lighting control with greater installation flexibility, good scalability, and lower labor installation cost, suitable for many applications but particularly hard-to-wire applications, exterior area lighting, non-accessible ceilings, hard ceilings, asbestos abasement issues, spaces requiring reconfiguration, and brick-and-mortar existing buildings.
This article, adapted from the new Education Express course EE301: Networked Wireless Lighting Controls, provides a basic understanding of wireless control, including functionality, benefits, protocols and topologies.

Wireless lighting controls have the basic functionality as hardwired advanced control systems, providing benefits such as energy cost savings and flexibility. 

Wireless lighting control systems consist of luminaire controllers (also called relay modules, power packs or dimming modules), typically installed in or on a luminaire or in a junction box; input devices (e.g., sensors and switches); and management devices including gateways (which function similarly to wireless routers) and servers.