Smart Lighting

 The goal of Smart Lighting is to develop a smart lighting system for industrial and domestic use, taking into account visual comfort and energy saving of interior lighting.

The idea is to control the lighting level in an energy efficient way, keeping a desired light level where it is needed, while regulating it to a minimum where not required. In order to achieve this goal, a single control unit is needed for each lamp.

In this way the system can individually control the desired light level, adapting the LED illumination according to the environment in which it is installed, by means of light sensors, motion sensors and a smart control system.

Energy efficiency, is the effort to reduce the amount of energy required to provide products and services.

Energy efficiency and renewable energy are said to be the twin pillars of sustainable energy policies and in the last years they have been supported by intensive research activities.

In many countries energy efficiency is also considered as a national security benefit, because it can be used to reduce the level of energy imports from foreign countries, and may slow down the rate at which domestic energy resources are depleted.

Lighting control is an efficient way to reduce energy consumption and to prevent energy waste, and it can be effectively used in conjunction with LEDs or any other type of lights.

The most common types of lighting controls make use of motion sensors, occupancy sensors and photosensors. Motion and occupancy sensors detect activity within a certain area.

They provide energy saving by automatically turning lights on when someone enters or stays in a room, and reduce lighting energy use by turning lights off soon after the last occupant has left the room.

Photosensors prevent outdoor lights from operating during daylight hours, and offer the possibility to control lights inside the buildings, by measuring ambient lighting levels.

We will try to simulate a complete system in order to evaluate control strategies and to calculate the efficiency of the lighting planning design. Thus, the design of a smart lighting system should provide two important features: a low-level lamp management and control on the one hand to prolong the equipment lifetime, and a trend consumption monitor to provide energy-saving policies on the other one.

In addition, a lighting system should be able to interconnect with other systems for the overall energy management of buildings, for example with the heating or the air conditioning system. Therefore, a reliable and expandable communication interface is needed.

Our goal is to develop a smart lighting system for industrial and domestic use, which integrates a low-level embedded board for Lamp control, a trend consumption monitoring system, and a supervision unit for the monitoring and remote control of the whole lighting infrastructure.

An embedded controller has been used for data acquisition and processing. It can be connected with other systems for buildings management and can detect faulty components. It can also exchange information with the supervision system using different interfaces, i.e., wired or wireless.

Temperature sensors, light sensors and motion sensors will be integrated in the control board, and have been used for retrieving physical measurements.