One of the foundational elements for many cities implementing smart city initiatives is the incorporation of connected streetlights. These fixtures are equipped with LED lights which are designed to communicate through a centralized network, allowing cities to monitor the individual characteristics (luminosity, color, energy usage, activation during public events, and more) of each lamp, leading to major energy costs savings as well as more secure streets.

Connected streetlights are also proving to be the backbone of smart city infrastructure, providing the base infrastructure for 5G and IoT technologies.

One example of this is our implementation with Tondo, bringing thousands of superintelligence LED endpoints to a large city, which has been written about here.

Cities currently consume over 70 percent of the world’s energy supply, a figure which is certain to increase steadily over time.

How does smart lighting fit in and can smart lighting lead the way in shaping the cities of the future?

Tondo, the first wireless DALI Master smart light relay works with our DeviceTone and Cloud of Things platform enabling next-generation “smart lighting” solutions for cities. Tondo is embedding DeviceTone’s edge and flexible CloudSwitch technology, including WiFi, LoRa-Mesh, and ULE integration, to enhance their offerings.

We have been working collaboratively for several years, and have many new, exciting projects underway in 2020 and beyond. Our vision is perfectly aligned with Tondo’s, and the combination of our technologies and experience are making it possible to deliver full, advanced, controlled lighting solutions with benefits including safer streets and buildings, energy usage reduction, and significant cost savings for Tondo’s customers.

What may be the most compelling part of what we are doing with Tondo is enabling Connected Field Service for deployments, meaning the intelligence end-points can send a signal to the agency responsible for maintaining the streetlights when a lamp may need replacing. Rather than going through a complex process of having a citizen call in to report a non-working streetlight, and having a dispatch worker have to enter and follow a trouble-ticket, a message goes immediately from the endpoint to the appropriate tech so the issue can be fixed immediately.

In addition, our Connected Field Service capabilities can include remote break/fix capabilities, for example resetting the streetlight to see if this fixes the issue without having to send a technician to the site.

The DeviceTone connected device management technology has been embedded into Tondo’s wireless lighting solutions, making it faster for Tondo to market future-proof, and economically cost-effective lighting solutions which can bundle Connected Field Service into their offering.

DeviceTone technology includes highly secure Plug and Play connectivity firmware, gateway control, and access to robust IoT cloud infrastructure.  DeviceTone’s CloudSwitch technology will enable these smart products to communicate with any IoT cloud using any network protocol from WiFi to LoRa.

Of approximately 300 million streetlights across the world, only one in ten are using high-efficiency LEDs and only 2 percent are connected according to analyst reports.

Integration of smart sensors can deliver energy savings of up to 80 percent, significantly increasing positive impact.

For cities, businesses, and society, in addition to the obvious benefits associated with energy efficiency, many benefits come from smart lighting which was not even a consideration ten years ago, including more efficient, digitally-enabled field service to keep those lights on and to support IoT hubs which integrate smart LED lighting solutions, but extend to additional sensors, which is where our Genie offering comes in. You can learn more about Genie, available on the Microsoft Azure marketplace here.

Similar Blogs