Lighting Is Ushering In The Internet Of Buildings

The LED revolution is over. To no one’s surprise, LEDs have won. Solid-state lighting is changing how we light the world, successfully displacing traditional illumination sources across every part of the global lighting market. Over the next few years, billions of sockets will be in play.
This transition has kicked off a new phase of LED adoption — the race to connect every socket. The stakes are high for consumers and vendors alike. A trifecta of qualities — ubiquity, network connectivity and access to power — make intelligent lights a perfect platform on which the promise of the Internet of Things can start to come to life.

Behind the scenes, this race to own sockets is really a contest to see who will control the infrastructure of the IoT across our built environment. These intelligent, networked, sensor-laden lights of the near future will form the central nervous system of every smart building.
Beyond simple illumination, this “Internet of Buildings” built on top of next-generation lighting systems will forever change the way we interact with the spaces in which we live.
In your kids’ elementary school, biometric sensors will track students’ alertness, subtly shifting spectrum to automatically boost their focus any time it starts to wane.
Around the corner at the grocery store, beacons embedded in connected fixtures will track every movement you (or your mobile phone) make — from produce to dairy — beaming coupons at you along the way.

Even the lights around your home will be intelligent, learning from and responding to the steady stream of data generated by your wearable devices — using light to help de-stress you after a long day or to perk you up on a cold, dark winter morning.
All of these scenarios (and more like them) are just around the corner. Intelligent lighting will be one of the first markets to realize the dream of the Internet of Things — millions (if not billions) of connected devices, silently sensing and acting on our behalf.
So how have simple sources of illumination evolved into such an IoT success story?

While the LED revolution may be over, the story of intelligent lighting is just beginning.

It all starts with the LEDs themselves. As low-voltage semiconductor devices, they have always had a natural affinity for digital control. Unlike the inherently analog and high-voltage light sources of the past, LEDs and micro controllers play well together. In the early 2000s, the first generation of solid-state lighting manufacturers took advantage of this to deliver spectacular color-changing LED lighting installations all around the world.

Read More:  http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/20/how-intelligent-lighting-is-ushering-in-the-internet-of-buildings/

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