Android-based Remote Lighting Control Solution for Buildings with Energy Saving Capabilities

Lighting accounts for nearly 38 percent of the annual total energy consumed by a modern, commercial building. Although most building managers prefer to rezone their lighting systems and circuits to optimize area illumination and reduce OPEX, it only contributes marginally towards reducing utility costs. While building management innovators view emerging solutions, such as photocells, occupancy sensors, light control switches, and relay signals, as a means to attain sustainability goals, intelligent lighting control systems will be a major contributor in reducing OPEX drastically.

Problem:

Develop an effective intelligent lighting control system with network interfacing capabilities and the ability to remotely configure lighting devices in a building, including switching them on or off and controlling brightness levels through the day.

Challenges:

The L&T Technology Services (LTTS) team was required to address two major challenges while developing the intelligent lighting control system.

First, manage multiple items, such as sensors, lighting devices, controllers, and the end mobile hardware platform. All of these had to be integrated using multiple interfacing protocols while ensuring that the end mobile device could seamlessly communicate with them.

Second, develop an intuitive and user-friendly interface, simplifying remote lighting control.

Solution:

LTTS configured the building hierarchy and ensured that subnets could be discovered through nodes and data could be transferred to the database for seamless communication. For internal lighting control device communication, LTTS used a CAN stack, and for communicating with the building management system, they integrated a BACnet stack. To develop an effective remote lighting control system, LTTS:

• Defined action items for channels and group of channels and formed a preset group, where the light levels could be raised, lowered or dimmed
• Provided options for an alternate mode and press or release that could support multiple interfaces
• Added buttons for the screen and provided support for slider gestures, to enhance user experience in the device’s native system and web application
• Installed energy saving daylight harvesting system that could be configured through a discrete occupancy and photocell interface

Highlight:

The lighting control software is based on the Android operating system powered by a multicore processor and microcontroller to support multiple high-bandwidth data streams. It supports mobile devices with capacitive/resistive touch screen and is available in two screen sizes. The application is developed on a Java-based framework and works through web and native app interfaces.

Results:

• Digital Connectivity - LTTS incorporated native digital control algorithms into the lighting control system, allowing users to utilize Ethernet, serial or CAN for communication.
• Energy Savings – LTTS equipped the system with data analytics capabilities to monitor, predict, and manage usage, resulting in significant energy savings over time.

Keywords: Remote Lighting Control Solution, Digital Connectivity, Energy Saving, LTTS, ARC Advisory Group.