INTRODUCTION TO

SMART
LIGHTING

www.silvair.com
White Paper by Seed Labs

As the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to proliferate, connected solutions

are affecting more and more areas of our lives, and the lighting sector in
particular is feeling this influence. While a simple phone-controlled light
bulb has been available for quite some time, more recently, new technolo-
gies have emerged that will radically change the way we use and manage
our lighting systems and the energy they consume.

» While there is clearly a lot of buzz around smart lighting these days, there
is also a fair amount of confusion and uncertainty. IoT-driven innovation «
is adding a whole new dimension to what is already quite a complex
subject, enabling previously “dumb” systems with features that go well
beyond just lighting up a space. The vast range of different smart lighting
technologies, platforms and solutions does not make it any easier for
manufacturers to decide where to invest.

In this white paper, we will try to cut through some of the noise to set out
the real value that smart lighting systems can deliver. We will also analyze
the potential impact of these developments on the lighting industry, and
share some of the lessons we’ve learned while developing and testing
various smart lighting solutions over the last few years.

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White Paper by Seed Labs | Introduction

Introduction To say that lighting plays an important role in our lives would be an
underestimation. Much has been said about the importance of proper
arrangement of artificial lighting both in residential and commercial
settings and numerous studies show that lighting has a profound effect
on our mood, health, productivity and comfort. In the retail environment,
light can directly influence customers’ perception of a product, impact
the amount of time they spend in a given space, and ultimately affect
their purchase decisions.

Lighting is becoming the perfect setting for the much-hyped Internet of

Things for a number of reasons. The first one is the rapid global transition
to the LED technology which is happening right in front of our eyes. Not
only has the widespread adoption of LEDs introduced a significant im-
provement in the quality, efficiency and longevity of light sources, but it
has also allowed the integration of digital technologies into lighting. Being
digital devices themselves, LEDs are inherently compatible with wireless
communication technologies and smart lighting controls. Furthermore,
the ubiquity of lighting infrastructure across all kinds of commercial, in-
stitutional and residential spaces makes it ideal as a wireless platform for
gathering essential data and putting that data to work to improve various
processes and drive down costs. We believe that smart technologies will
fundamentally change the business model of the lighting industry and
force all serious market participants to join the revolution or be left on
the sidelines. However, this collision of the worlds of IoT and lighting is
still in its infancy, making it difficult to predict which of the current trends
or standards will come to dominate.

» What is clear though, is that manufacturers in the lighting industry who

don’t want to get wiped out from the market must keep an eye on the
major disruptors that are expected to reshuffle the rules of the game in
the coming years. «

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White Paper by Seed Labs | Why does smart lighting matter?

1 Why does smart

lighting matter?

Smart technologies have the potential to bring a massive breath of fresh

air to the lighting sector which has recently been dealing with a number
of challenges. While the LED revolution has opened many doors for light-
ing manufacturers and end users alike, it also made the lighting business
much more demanding. One of LEDs’ key qualities, namely longevity, pos-
es a serious challenge for manufacturers. Traditional bulbs were fragile
and more importantly, their lifespan was much shorter. Replacement was
a huge driver of industry profits but the widespread adoption of LEDs
has changed this drastically. With their general life expectancy of tens
of thousands hours, the stream of replacement orders suddenly started
running dry.

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White Paper by Seed Labs | Why does smart lighting matter?

The technology shift towards LEDs also shook up the balance of power
in the lighting business. Manufacturers of semiconductor technologies
entered the scene and immediately exerted their influence on shaping
prices, a move that not only eroded market share for the major players,
» but also reduced their profit margins. Amid downward-trending prices
and limited price competition opportunities, the ability to provide
groundbreaking value-added features has emerged as the best way to
gain competitive advantage. And since connectivity enables additional «
revenue-generating services, a gradual transition towards smart solutions
becomes a natural direction for the entire lighting business.

» Technology market intelligence company ABI Research predicts that

throughout the coming years, smart LED revenues will account for an
increasing part of total LED revenues, climbing to an impressive 30% of
the total market by 2020. With the constantly growing market penetration
of LEDs themselves, we believe that smart lighting is set to be a thriving
business for years to come. «

The integration of digital technologies to create “smart” lighting systems

out of previously “dumb” systems has led to the idea of “Lighting 2.0”, the
idea that lighting can now communicate and interact with its environment
and the people or things in it. The opportunities that this offers are only
beginning to emerge, and are expected to increase in range and scope as
the LED revolution progresses. Early examples of this symbiosis can be
seen particularly well in the case of retrofit projects. Deploying wireless
lighting controls can significantly reduce installation costs for building
owners and open up new possibilities for lighting designers. With the
enormous flexibility of smart lighting solutions, they can now totally re-
vamp the previous lighting systems while putting significantly less effort
in overcoming the architectural challenges associated with traditional
wired controls.

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White Paper by Seed Labs | Why does smart lighting matter?

» However, we believe that on their own, even the smartest devices cannot
radically change the way we use and manage our lighting environments, «
and are not capable of producing significant benefits on a global scale.
» The real value is to be found in entire ecosystems of connected devices «
that will open up new possibilities challenging the traditional lighting
paradigm and turning lighting infrastructure into a new delivery platform
for different types of services.

» This will further accelerate the maturation of the global smart lighting
market which, according to a report published recently by Transparency
Market Research, will be growing at a compound annual growth rate of
15.9% between 2014 and 2020, reaching some USD 56.6 billion by the end
of that period. «

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White Paper by Seed Labs | What’s going to change?

2 What’s going
to change?

For years, the physical electrical circuitry has determined the way lighting
systems are designed, used and managed. A smart lighting environment
is radically different in that it allows wires to be replaced with wireless
communication, a change capable of revolutionizing the way we interact
with the lighting infrastructure.

This means that a wireless switch can be moved freely around the space
to fit with current needs, but it can also be customized to control any
number or arrangement of lights or devices. Any smart lighting setup
can be completely reconfigured whenever desired, so that a new lamp
or set of lamps can join a given lighting scene or group with just a few
clicks, without interfering with advanced building management systems
or the disruption of installing new wiring. This represents an enormous
time saving, particularly for the owners/operators of all types of retail or
exhibition spaces where lighting systems have to be reconfigured on a
regular basis.

Apart from ease of installation and control, a more transformative fea-

ture offered by smart lighting to building owners and operators is that
it significantly facilitates the maintenance of complex lighting systems.
Any smart devices, including lamps, are capable of providing real-time
feedback regarding their status and operation to a central system. Imag-
ine a large hotel or museum with thousands of lights – how valuable
would it be if any operational anomalies were automatically identified

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White Paper by Seed Labs | What’s going to change?

and reported to whoever is taking care of the entire system maintenance?

In fact, the data that can be reported goes far beyond whether a particular
bulb is working or not at a given moment; smart lamps have the capability
of constantly monitoring their primary operational parameters, such as
lamp temperature, power consumption or color temperature, which al-
lows early detection of problems and monitoring of performance against
manufacturers’ guarantees.

It is commonly cited that lighting represents a large proportion of the

costs of commercial, institutional and residential buildings. For this
reason, as well as due to increasingly stringent regulations concerning
» energy efficiency, smart lighting has a major part to play in the ongoing
transformation towards low-emission economy. In addition to custom- «
izable wireless switches that can be assigned to any set of lamps in
order to optimize ad-hoc lighting management, energy efficiency can be
further increased by the use of wireless low-power motion and occupancy
sensors. An intelligent network of sensors, lamps and switches can be
easily configured to deliver “enough” light exactly when it is needed. Such
sensor-based automation systems are already in existence particularly
in the office environment, but they are complex and require specialist
» knowledge and experience to set up. We believe that the easy connectiv-
ity and interoperability of smart devices, combined with the extremely
low power needs of wireless sensors and switches, will bring these more
complex control strategies, such as daylight harvesting or the creation of
specific scenes throughout the day, within reach of more people. «

These are only some very core features that come with smart luminaires
and we are only just starting to explore the possibilities offered by the
implementation of connected lighting solutions. Early applications in the
office or industrial environment include lighting that could help dissemi-
nate warning messages in the event of an emergency, or show the way to
the nearest emergency exit. In restaurants or hotels, managers, staff and
guests could be given different levels of control over lights, allowing a
unique, personalised experience to be created for guests. Retailers could
easily setup and reconfigure lighting scenes in their premises to display
their products in a vibrant and engaging manner, and also deploy Visible
Light Communication (VLC) technology to directly engage their customers

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White Paper by Seed Labs | What’s going to change?

even further. In retail, where lighting often plays a key role in overall
shopping experience, smart devices are capable of delivering numerous
extra qualities that will allow brick-and-mortar shops to compete with
onlines stores more effectively. With more and more IoT-based solutions
expected to come on to the mainstream market in the near future, the
range of potential applications will grow even further as wireless switches
and bulbs form networks with other devices and systems, bringing even
more automation and comfort to our lives.
The flexibility offered by smart lighting solves another major problem
faced by the owners, users and specifiers of lighting systems, namely
frequently changing regulations. Complying with new and changing codes
and standards becomes so much easier when a lighting system can be
configured to comply simply by updating the software. So for example,
when the building code regarding how long a light can remain on once a
hotel bathroom has been vacated is updated, in a smart lighting system,
all the bathroom lamps in a building can be adjusted with the new value
centrally, with one click.
There are no doubts that smart lighting is capable of generating enor-
mous benefits along the entire value chain and that we are just at the
beginning of this journey. What is clear even now though is that in order
to realize this potential, two key factors are needed: interoperability and
ease of use.

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White Paper by Seed Labs | Lessons learned and pitfalls to avoid

3. Lessons learned
and pitfalls to avoid

A quick glance at the fledgling smart lighting market reveals that there is
little consensus regarding which technologies are the most suitable for
the next-generation lighting systems, and we think that this will be the
case for quite some time yet, as there are major differences between the
» protocols that originate at the very core of the concept. Just like in the
entire IoT segment, lighting manufacturers are building their connected
devices and ecosystems around different wireless communication pro-
tocols, which by itself constitutes a serious barrier to the overall growth
of the market. «

At Seed Labs, we have long been strong believers in the potential of

Bluetooth Smart to be the perfect enabler for smart lighting ecosystems.
The reasons for this are numerous. In terms of the technology, we like
» the low energy consumption of Bluetooth devices, which allows for long «
battery life, and the fact that it is found in every smartphone and is
already trusted by consumers. Most importantly, the development of the
Bluetooth protocol and the standards that drive the software develop-
» ment are controlled by one entity, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group
(SIG), the body that oversees the licensing of Bluetooth technologies to «
manufacturers. It is this arrangement that allows all Bluetooth devices to
talk to each other, regardless of who made them.

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White Paper by Seed Labs | Lessons learned and pitfalls to avoid

Recent developments seem to confirm that betting on Bluetooth was the

right move. While the market is still far from any sort of standardization,
Bluetooth Smart is emerging as the protocol of choice for a growing
number of participants.
We believe this trend will keep accelerating, particularly once the mesh
networking standard is officially adopted by the Bluetooth SIG. Mesh
networking will be the development enabling truly smart lighting sys-
tems that are not constrained by distance or the number of nodes in a
network. Once this standard is formalized, we will see increasing numbers
of reliable building-wide networks of smart devices deployed in any en-
vironment, regardless of size.

» The new Bluetooth Smart Mesh Standard will allow any standard-com-
pliant devices to communicate and interoperate seamlessly, straight out
of the box. This will benefit end users and vendors alike, and strengthen
the position of Bluetooth Smart in the race for dominance among wire-
less communication protocols. Work on the mesh protocol is now well «
underway within the Bluetooth Smart Mesh Working Group which was
established in early 2015. With the major industry players involved in
these discussions, we believe that development will proceed rapidly. In
fact, according to the lastest news from Bluetooth SIG, the adoption of the
mesh networking standard can be expected at some point in 2016, so the
future of Bluetooth Smart in IoT applications looks brighter than ever, and
the experience Seed Labs has already gained both in mesh networking
and the Bluetooth Smart protocol itself positions us at the very forefront
of the approaching smart lighting deluge.

The Silvair solution developed by Seed Labs allows connectivity and

interoperability of individual devices, enabled by a tiny low-power,
» high-performance Bluetooth module installed inside the device during «
the manufacturing process and linked to the manufacturer’s MCU via a
simple interface. The Silvair module consists of both hardware (a standard
» chip) and our own proprietary Silvair software stack which enhances and «
extends a standard Bluetooth Smart peripheral stack, while preserving
compatibility with Bluetooth’s most recent core specification. We are
putting a lot of effort to ensure that our module reliably supports all of
the smart features mentioned above; from mesh networking, through

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White Paper by Seed Labs | Lessons learned and pitfalls to avoid

user-defined groups and preset lighting scenes, to multi-user support or

operational feedback from individual devices.

» We are also adding over-the-air update capability, an important feature «

that will open up the possibility of delivering new types of services by
our manufacturing customers to their end users. For example, it will allow
new functionalities to be added without the need to replace or modify the
device itself, or diagnostic reports to be sent back to the manufacturer
via a connection with the Cloud. In addition, we are developing our own
» proprietary logic-based system that will allow all elements of a smart «
network to work together smoothly.

» At the foundation of our philosophy behind wireless connectivity in the

lighting category is the belief that managing smart lighting environment
must be as easy and intuitive as possible. The struggle to make our devic- «
es smart makes sense only if its ultimate goal is more comfort and more
freedom for those engaging with them, and a financial benefit for those
making them. After all, the reason why we want these devices to be smart
is because we want them to address certain problems that normally we
would have to address ourselves. This is the point of smart automation
– to shift workload from humans onto computers

So for us at Seed Labs, it is all about user experience. We are working hard
to ensure that our solutions are as simple as possible, whether in terms
of integration, manufacturing, everyday use, configuration, reconfigura-
tion and maintenance. This is also why we consider Bluetooth to be the
protocol of choice for enabling wireless connectivity in the smart lighting
environment; a network of Bluetooth devices does not need a central
hub or extra hardware to be fully operational, which is a major difference
compared to numerous other technologies available on the market, such
as Z-Wave or ZigBee. Suppliers of connected lighting products employ-
ing these standards are forced to build their smart ecosystems around
control hubs. Not only do they add complexity, but they also represent
single points of failure in their networks, so once a hub fails, the entire
network fails as well.
And it’s not only in the network topology where the importance of sim-
plicity and intuitiveness often seems to be underestimated. It’s hard to

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White Paper by Seed Labs | Lessons learned and pitfalls to avoid

expect end users to naturally shift from simple traditional on/off switches
and dimmers to complicated and feature-loaded on-wall LCD controls.
We believe such an approach to be a major underestimation of the UX
challenges accompanying the introduction of solutions that are turning
upside down the more-than-century-old lighting control paradigm.

Adding complexity at every step of smart lighting experience has its

consequences. This may simply be in the form of low-level irritation of
customers, but more radical examples include lighting systems which are
so smart that end users are unable to manage them without help from
dedicated specialists trained by the provider of a particular solution.

Our approach to smart lighting controls is radically different. There is no

reason not to make things as easy and intuitive as possible if technologies
allowing this are already here. As opposed to on-wall LCD displays and
multi-mode controls, we believe light should be controlled with devices
that are not much more complicated than those we have been using for
» decades. Lighting controls should be fully customizable and they should
be wireless. Anything else does not take full advantage of the potential
of smart technologies available today. With the extremely low power «
demand of Bluetooth Smart modules, a tiny coin cell can easily keep
such devices running for years.
Another advantage of Bluetooth is that it is supported by every smart-
phone on the market, making a phone app all that is needed to introduce
ad-hoc adjustments to the local lighting network, e.g. to change the
number of bulbs controlled with a particular switch, or to correct a faulty
arrangement made by an electrician. Of course, the phone can also be
used to control smart bulbs directly. Both the wireless switch and the
phone app are extremely important links of the smart ecosystem - after
all, these are the contact points through which end users will be inter-
acting with their smart lighting environments.

Based on our discussions with numerous manufacturers of lighting and

lighting controls, we believe we are able to deliver solutions that address
the fears and expectations surrounding the smart lighting revolution.
Being fully aware of the difficulties associated with the adoption of such
groundbreaking technologies, we support manufacturers throughout all

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White Paper by Seed Labs | Lessons learned and pitfalls to avoid

of the stages of implementation of our connected solutions into their

products. This, along with the flexibility and scalability of our Blue-
tooth-powered connected lighting ecosystem, sharply lowers the costs
they need to incur in order to make their products smart, while at the
same time radically improving time to market and minimizing product
development risks.

Time is key to success in this vibrant environment, as the next 6-12

months will see rapid change in smart lighting technology. With more
uncertainties than answers, navigating the hectic smart lighting space
is an enormous challenge. The key to success is keeping on top of the
available and emerging technologies and what they mean for your busi-
ness. At Seed Labs, our role is to help guide our customers on this journey
towards the smart future, by providing extensive knowledge and expertise,
as well as reliable solutions, to every manufacturer fully involved in the
lighting revolution.

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White Paper by Seed Labs | About Seed Labs

About Seed Labs

Seed Labs is a wireless technology provider that empowers manufacturers

to build cutting edge products and enrich the experience of users in a
software-defined environment. Seed Labs’ technology provides comfort,
efficiency and safety to end users through data collected from connected
infrastructure.

For more information about Seed Labs please visit www.silvair.com

or follow our LinkedIn page.

To request further information please contact:

Marek Wierzbicki
Phone: +1 415 6969 357
Email: marek@seedlabs.io

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