SS Electrical Projects – St Annes Sponsorship News

by | Feb 17, 2022 | NEWS | 0 comments

SS Electrical Projects Sponsorship News | What Is Bluetooth Low Energy Lighting?

Feb 17, 2022 | NEWS | 0 comments

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Welcome on Board SS Electrical Projects

We are thrilled to announce that SS Electrical Projects will be sponsoring our second event of the 2022 tour at St Annes Old Links.

SS Electrical Projects are a design and installation company operating in the domestic, commercial and retail sectors.

Specialising in Bluetooth low energy lighting controls, SS Electrical projects are experts in installing Casambi lighting control systems after becoming one of only four UK certified commissioning partners in 2019.

Although specialising in Bluetooth low energy lighting controls, SS Electrical Projects designs, supplies and installs all elements of electrical systems too.

Happy to fulfil with any electrical installation task, ranging from small jobs, all the way through to major multidisciplined projects. 

For further information, contact Steve Sewell at steve@ssepltd.com.

Bluetooth Low Energy Lighting Controls

As SS Electrical Projects has extensive experience across all areas of electrical systems, they are happy to fulfil any electrical requirements that you may have. However, as they specialise in Bluetooth low energy lighting controls (specifically Casambi), you might be wondering what they are?
Casambi App Used to control entire lighting system in a room

So What Are Bluetooth Low Energy Lighting Systems?

The standard Bluetooth that we all know and love is used for continuous high data applications, such as listening to music through wireless headphones or transferring files between two devices.
Classic Bluetooth vs Bluetooth Low energy (BLE)
Bluetooth low energy (BLE) is similar, but the difference lies in how they distribute data; BLE only exchanges small packets of data (100 times less than classic Bluetooth), which means that devices can run on battery power for years at a time.
This existing Bluetooth protocol which has been optimised now has practical use for low energy applications such as controlling smart lighting.

It overcomes the drawbacks of communication protocols such as Wi-Fi and ZigBee, and it can be combined with other technologies to make smart lighting even smarter.

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) control has finally reached the technological capability to deliver the level of performance everybody in the lighting industry could only ever dream about.
Casambi app being used on a smartphone
Casambi, arguably the world leaders in BLE lighting control systems, have harnessed BLE technology to develop state-of-the-art smart lights that can be controlled from mobile devices or programmed to respond to data from other devices and online services. 

This means your entire smarting light system can adjust according to the current weather, the location of your car as it pulls up outside the front door, or the TV being switched on. 

With smart lighting, the possibilities are endless.

What Are the Benefits of Using BLE for My Lighting System?

No Wires Necessary

BLE lighting controls drastically reduce deployment costs by eliminating the need to pull control wires, while also being more easily reconfigurable and flexible compared with wired systems. In addition to this, equipment can be placed where wired solutions would be problematic, if not impossible, due to distance restrictions or accessibility.

Lower Installation and Running Costs

Reduced labour and material costs, as well as minimal disruption to business operations during installation and ongoing maintenance, combine to save building owners and managers a lot of money, especially in retrofits.

“Energy savings is an important aspect of lighting. Adding a Bluetooth low energy lighting control system will further save energy on top of energy efficient LED.”
Stephen Zhou

Vice president, McWong International

Smart Lighting and Beacons

Imagine returning home after work, walking into your front room, and suddenly a pre-set scene accustomed to your personal preferences activates, followed by a lighting system that follows you as you move through a building. 
When incorporated within retail shops, shoppers who pause by a display of shoes in a store can be sent a discount code, a link to a promotional video, or an app that lets them try out how the shoes look with different outfits. Or you might use a beacon to inform shoppers who look at a particular display about an upcoming in-store event.

This is all possible using beacon technology, which can detect when a BLE device (any smartphone or smartwatch) enters or leaves the area around the beacon. 

iBeacon is a type of beacon technology created by Apple which also enables location awareness possibilities for iOS apps.

Casambi has integrated iBeacon technology in all Casambi’s products, therefore any Casambi node can work as an iBeacon sender and, no additional investment needs to be done for these services.

No Single Point of Failure

Existing smart lighting systems often make use of Wi-Fi or ZigBee, and while they perform the job, they also rely on a single communication hotspot. If this hotspot were to malfunction or go offline for periods of time, the entire smart system will be non-functional. 
Diagram of Wi-Fi and ZigBee Versus Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)
As Casambi’s system makes use of Bluetooth low energy (already built-in to in smartphones smartwatches and tablets) instead of flaky Wi-Fi or ZigBee, you remove the need for a dedicated gateway to control the lights, thereby reducing complexity and taking out single points of failure.

Reliability

For years, it has been commonly believed that wireless networks cannot match with wired infrastructure in terms of signal reliability. While they have a lot of benefits, they haven’t always been able to provide the dependability that business and industrial settings, particularly commercial lighting, require.
But recent developments in Bluetooth technology are now revolutionising the way in which networked lighting control systems are deployed. 

Which BLE lighting Control System Should I Choose?

There are many companies specialising in Bluetooth Low Energy lighting controls, and all have their own advantages. However, Casambi are world leaders in BLE lighting control systems for a reason; from the biggest Bluetooth-based lighting ecosystem (thousands of compatible luminaires, drivers, and control components), to their intuitive app that’s functionality is way ahead of its time.
Here are a few things that you can do with Casambi’s lighting control systems:
SS Electrical WiFi Infrastructure
  • Grouping – Grouping works with the same gestures as grouping apps in your smart device. After grouping, all the luminaires in the group can be controlled all together or the group can be opened for individual control.

  • Scenes – Different lighting situations for different occasions can be created. It is possible to control multiple luminaires with one tap to create the perfect ambience for different occasions and needs.

  • Animations – Animations are dynamic scenes, where it is possible for the lighting to fade from one scene to another scene. Animations can be recalled to cycle through different lighting situations once or they can be set on repeat.

  • Gallery – Users simply take photos of a space, or upload a floor plan to the app, and mark the positions of the luminaires. The images then appear in a gallery in the app, with luminaires shown, and users simply tap the one they want to control.

  • Light Colour – A user can change the colour in a simple manner from the app and also save his/her favourite colours in a colour palette as well as adjusting the colour temperature.

  • Daylight Sensor – The control solution allows dimming of artificial lighting when daylight is available for achieving maximum lighting quality and reduced energy consumption.

  • Occupancy Sensor – The Casambi lighting control system supports movement sensors, also overlapping movement sensor information. Motion sensors can be used to save energy and only to have lighting on when it is actually needed.

  • Control Hierarchy – The Casambi ‘Control hierarchy’ allows a co-operation between manual lighting controls (the app, switches and push buttons) and automated lighting controls (sensors and timers).

  • Remote Access (Gateway) – With the gateway functionality, a Casambi network can be accessed remotely from anywhere.

  • Scalability – The Casambi system is scalable and is suited equally well for small one room solutions as for big building complexes. The Casambi solution is based on networks and an unlimited amount of networks can be created.

  • Synchronisation – The Casambi devices are smart on their own. All the intelligence is replicated in each node leaving no single point of failure – any unit can go offline and catch up from others when they return back online.

If you’re interested in getting your own BLE lighting control system or want to find out if it could work for you, get in contact with Steve Sewell from SS Electrical Projects at steve@ssepltd.com.

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