Some time ago, consumer marketing professionals discovered the power of the word “smart.” Terms like smartphones, smart speakers, and smartwatches have defined a new category of products with features that consumers are prepared to pay a premium for.
“Smart” products do more than the standard alternative—a smart watch does more than tell the time and a smart speaker does more than play sounds. Rather, they respond to data inputs and often provide a sophisticated means of user control.
It’s natural for marketing professionals to want to perform the same trick in the lighting market. But when the lighting industry discusses “smart lighting,” what exactly does it mean? Today, there’s no consensus. It’s certainly not enough for a manufacturer to simply add a microcontroller (typically a dedicated-function microprocessor, more limited in its functions than that found in a personal computer or smartphone) to a luminaire and declare that it’s “smart.” The “smart” in smart lighting needs to add perceptible value, not simply be another way to do the same thing.
There are various convenience features that require some form of intelligence in a lighting installation. For instance, it’s common for new commercial lighting schemes to include presence detection capability, to switch room lighting on and off depending on whether the room is occupied. Increasingly, lighting installations are incorporating daylight harvesting as an energy-saving measure, automatically dimming artificial lighting when sunlight is making some contribution to total illuminance.