Bluetooth® connectivity helps create spaces that foster better health and improve the well-being of individuals and communities alike. By improving air quality, optimizing energy use, and ensuring health and safety compliance, Bluetooth® technology helps enable spaces to provide cleaner, more comfortable environments that foster better health and well-being.
Bluetooth® Networked Lighting Control (NLC) has played an important role in creating healthier environments to support healthier lives, and a new Bluetooth specification is now available that can further enhance the impact of Bluetooth NLC on healthier spaces.
Why Bluetooth Networked Lighting Control
Bluetooth® Networked Lighting Control (NLC) has clearly established itself as the only fully open wireless standard capable of addressing large commercial buildings. With office buildings and schools being the leading applications. This is primarily driven by energy savings. LED lighting alone can save a lot of energy, but case studies (see the Atalian Headquarter in Belgium) have demonstrated that by adding the wireless NLC component, the savings can be pushed up to over 80 percent.
But the energy savings is just the beginning. The Bluetooth wireless mesh network that spans the entire building or a campus can do much more to improve the well-being of occupants.
Staying in the lighting domain, the energy savings story is really simple: dim down the lights when there is sufficient daylight (daylight harvesting) or turn them off completely when not needed (occupancy/vacancy control). But then, at the same time, the Bluetooth enabled lights can also follow the sun in circadian rhythm by adjusting the color temperature to the time of day (colder light in the morning and warmer in the afternoon or evening). The color temperatures can also be recalled on demand as simple scenes, a method often preferred by school teachers to energize or calm down students in classrooms.
Through advanced lighting controls, buildings become human centric. It is no longer about the space being lit. It becomes lit in a way that puts the occupants’ well-being at the center. Task light is tuned to the individual preferences and needs. At the same time, the color temperature of the light matches the natural daily cycle that our bodies have been accustomed to for millennia, creating the most optimal conditions, either for work or for rest. This reduces fatigue and enhances well-being.
Then, once the Bluetooth Mesh Network lighting is commissioned, it can be used to add more sensors. Lighting systems support occupancy and light level sensors, but the Bluetooth Model specification covers a wide variety of environmental sensors (see the Device Properties). Innovative lighting manufacturers include a number of them in luminaires. They sense temperature, air quality by measuring carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration, humidity, and even noise levels to help other non-lighting systems improve the occupants’ comfort.
Healthier living via better lighting
Legacy building systems, such as heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC), typically do not have good/fine-grained sensor coverage. Bluetooth NLC helps here by offering a much denser sensor wireless grid that can offer valuable input data to help drive the HVAC behavior. In larger buildings, this is typically done by connecting Bluetooth networks to the building management systems (BMS) by standardized Bluetooth to building automation and control network (BACnet) gateways. Smaller buildings are not left behind, thanks to the recently introduced HVAC Integration NLC Profile. This specification enables thermostats to subscribe, directly over a Bluetooth connection, to occupancy data published by NLC occupancy sensors. Lighting retrofit projects now expand the scope to cover plug-and-play thermostat upgrades, instantly improving the occupants’ comfort (and improving energy savings too). Additionally, by ensuring indoor air quality meets health standards, Bluetooth technology helps reduce the risk of respiratory issues and promotes greater comfort for those occupying the space.
Occupancy data reported by Bluetooth NLC sensors also helps improve mundane but super-essential tasks, such as cleaning. There is no point in revisiting an unattended restroom every 15 minutes, but the story is different, of course, for a crowded one. The same concept applies to conference rooms and other shared spaces. An unused space is not repeatedly cleaned over and over again, but, more importantly, a frequently used one is maintained at the highest standard, contributing to healthier public spaces and safer, more comfortable environments for everyone.
Finally, there is the less visible but very important aspect of safety: emergency luminaires and exit signs. Increasingly more of them have local batteries, and the batteries (as well as the entire fixtures) must be regularly tested — a short (functional) test once a month and a longer (battery duration) test once a year. Thanks to Bluetooth Mesh Networking, these tests can now be scheduled to run autonomously at predefined times, and the test results can be collected automatically. Facility managers can access the test reports and even be notified if a failure of emergency equipment is imminent.
Bluetooth® NLC has a pivotal role in creating healthier spaces. The most appealing feature is the ease of installation and upgrade, which not only helps new buildings to be great, but also gives the old ones a completely new (and healthier) life.
