9 Resources That Showcase the
Realization of Bluetooth Networked
Lighting Control in Large-Scale
Commercial Environments

5) STEINEL Uses Bluetooth Mesh to Optimize Building Automation

Using Bluetooth^® technology to support building automation, STEINEL Solutions AG helped achieve significant energy savings with smart lighting sensors and Bluetooth Mesh. In this paper, STEINEL outlines several use cases and shows how Bluetooth enabled sensors provide building operators with a range of optimization options, including:

• Energy-Efficient Facility Management: Energy data and consumption can be measured with pinpoint accuracy. This directly reveals unnecessary power consumption and saves costs. Some customers achieve more than 90 percent energy savings and thus operate their buildings more efficiently and more environmentally friendly.
• Optimizing Space Utilization: Heat maps provide accurate information about the actual volume of people in commercial properties. They show where there are opportunities to optimize space utilization. For example, data for the utilization of flexible office workstations can be collected and evaluated from the information provided by Bluetooth Mesh sensor networks. This allows a reliable overview of actual demand and more efficient building utilization.
• Streamlining Process Flows: Data from sensor technology can be used to redesign operational processes. For example, in a hotel, cleaning staff can receive information via Bluetooth Mesh as to whether a guest has already left their room. Accordingly, cleaning procedures can be planned automatically. The staff does not have to search for free rooms, allowing them to work faster and more efficiently.

“In addition to its high reliability, the great advantage of the Bluetooth standard is its widespread use and connectivity via smartphones,” said Manuel Siegrist, sales and product manager SENSOTEC at STEINEL Solutions AG. “This allows us to offer a control app for our sensors that any facility manager can use without complications.”

Read the full paper.

6) A Brighter Future at the Palazzo Sturm

This article highlights how WiSilica used new advancements in Bluetooth^® technology to develop a wide range of applications. These applications support iGuzzini’s lighting solutions, and the partnership between WiSilica and iGuzzini has led to many lighting projects that created smarter intelligent spaces.

The addition of DALI into the system provides an added leverage of creating interoperable ecosystems with smooth dimming and zero flickers. The article highlights some of the duos most meaningful achievements across various deployments. The most prominent among them is the smart lighting deployment at the Palazzo Sturm in Italy which is well-known for consistent and high-quality lighting.

Read the full article.

7) Espressif Uses Bluetooth Mesh to Help Unlock the Full Potential of the IoT

In a recent Q&A article, Teo Swee Ann, the founder and CEO of Espressif, discussed why Espressif uses Bluetooth^® Mesh for its open-source protocol stack and how it is used across smart home, smart lighting, and smart industry environments.

Thanks to its adoption in smartphones, gateways, and endpoints, Bluetooth technology is one of the most ubiquitous wireless communication protocols. “Its ability to work in a congested 2.4 GHz frequency band through adaptive frequency hopping (AFH), secure design, and a high degree of interoperability has made Bluetooth Mesh a robust, safe, and important local-area-network protocol,” said Swee Ann. “Also, the design of the Bluetooth Mesh protocol can easily be extended to existing Bluetooth devices through OTA (over-the-air) upgrades if hardware resources allow.”

Since Bluetooth Mesh is defined on top of the existing Bluetooth specification, it can easily be supported on current hardware platforms using the Bluetooth radio.

“The most common use case for our Bluetooth^® Mesh solution in the smart lighting market is connecting the lighting equipment using the Bluetooth Mesh topology.” Said Swee Ann. “This can be implemented effectively in home, enterprise, industrial, or public environments. Our Bluetooth Mesh solution reduces the complexity of deploying and managing the networking infrastructure.”

Read the full Q&A article.

8) Silvair Lighting Control Deployment Maximizes Energy Savings

A popular bottled water provider in the U.S. needed to maximize energy savings by installing a lighting control system at its production facilities. At the same time, the facility needed to be able to take advantage of the future connected lighting and building intelligence benefits. To fulfill these needs, a combination of Bluetooth^® Mesh standard components from different vendors and the Silvair lighting control solution was used.

According to the case study, the installation supports 550 lighting fixtures across the facility, including high bay and office lighting. The baseload reduction (just from LED fixtures) was projecting about $85,000 in energy savings annually, and the installation achieved 30 percent in additional energy savings by incorporating Silvair lighting control with the LED luminaires.

Read the full case study.

9) Why Lighting Professionals Prefer Bluetooth Commercial Connected Lighting

This Q&A article with Sog Yang, software and platform manager at Delta Electronics, looks at how Delta Electronics used Bluetooth^® Mesh to develop a lighting control solution that helps professionals easily deploy commercial connected lighting systems.

“In the construction and lighting industry, designers and architects do not like to see their work occupied with drilling holes for wiring,” said Yang. “Bluetooth Mesh uses wireless technology to minimize the need for control wires or a central controller.”

Built on Bluetooth Mesh’s unique, decentralized architecture, the system supports group control, scene recall, schedule settings, and sensor triggers all without needing a central controller. The system offers convenient lighting environment design and deployment for architects, interior designers, and building automation solution providers.

“For designers, Bluetooth Mesh uses decentralized, wireless technology to minimize the need for control wires or a central controller,” said Yang. “This helps maintain the original design concept and aesthetics. In addition, compatibility with the Bluetooth Mesh profile lets us use third-party parts, such as wall switches and occupancy sensors, to produce lighting solutions quickly.”

For information technology providers, the commercial connected lighting system could be an IoT backbone for a building’s control and sensing applications. Bluetooth Mesh lighting control systems provide greater convenience to designers and users and can be flexibly used in various sectors, such as offices, hospitals, retail, and industry.

Read the full Q&A article.

Why Bluetooth Technology is Lighting the Way

In light of the aforementioned use cases and case studies, it is clear we are seeing a realization of Bluetooth^® networked lighting control in large-scale commercial environments. But what is driving this trend?

There are four key reasons Bluetooth Mesh networking has emerged as the technology of choice for wireless lighting control in commercial settings.

First, it supports a cost-effective decentralized architecture. The cost of deploying, or even piloting, legacy networked lighting control systems has limited their adoption. Bluetooth^® Mesh removes the need for centralized controllers, lowering the cost of componentry and reducing upfront labor and installation expenses, allowing designers and specifiers to quickly deliver value to building owners and end users.

Second, Bluetooth technology is ubiquitous and creates the foundation for direct mobile device provisioning. With Bluetooth technology native in 100 percent of smartphones and tablets, system integrators and installers can use simple, user-friendly, commissioning apps that communicate directly with nodes on the network, eliminating the need for specialized engineering expertise as well as internet access and cloud platforms to support installation and operation of the system.

Third, Bluetooth^® Mesh networking was specifically designed with large-scale networked lighting control implementations in mind. Three key features help separate the scale, performance, and reliability of Bluetooth Mesh from other wireless lighting control technologies and provide the resiliency needed by installers, building managers, and end users in commercial installations. 

• A decentralized control architecture distributes intelligence to all end devices, eliminating single points of failure to prevent system-level outages
• A unique publish/subscribe message addressing approach significantly lowers messaging traffic on the network, leading to greater network scale and performance
• A managed flood message relay approach enables lighting networks to scale to thousands of nodes while maintaining high performance and reliability

Finally, Bluetooth networked lighting control systems offer a range of benefits beyond simple illumination. The same Bluetooth radio embedded in lighting control devices can also be used to implement advanced building services, such as indoor navigation and asset tracking, enabling networked lighting control systems to shift from a single-function solution to a platform for data-driven smart building services that bring benefits far beyond illumination.

Want to learn more about why Bluetooth wireless lighting control networks are well-positioned to take over commercial lighting?

Check out more Bluetooth Networked Lighting Control resources.