Recently, the University of London's Royal Holloway, University of London installed an innovative outdoor lighting unit with wireless motion sensors.
Royal Holloway's buildings, including lecture halls, cafes and student residences, are located in vast park-like grounds with trees.
At dusk, the 200-inch LED luminaire turns on with 10% of the light output. When an object is detected to move and someone is present, the illumination will gradually illuminate between 50% and 100% depending on the location.
Two adjacent fixtures will also automatically light up. If no new object movements are detected, the light output of these fixtures will return to the predefined minimum level after a 30 second retention time.
All fixtures are connected to a mesh network, which means that all spots can not only communicate with the gateway, but also notify adjacent fixtures when an object movement is detected. Therefore, the motion sensor can immediately turn on other lights in the wireless network.
Compared to other wireless systems, this system architecture makes the lamp activation faster because in other wireless systems, communication between the spots always has to go through the gateway.
The sensor was developed for harsh outdoor applications and for adaptive lighting. It adjusts the brightness of the luminaire based on the presence of pedestrians, cyclists or vehicles and filters out disturbances caused by small animals and branches.
Because students, teachers, and university staff often study or work late into the night, the school hopes that the program will provide additional security.
