'Largest Street Lighting Upgrade' Signed by Philips

The Spanish capital city of Madrid is having its entire street lighting system replaced by Philips, a total of nearly a quarter of a million luminaries are to be upgraded.

Lighting up Madrid Since Philips announced their split in late 2014 their lighting division's annual sales have fallen by 3% to a mere $6.9 billion for the last year. CEO Frans van Houten has commented to investors that the North American division's performance was 'unsatisfactory' and because of this he has appointed Amy Huntington as the new head of North America's lighting business. He also commented that China's sales had also dropped due to deteriorating market conditions. This is different to the wider divisions performance which has continued to grow rapidly due to selling of LED-based solid-state lighting products in addition to a contract to replace the entire street lighting system of Madrid. Philips is also planning to sell the automotive lighting unit in addition to Lumileds, the LED chip making branch. Lumileds commented that, 'The company is in discussion with external investors for the combined Lumileds and automotive lighting businesses and expects to complete translation in the first half of 2015.' These two divisions composed of 8300 employees have delivered sales of $1.4 billion. Madrid project Philips has estimated that the market for high-power LEDs will grow at an annual growth rate of 17-21% up to 2018, whilst the growth of the the overall lighting market is estimated to be 3-5%. The lighting industry is rapidly transforming from inefficient products to highly efficient goods and now demands extreme innovation. The CEO has claimed that Philips is outlaying over 30% more than its closest competitor in research and development to set a higher pace of technological advancement. Van Houten expects that the emerging market of data-enabled lighting systems will expand the overall market by roughly $1 billion in the next few years. Whilst all this is going on, Philips have undertaken a monumental project to replace street lighting in Spain, Van Houten commented that, 'We signed a contract to provide the city of Madrid with what is the world's largest street lighting upgrade to date, involving the replacement of 225,000 luminaries.' He also commented that the new system would create a saving of 40% in energy which would mean the installation cost would be paid back almost instantly and mean no extra cost to Madrid's citizens. The new system is said to feature an 'integrated command centre' which means that the entirety of the street lighting system could be controlled by a single control point. Another project that is set for the future will see the distribution of 1.5 million Philips LED lamps in India to over a million households. This should cut lighting energy consumption by 80% and would save 80 MW in electricity generation. With these projects Philips lighting is looking to have a prosperous year ahead but 2015 will present challenges due to the $400 million in costs due to the split and reconstruction of the company.

SNAP! - The Lightbulb That Doubles As A Camera

US Company SENGLED have debuted a smart LED lamp that also functions as a high resolution camera, microphone and speaker. This lamp is supposed to act as a subtle home security and monitoring system designed to de-clutter your home from multiple leads and cables and keep things all in one place. This lamp streams a video to your smartphone or tablet through its app and allows the user to view videos in real time.  

The Snap also features voice and motion sensors, facial recognition and GPS boundary alerts. So this clever little lamp will alert you when a face it doesn't recognise is about the house, or when someone has entered the boundaries of your home. It is also so discreet that any intruder would mistake it as any other normal lamp, genius. 




(Pictures courtesy of SENGLED and Yahoo)

Snap is another highly functional lamp that SENGLED have added to their collection, some of their other innovations include a lamp that doubles as a wireless speaker as well as a lamp that also functions as a Wi-Fi repeater to boost signal to the blackspots in your home. 
Unfortunately the Snap is yet to be released or priced, but it is expected to come to market this summer. Stay tuned for more info about this bright little lamp! 

Will Fujitsu's New Smart Lighting System Replace the QR Code?

Fujitsu spotlights to project invisible data onto an object. 

New smart technology which means we will be able to point our phones at a particular item in a shop or museum and its details will immediately be displayed on our screens. 

Major Japanese technological corporation, Fujitsu, has offered to do this by creating a spotlight which encodes data in light, which can then be picked up by pointing a smartphone camera at an object that the light is shining on. ( See diagram from Fujitsu below).

This innovative lamp is the latest application of visible light communication (VLC), which can be used to provide internet connections through light, or to create highly accurate indoor positioning systems.This data is invisible to the human eye but can be picked up by an app on a smartphone which could provide an alternative to QR codes. These codes are currently used to allow smartphone users to grasp information or find websites quickly by pointing their phone at a display. 

Unlike QR codes which have to be displayed on a screen, poster or label, Fujitsu's system only needs a light and something to shine it on which will not detract any attention from the product itself.  

A Fujitsu spokesperson has suggested that, 'For aesthetic and practical reasons, it is obvious why using this newly developed technology from Fujitsu would be preferable to that.' Fujitsu has proposed that shops, museums, performances and tourist sites could all make use of this new technology. It could also be applied to provide 'point and pay' services in shops or feed into audio-visual guides in museums. 

However it seems that there is a downside of this technology. It would appear that every object would need its own individual spotlight in order to provide its own data. This makes it hard to imagine how the technology would work in a supermarket or other similar settings, unless one spotlight will be able to hold data for more than one object. 

Fujitsu's application of VLC would compete with solutions from Philips and EldoLED, in which luminaires are used to calculate the position of a smartphone within a few centimetres, similar to a  more precise version of GPS. This could be applied in retail environments, directing a user to particular offers or products in a store. 

 Fujitsu has indicated that the benefit of using one spotlight per object is a higher level of precision whereas an indoor positioning system could only communicate information relevant to an area in a shop rather than to an individual product.  

One potential issue that this technology presents is the way that different objects reflect, transmit and absorb light but Fujitsu has commented that accuracy on this front has been improved 'since this technology uses an image captured by a camera to measure the reflectivity and compensates accordingly.' A spokesperson also added that, ' You can point a smartphone's camera in the direction of the object that has the light shining on it. Different surface have different levels of reflectivity but this technology is still able to read that data from the light reflecting off an object. The camera does not have to be focused on the light itself.' 

The real question is, do we really need this technology just to replace traditional product displays and QR codes? A few years ago we may have asked do we really need GPS to replace maps and road signs, now maps are virtually obsolete. 

Fujitsu is currently testing this data projecting LED system in various applications and working to improve accuracy. It aims to have the product on the market by April 2016.