Thanks for participating, everyone. I'm learning from your experiences too. Sorry I can't answer all of your questions. But hopefully you have picked up some new information to help with your work!
@LevitonDave. Devil's in the details and customer relations. For example cell phone companies have improved customer service. But you can only do so much.
Attitudes to energy efficiency has changed dramatically in 30 years. Or maby we're circling back to the Carter days. In any case, I hope the utilities just haven't found the right approach yet.
@Carol - your approach to smart meters is typically what is done to provide time of day or demand metering. Control has been around for 30 years and usually customers get a break on their billing if they allow the control to exist.
@naperlou I think the smart meter controlled by utilities is a public relations nightmare and unenlightened strategy. I think they should have only provided it as a benefit to allow occupants to see there energy use. Not take control from the beginning. Then once people are used to the meter and can see its benefits, then they can offer to reduce the bill by trading a small relinquishment of control.
zigbee can be useful in other ways. in IEEE Communications Magazine there was an article about a Zigbee headset that woudl allow one to roam an entire Zigbee enabled building and never loose connectivity. This ia a good side benefit, for example.
@Carol - Do you think you'll go into more of the component level specifics later this week? Also, what about various topologies of LED design PROs and CONs.
@kanjaa Most of these are for diy where you spend $600, pick up a control module and several modules for the lights. Is the public lighting across a big distance? You might need more professional system. I'll talk about that on Fri.
@LevitonDave, I'd be interested on seeing something that tracks individiual occupants, so, when I walk into an in-occupied room, my light and music choices follow me. I am working on something like it, but wanted to make sure it doesn't already exist.
Zigbee has morphed several times. So just being Zigbee compliant may not mean what you think it means. I would wait till there are products out for Zigbee Light Link. It's the latest standard and has good security.
@PGGhrarm There are commercial products to do this (I'm designing the next generation of one now). Typically they detect occupancy using heat or ultrasonic sonar and then communicate with light control either wirelessly or via LV wiring.
Thanks for another interesting talk Carol. Any advice for someone is remodeling a house and wants to go to LED lighting? Are there products they should avoid because the standards will be superceeded? ZigBee for lighting sounds interesting.
One think I'd like to see in home control and room lighting is intelligent monitoring of room occupants, such that the sound and light schemes will change depending on the time and room occupation. Have you seen anything like that?
we have lots of people in Naperville, a fairly well off city near Chicago, who are concerned about their "liberty" being compromisd by the Smart Grid and DSM. If the DSM is active on the power company side it is precieved as being intrusive. Of course, if it is not run from the power provider side it does not work. that is the issue I see locally with some of this control technology. i am for it, by the way. I am just mentioning some of the issues I hear about. so, security is key.
In the newest 6loPAN there are 3 levels of security. It's really a new issue for the industry. Older standards weren't designed with it in mind. The new Zigbee standard is much better prepared to deal with security.
Typically energy savings or Green building is due to redusing energy when not needed. Having the lights go off when a room is unoccupied can save a building up to 10% of it's energy usage. Adding intelligence to this can improve the savings.
@Carol, security is a great concern, not just information privacy, but malicious control of the network or plain old denial of service. Are these concerns being addressed by industry for home use?
What needs to be done to crack the slow adoption of smart control by US power companies (utilities). Many foreign markets are moving much faster than the US.
@Rerepete - it seems wireless networks precludes having to retrofit existing homes. also, it fits nicely with new homes, therefore no pre-wiring necessary
We've been using PLC to control LED displays for a long time, but recently we did a patent search and there are recent patents for just that. Is there room for everyone to play?
@Alex - Internet of things... Whether we like it or we don't like it, the industry and the consumer demands it, so we, the developers/marketers/sellers had better get used to it. Learn it and do it. It's a fact of life. So, Ethernet, ZigBee, etc. are going to be around for a long time. Let's do it. Let's roll.
@raghu - yes it seems the presentation at this point is more networking, but it seems connectivity is interwined into most everything current and future. what do you think
@Alex - I am more interested in the electronics used to control the LEDs. The coverage of SMPSs was a good start, but more would be better. For example, I'm still not clear on isolation techniques and the subject of dimming (other than PWM), such as how triacs fit into the electronics.
@netboss - Yes, getting audio. But I had a problem that caused the open message got stuck constantly repeating over and over. An F5 refresh did the trick. All good now.
Baltimore is comfortable, but wet. We got our share of rain, finally. We're getting caught up for the year. That'll mean some good corn later in the summer.
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