If perhaps your hacked-together Arduino project is suddenly looking a little shy of “professional grade” in front of your client, and you need some seriously heavy-duty show-control and A/V gear, check out the industrial controls supplier Beckhoff. Beckhoff has taken their … Continue reading beckhoff
If I could start with a blank page and design my own residential lighting system from scratch, I would combine a Redwood Systems-style power-over-Ethernet centralized rack system to feed DC power and IP control all the way out to each … Continue reading residential lighting dream system
For several years now, it has been apparent to industry insiders that, essentially, all light sources in the near future will transition to LED or OLED. So the question needs to be asked: When energy efficiency becomes irrelevant (because every light source has a very high level of efficacy as a standard feature), how will designers continue to conserve energy? The answer, I think, will be a shifting of focus for lighting designers from selecting light sources to scripting lighting control systems; designers will need to engage the art of dynamic controls. Accompanying this shift will be the transition of … Continue reading the art of dynamic lighting
There is clearly a huge disparity in what control system developers consider valuable — proprietary ownership of technology — versus what specifiers and owners consider valuable — open spec, interoperability, and selecting industry-best components as they please. This is especially acute within the North American architectural lighting industry, but certainly it is not exclusive to that geography. For example, if I wanted to buy an excellent Crestron touch panel, a Lutron wall station with custom finish, and a dimming panel from Lightolier, then I am out of luck. Each of these common manufacturers wants to “control” the whole purchase order and … Continue reading control system disconnect
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