Interview


The development of smart lighting


Smart lighting is something that is slowly creeping into our everyday lives with the development of the Internet of Things. CIE editor, Amy Wallington talks to Kate Baker, UK market manager of WiZ, a smart lighting company, about the technology’s development


W


iZ is a French-Asian company and has produced more than 80 million lights since its


establishment in 2004, including some of the very first LED bulbs. One of the key industries that is beginning to become apparent around us is smart lighting. WiZ is one of the key players in this market allowing users to have complete control over their lighting systems, whether that is in a restaurant, hospital, office environment or at home.


Kate Baker explains how the company came together: “The two founders of WiZ are two brothers and they’ve both got different strengths that work together. One is more experienced in the software side and the other is more


12 April 2018


experienced in the manufacturing side so it works really well. One of the big growth areas for the Internet of Things has always been smart lighting so they knew that if they wanted to stay in the lighting industry they would need to look at putting together a smart proposition.” The company has recently launched


‘WiZ Connected’, its OEM partner programme allowing other companies to join the smart lighting market by giving them access to its knowledge and expertise. Baker says: “We are opening up the platform of smart lighting to other people. We are lucky that we have a team with the right knowledge, expertise and skills to make us successful in this market but a lot of other


Components in Electronics


companies don’t have everything they need to do that. So they partner with us and are looking at using our chips, our software, our system and integrate it into their LED drivers and into their systems and we can help them with that. We’ve currently got over 40 companies on board with more and more joining.” Lighting is something we take for granted which could be why we haven’t seen as much development as we have in other markets. But it has a big future. Baker explains: “I think there are two main ways that smart lighting is a game changer. You’ve got the Internet of Things conversation where smart lighting is going to become part of a bigger ecosystem that will become more interoperable and more integrated and therefore more useful. It is becoming connected to things like your phone so you will have more and more abilities to move forward with it. “More importantly, though, I think it will change how people see and perceive lights. Lights have become something that people have taken for granted in that it’s on, it’s there and people switch it on and off and that’s it. I think people will start looking at how we use it more and


understand it more. And then you get into conversations about tones of light because a lot of people sit in the wrong light. So generally, it will not only improve technology itself but it will also have a wellbeing positive side to it too.” Baker also thinks that smart lighting has the potential to eventually become intelligent. She adds: “In terms of smart lighting as a whole and where it will go, I think it will come to a point where it develops beyond smart and it will become intelligent lighting. If you take all the elements of smart lighting and the human centric element, eventually it becomes interoperable. Once you start putting it into places and combining it with big data analytics, it will become intelligent but I also think it will become more human centric. It will stop being just a ‘cool gadget’ and become more of a mainstream proposition. “Right now we are in that education


process; a lot of people still don’t know the difference between a warm white and a cool white or why they should be buying different tones of light for different areas. What smart lighting will do is take lighting and the understanding


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