Commercial Architecture October 2016 - 14

FEATURE controls wireless connectivity in the commercial environment. There are many different standards that have been ad- Ken's V I E W opted, but no dominant players. There is a lack of com- The IoT, Whatever It Is, Is Here monly agreed-upon standards and protocols on interoperability (how devices communicate with each other) and security," said Legrand's Smillie. "Standards bodies and consortiums of big technology companies like Intel and Google are working very hard to create common languages so over time a light from manufacturer A will be able to communicate directly with one from manufacturer B and be controlled by the same software application," added Cree's Gary Trott. "One emerging standard that will support the useful inclusion of LEDs in control and automation systems is the ANSI C137.1 American National Standard For Lighting Systems-0-10V Dimming Interface for LED Drivers, Fluorescent Ballasts, and Controls. This standard will allow the inclusion of a standardized 0- to 10-V dimming protocol in LED dimming systems," observed Jian Ni of Forest Lighting. Control standards probably will remain proprietary for the near future because, in a typical deployment, the luminaires-controls combination forms a homogeneous system. An open standard isn't necessary, Hedayat commented. However, an open API for integrating in the building-management and warehouse-management systems is important, he added. For example, "we have APIs that talk to BacNet. I think that is going to continue to exist and will be a requirement for every control system," he said. Today's lighting technology, beginning with LEDs and developing in parallel with digital controls, can truly be said to be disruptive. As startling as developments have been, they're no doubt only the beginning of the possibilities of the Internet of Things. CA Want more information? The resources below are linked on our website at commercialarchitecturemagazine. com and our digital magazine at commercialarchitecturemagazine.com/digital/ oct2016. Automatic Lighting Shutoff for Tenant Spaces DOE Solid-State Lighting Program Human Centric Lighting Society geeks. Things such as lost socks, perhaps? realms, there is something called exponential growth, Matter of fact, that's pretty much what the internet sometimes referred to as Moore's Law. Basically, it does. It attracts all sorts of things (information), some of predicts that the number of transistors in an integrated it outdated, some of it wrong, some of it garbled or just circuit will double every couple of years. There are those plain crazy. That's what makes one wary of the Internet who have questioned, rightly so, whether this rate of of Things concept. Especially when some of the initial growth is sustainable indefinitely. Logically, one would breathless notions made little or no sense. What is the think not, and recent progress would seem to bear point of having one's household appliances talk to one that skepticism out. Personally, I think that a slowing another? It is completely useless to have a toaster of growth might be good to give everyone a chance to talking to a washer or dryer, or any other appliance, catch their collective breath. person, or thing. A refrigerator that beams a photo of Nevertheless, the term seems to apply generally to its contents to your potentially explosive smartphone is many facets of technological and digital development. beyond ridiculous. If you can't plan your shopping any In fact, the concept has been employed to describe better than that, perhaps you need to be in some sort of the driving force behind not only technological change custodial-care facility. but social change, productivity, and economic growth. OK, these excesses may just be exuberant, out-of- Something of that sort clearly is going on in the lighting the-box thinking that will evolve into unimagined, useful industry. LEDs were big news a few years ago, but at things some day. You can't blame people for trying stuff the last LightFair the buzz was all about controls and just because they can. connectivity. It still is, but in my recent conversations But to the point, the terms we use to describe all this with industry insiders, the term Internet of Things came new stuff sometimes are less than ideal. I came across up repeatedly. an article in a respected magazine that justly ridiculed One problem with this exponential-growth thing "smart devices" that "dupe" consumers. As an example, is that we have to come up with new names-or the writer held up a propane-tank app that connects to acronyms-to describe all of this new stuff. One might your smartphone to measure the contents of the tank that say there's been exponential growth in inexplicable and supplies your outdoor grill. The author correctly points misunderstood terms used to describe what are often out that there are simpler and cheaper ways to measure complex concepts. the contents of that tank. While I know nothing of outdoor I suppose this might have always been the case. gas grilling, I tend to agree. I would ask the additional When movable type was invented and pages were question: Why do not the manufacturers build a simple fastened together to form a book, were there discussions indicator into their appliances that would measure the about what constituted a book? Did it have to have a fuel level? How hard would that be? Automobiles have minimum number of pages? A hard cover? Illustrations had such a device for years now. (Yeah, yeah, measuring or no illustrations? Presumably all of the above. Different a gas isn't the same a measuring a liquid, etc.) terminology evolved: pamphlet, comic book, hardcover, That aside, the author's mistake, in my mind, is saying paperback, magazine, to name just a few. They all are that this app exemplifies the Internet of Things. I don't composed of paper and bound together by different think so. It is an example of the Internet of A Thing. technologies, but terms have evolved to differentiate Only one thing is connected here, and that thing isn't them. That's the nature of language. connected to anything else. Just like the refrigerator. Computer-speak and digital dogma, being relatively One thing. The Internet of Things, however, is about at new, seem to be suffering the same language-based least several things connected, sharing information, and growing pains. Take the Internet of Things, for example. interacting. Those things, by the way, are not random Greening the Building and the Bottom Line What does that even mean? What things are those? things, but things that are related and have some logical Building the Digital Enterprise Everything? One imagines the internet (lower case per reason to interact. Folks in the lighting industry seem to the recent Associated Press edict) as an amorphous have grasped this concept. They may be onto something. cloud (cloud computing) that attracts things randomly by Who knows where it will lead? static cling or some mysterious force understood only by - Kenneth W. Betz, Senior Editor Lighting Controls Association DesignLights Consortium 14 In computer circles and, in general, most digital COMMERCI A L A RCHI T EC T URE OCTOBER 2016 commercialarchitecturemagazine.com http://www.commercialarchitecturemagazine.com/ http://www.commercialarchitecturemagazine.com/digital/oct2016 https://www.energycodes.gov/sites/default/files/documents/cn_automatic_lighting_shutoff_for_tenant_spaces.pdf http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2016/06/f32/ssloverviewbrochure_june2016.pdf http://humancentriclighting.org/ http://www.rmi.org/Knowledge-Center/Library/D94-27_GreeningBuildingBottomLine http://hub.currentbyge.com/h/i/272616684-building-the-digital-enterprise http://lightingcontrolsassociation.org/ https://www.designlights.org/ http://www.commercialarchitecturemagazine.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Commercial Architecture October 2016