SmartCore and BMS

Lighting control is often managed in a Building Management System (BMS), but the interoperable SmartCore platform offers additional features and benefits that can be integrated to provide even further capabilities, making your smart building solution smarter, easier to use, more energy-efficient and more cost-effective.

Communicate with previously problematic protocols

With the SmatCore platform, BMS systems will communicate with protocols such as MQTT, which they would struggle to do independently.

SmartCore supports REST-based APIs that support GET, POST requests and XML, JSON responses, and a BACnet integration. This allows data to be seamlessly communicated to other building systems, informing their behaviour and leading to energy savings.

Extend your functionality

Working together, the BMS and SmartCore can extend your product offering, helping to produce smart, healthy buildings.

SmartCore is primarily a lighting control solution. However, it also includes an intelligent networked system of devices that relate to lighting control. These devices may include various sensors, beacons, controls switches or touchscreens, and signals from other building systems (such as fire alarm or HVAC). This ability improves efficiencies, and additional capabilities can be achieved through seeing all of the data in one user-friendly dashboard.

Traditionally, lighting control was siloed, and still, today, most large buildings don’t utilise any smart controls at all, even though lighting often accounts for the largest amount of energy wasted in commercial buildings. At the very best, some companies have implemented lighting control that includes sensors so that the lighting only turns on when presence is detected, but lighting control can be so much more sophisticated than this. Combining these capabilities with a BMS can dramatically increase efficiencies, save energy, and ultimately reduce cost for the end-user.

SmartCore’s scheduling and Event tool allows building and facility managers to schedule the lighting to turn on or off at certain times and even react to ‘events’ such as the fire alarm going off. Circadian lighting also offers the ability to make the environment more comfortable and healthier for occupants ensuring they receive the right level and colour of light at the right times of day. Employees are also proven to work more productively with Circadian Lighting.

Daylight saving mode uses sensors within the lights to detect when there is sufficient natural light in an area; lights nearest the window will turn off. Others will dim down, ensuring artificial light is only used when absolutely necessary.

Emergency Lighting Control

Emergency lighting control also ensures that a building remains compliant without the manual laborious process associated with emergency lighting. This additional capability allows BMS companies to offer another service to end-users. SmartCore allows function and duration testing as well as status reporting. In the next couple of months, automatic test, monitoring and reporting will also be released, with no need for manual intervention. This will allow out of hours testing, reporting and full monitoring. SmartCore has its own range of user interfaces; however, it can also easily integrate with third-party systems if BMS companies want to maintain their own dashboard for users. Another option is SmartCore’s ‘white-label’ solution, which can be fully branded as your own product.

Occupancy Awareness

Sensors built into the lights can detect motion which can trigger a response from the lights. Voice control sensors can also be built in so that users can request an action. For example, SmartCore can integrate with other systems and devices within a building; therefore, a user could walk into a meeting room and state ‘start meeting’, which in turn could cause the blinds to close, the air conditioning or the heating to turn on (depending on the temperature, monitored by the temperature sensors), the TV to turn on and the online booking system can be informed that a meeting is in progress. If users have an ID card that they swipe to get around the building, the system could also detect who the person making the request is. We are now also beginning to see AI being integrated into smart systems; therefore, in the future, the system could learn specific user preferences and personalise an environment to meet the users needs or preferences.

Occupancy data can reveal how a space is being used, how people navigate a building, and areas underutilised, allowing facility and building managers to make smarter decisions. “Data in smart buildings is essential to understanding what your building is doing. When we look at a building, we need to realise how it is working, what spaces are being occupied, and getting feedback on how the building is being used”. Andre Jutel, Business Development Manager – amBX.

Sensors and cameras can be installed anywhere in a building to make it smart, but including it in the lighting makes sense; within a building, lighting is everywhere…

“Lighting is ubiquitous; it’s everywhere, so the opportunity for connectivity through lighting is an obvious way”. Roger Woodward, Smart Buildings Consultant.

Asset tracking

In buildings such as schools or hospitals, asset tracking can be a useful tool. Instead of wasting time searching for resources, beacon technology within the light can be used to locate the equipment; Bluetooth is used to track the asset and even show a history, e.g. who used it last or whether it has a fault. This can dramatically improve efficiencies within a building allowing for optimum building maintenance.

Circadian Lighting

The advent of circadian lighting allows the system to ensure building occupants receive the right amount of light and the right colour and intensity of light for their health and wellbeing. Research studies indicate that circadian lighting can improve mental health, sleep patterns, comfort, productivity, and general wellbeing. This is especially important if occupants are spending a large amount of time indoors as their circadian clocks can easily get out of sync, leading to lethargy, headaches, and it has even been linked to more serious conditions such as type 2 diabetes and cancer.

No complex programming

No time-consuming and costly programming is required, whether at the initial commissioning stage or for subsequent moving, adding or removing fixtures. This can save up to 75% of the time and cost compared with other lighting systems in the setup and commissioning stage.

Currently, many (most) available lighting control systems are based around variations of a programmed, rule-based system. Each controller is programmed with rules that link sensor values changes with changes to intensity (or colour temperature) of defined groups of lights. Such systems have a direct control algorithm - a mapping between each sensor's state and a group of lights. Each of these groups must be set up and have its lights associated with it and the rules configured. This bespoke programming is expensive and time-consuming, and little can be re-used from project to project.

The high cost of programming leads to a reduction of scope either at the specification phase or, more commonly, on implementation. As the overall project budget comes under pressure, the lighting design is simplified to reduce programming cost. This simplification has a long-term impact - increasing energy use and leading to a poorer quality of lighting for the installation's lifetime.

If the building layout changes or certain aspects of the lighting behaviour are not as required, the programming must be re-visited, making snagging relatively costly.

Even small changes have to be done with most systems by a system specialist programmer, usually on-site, which is a costly requirement.

Now an alternative approach that overcomes these problems is available. A Light-Scene, in which the lighting requirements are captured as an abstract description, which is independent of the sensor and fixture. . This means that all that needs to be commissioned are the sensors, fixtures, and their location- by simply entering them into the system. The system then handles everything else, mapping the selected lighting experience onto the devices' capabilities and delivering the required lighting outcome automatically.

Smart lighting control platform SmartCore opens up a variety of opportunities for BMS companies.

“Today, the light itself can be made smart, which is opening up even more opportunities for use in homes and further improving people’s lifestyles. We have also seen smart lighting used in retail to monitor people movement and see how long people spend lingering in certain areas or looking at certain products. We also see space utilisation being a core requirement for buildings from now on”. Roger Woodward, Smart Buildings Consultant.

If you would like to discuss how SmartCore can integrate with your building management or automation system, click here.

To understand more about the opportunities available with smart buildings, click here.