Smart lighting: LED lights next stop?

If you want to ask the lamp from the incandescent lamp to the development of energy-saving lamps to LED lights, the next step where the answer is perhaps different people, but the smart lighting is likely to be the next step in the development of LED lamps inevitable trend. Because the LED lights cost expensive, energy saving alone can not allow consumers to pay, but if the implementation of intelligent lighting, has a low cost, easy to use, flexible setting (automatic light adjustment, automatic heating and light) and short payback time advantage, consumers buy will tend to be strong. It is clear that the smart lighting ignited the imagination of the semiconductor manufacturers, so that the pace of its brilliant is accelerating.

ZigBee camp ushered in the dawn

ZigBee alliance released a new application specification ZigBee Light Link (ZigBee lighting connection), many manufacturers launched new smart lighting solutions based on the new standard.

LED lighting control wireless, networking is an important trend of development, mobile phones, tablet PCs, etc. can be achieved on the LED lights dimming color, and this requires only one chip and control can be achieved. But wireless intelligent lighting also has different "solution", for different types of applications, there are many kinds of wireless protocol stack source code. For intranet or internet access, the most commonly used is WiFi. For immediate control, there is currently very popular JenNet-IP and ZigBee. The gateway is responsible for the conversion between TCP/IP and JenNet-IP or ZigBee protocol stack source code. From the overall controllability, economic costs, the current ZigBee, JenNet-IP these two models are the most suitable for LED wireless lighting control. The former camp is more extensive, TI, Freescale Carle, MarvELl, etc. are in full swing, which is pushed by nxp.

Since the emergence of ZigBee technology, the market performance has been praised, but by virtue of their own perfection and find "intelligent lighting" the fulcrum, leveraging the ZigBee market. Last year, the ZigBee alliance released a new application specification ZigBee Light Link (ZigBee light connection), simplifying the design, the use of this specification will be easier to use ZigBee network control lighting. TI semiconductor technology (Shanghai) Co. business development manager Zhou Xiang said at the end of October last year, PHILPS released a ZigBee light connection standard of $199, can control the light source of intelligent lighting products, including three lamp light adjustable LED lamp and gateway gateway integrated ZigBee+ Ethernet interface of the gateway cable connections after using a mobile phone or tablet computer to download the HUE application can adjust the brightness of the lights, greatly improve the ease of operation.

TI is an occasion to force, developed a system on chip (SoC) CC2538, based on the former CC2530 made substantial improvements, not only will ARM Cortex-M3 memory and the hardware accelerator is highly integrated, but also support ZigBee and other 6LoWPAN such as 802.15.4 and IPv6 based on IP standard. TI recently held in the Demo demonstration on the reporter saw the development board to CC2538 chip based control, the board also includes a Light Link WiFi chip, equivalent to WiFi+ZigBee router. Zhou Xiang said, different from the traditional WiFi chip, WiFi chip TI is the main protocol integrated on a single chip, peripheral only application interface of API can be controlled by WiFi WiFi, mobile phone connected to the home gateway, the CC2538 control module WiFi orders, adjust the brightness of LED lights, the operation is relatively easy. At present, there are customers based on the development board to do the design, development tools have been open on the Internet, the underlying protocol is also open, as long as the chips can be bought TI protocol stack into the standard chip development. TI (TI) MCU business development manager Wu Jianhong mentioned.

And (Marvell) to take the route is also ZigBee+WiFi. The new intelligent lighting wireless platform will not only the low power AC/DC controller and wireless micro controller embedded intelligent LED lighting, but also includes a simple low cost ZigBee remote control, a special lighting Bridge Based on Marvell microcontroller WiFi module WiFi to ZigBee device, so that the bulb is directly connected with the gateway and wireless router.

ZigBee will usher in a new dawn. Feedback from the market point of view, PHILPS listed 100 thousand ZigBee based intelligent lighting system will soon be sold out, it is because of its users to bring a new experience. Zhou Xiang further mentioned that "ZigBee intelligent lighting solutions in North American commercial and popular, will also get a breakthrough in China market, but because of the traditional lighting manufacturers still do not understand this concept, so the market will take a long time. "

JenNet-IP more emphasis on the overall advantage

An intelligent lighting system module, a router gateway, free download from the Internet a wireless intelligent control software, you can achieve intelligent control.

Although many manufacturers take the ZigBee express, but NXP but the sword go partial peak, provide solutions also apply to these two kinds of models, but more emphasis on the overall advantages of the scheme JenNet-IP.

It is understood that JenNet-IP is based on 6LoWPAN technology, ultra wireless interconnection network protocol stack, designed specifically for the interconnection of the IEEE 802.15.4 network, the utility model is suitable for residential and industrial applications. Wang Yongbin pointed out that although the physical layer of JenNet-IP and Zigbee, but to the protocol layer, compared with Zigbee with low cost, the need for small space, scalability and other characteristics. The scope of ZigBee can only be used in a LAN, and the JenNet-IP can control the whole building. JenNet-IP also has self-organizing and self-healing capabilities, power consumption is also much lower than ZigBee, and JenNet-IP does not require authorization fees.