Lighting is a very visual element which is why it’s the perfect gateway to smart home automation. Anna Hayes explores the area of lighting, trends like human-centric lighting and how the DIY market is playing its part in driving interest.

If you walk into your local Bunnings or JBL or Officeworks, you’ll find a section dedicated to smart home technology and, in particular, lighting. You’ll see smart bulb manufacturers that you’ve never even heard of – everyone is getting in on the action.

For my part, I am the proud owner of a single smart bulb that sits on my bedside locker, less than 12 inches away from me. And I use Alexa to control it. I’m not going to be a case study for any of these lighting companies anytime soon.

Be that as it may, it highlights something important – the sheer accessibility people have to smart lighting and control thereof. Secondly, its visual feedback – the light coming on when you ask it to – offers instant gratification to the user.

It is, at least to my mind, a gateway to the smart home experience, and its accessibility must surely be a strength.

The four pillars

No, that’s not a reference to gin, although with a smart lighting setup I’m sure you can create a scene called ‘Gin O’Clock’.

Todd Norberry is the APAC training and support manager for Nice North America LLC and he says that lighting is one of the four pillars of home automation and control, along with media, security, surveillance/intercom, with power monitoring emerging as a fifth pillar.

“Lighting control is a big driver in home automation solutions, many of the deployments we are seeing focus on media and lighting control.”

On a similar note, Gerrit Ryan, Amber Technology’s brand manager RTI and KASTA says that “ANZ integrators rated lighting control as the third more important sub-system to clients in the CEDIA ANZ 2022-2023 industry survey – behind networking and audio, and above 12 other categories including control, security, video, theatre/cinema and voice control.”

Ivory Egg national technical and training manager, Simon Harvey, says that lighting has always been the gateway to smart homes and automation, mainly because it was one of the first controllable things that we ever had.

“I get people who say they don’t want an automated house but they want this light to come on here, and that one over there, and so on. They start building this complicated web of what they need to achieve with in a house. But the thing is – if they do it with conventional wiring, it’s going to be really expensive and complicated. It’s also fixed forever, you can’t go changing it.”

He says that the advent of automation has allowed people to change their settings as their circumstances and requirements change.

The Tech

With smart lighting, there’s a variety of options from fully wired systems to wireless operations, generally more suited to retrofit situations.

Todd explains: “In any new installation, a fully wired solution is the preferred option for reliability, speed and flexibility. In a small or retrofit environment, a wireless solution may make more sense from a cost and logistical standpoint, however there can be compromises when compared to a wired solution.”

He adds: “Wireless solutions range from small plugin DIY solutions through to products that need to be wired into the mains. These wireless solutions can be based around 433Mhz non-meshed, 921.7Mhz Z-Wave meshed, 2.4Ghz Zigbee meshed, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi wireless technologies to name a few, and each have their own of benefits.”

Gerrit feels that while centrally wired systems still have their place in the market, there is a little bit of a shift towards the alternative: “Wireless lighting systems have higher growth potential as they can be installed on conventional 240V electrical wiring topology, making it less expensive and complicated to install in new-builds, or retrofitted into existing, conventionally wired dwellings.”

The Trends

As previously stated, lighting is an area whereby most commands result in a very visual, obvious action – you ask Alexa to make the light blue, the colour tone in the room changes. Yes, it’s a party trick of sorts but if there’s one thing smart lighting providers are good at (the DIY ones in particular) it’s party tricks like that.

Todd says that he sees a lot of colour control being deployed in ELAN systems, yet there has been minimal demand for human centric lighting outside of basic scheduled events to manage time-based scenes. Human centric lighting, or HCL, is based on circadian rhythms. It’s been the buzz phrase du jour in the lighting sector for quite some time, but Todd isn’t sure that HCL has been a major factor in many recent residential integration projects.

“HCL is certainly being talked about in the lighting, and health and wellness industries, but is it being deployed on a widespread basis by system integrators? Possibly not yet, and it’s a requirement that hasn’t been raised in conversations that I’ve had with installers.”

Todd feels that HCL is possibly being considered in applications where health and wellness are a major consideration, and within NDIS projects where natural light maybe limited, to name a few.

Simon remarks that HCL was developed for the commercial space and branched into the home from there, similar to the profession of DALI lighting.

“DALI was predominantly a commercial building lighting control but now we see oodles of DALI domestic.”

Simon says that what’s changing most dramatically from his point of view is not just the interest in lighting control but the desire for speed in that usage.

“We’re seeing a lot more need or inclusion for systems like DMX which has its origins in stage lighting. It’s a really fast protocol, much faster than DALI, and it can react really quickly. So we’re seeing a lot more DMX integrations.”

Simon adds that, being with KNX, they are not restricted to any one type of lighting control strategy and can see those trends coming a little more clearly.

The Challenge of DIY

One of the big areas of, maybe not concern but certainly challenge, in this space is the aforementioned excess of lighting providers, especially in that DIY space. With Matter finally releases and promising something resembling interconnectivity between certified devices, tech-savvy DIYers may finally be able to assemble something remotely resembling an interconnected smart home.

Gerrit says: “With the proliferation of affordable IoT lights and increasingly sophisticated retrofittable wireless lighting systems, lighting control is no longer exclusive to wealthy luxury homeowners and new-builds.”

Accessibility is a major bonus in this regard – lighting, after all, is considered a gateway.

Gerrit adds: “The smart bulb has led to market awareness of smart lighting technology everyday Mums and Dads by giving them a taste of basic app control and voice control of their lights and power.”

The two worlds of IoT and professionally installed automation systems are colliding, as far as Simon is concerned, and the big question is working out how the two can co-exist in harmony. As part of the KNX Association, Simon says that they are heavily invested in standardising how the professional will interact with the IoT world.

Matter, he says, is a huge development but the buy-in from manufacturers is still in its early stages and, while there are products out there with Matter certification, it’s nothing compared to what it will likely become.

“We do have a number of manufacturers that already have products and are making products with the Matter standard. And that is just going to blow open the doors for that specialist IoT device that someone really wants but they also want to be sure that it will work seamlessly within their existing or new professionally completed automation project.”

Keeping the lights on, it seems, won’t be a problem.