Australian company Cognian Technologies has launched a wireless mesh technology that it says can be easily installed in any building and make it a smart building by supporting a wide range of IoT devices and applications.
It comprises a central hub and wireless units installed in the building’s smart lights. These interface to the lights using the DALI standard, and act as nodes in the wireless mesh.
Cognian says the technology has already been deployed in a number of buildings: Crowne Plaza Terrigal Pacific, 616 Harris Street Ultimo, Parramatta Public School Hall, three universities and multi-storey CBD buildings in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney.
Cognian CEO and co-foundMark Blum told IoTAustraliathat the technology, Syncromesh used a software overlay on blue tooth low energy wireless, but could be used to create a wireless mesh using other technologies, such as Zigbee.
“We have chosen BLE because of its ubiquity and its cost. It’s a very economical means of providing connectivity,” he said.
“It is a very scalable, simple and secure mesh in which each of the devices can talk to each other via a multihop technology. One gateway can control many, many devices and you can have multiple gateways.”
Because lighting is ubiquitous he said the technology could support very dense networks for IoT, by adding wireless nodes to more smart lights.
“Once that network is in place it can support other applications. We can connect to a C-bus controller, we can connect using KNX and other control systems,” Blum said.
“We want to enable numerous control systems to play because the secret to smart building is to have an IoT data connectivity platform. You don’t want to be locked into any particular control system, or mechanism.
A largely untapped market
Blum said that, with only about five percent of buildings qualifying as smart there was a large untapped market, but take-up was rather sluggish.
“Take-up has been nowhere near as quick as government regulators and, from an environmental perspective, occupants would like. It’s costly, And it’s disruptive. Wireless solutions are a key part of accelerating that.”
He said the new Building Code of Australia should accelerate progress.
“If you are doing a major refurbishment of you’re building, you have to now at least put in smart lighting, which moves you along the path towards having a smart building.
“if you use Cognian Syncromesh you get further along the path. We believe if we make this easy, economical and give strong benefits to the occupants, we’ll accelerate it.”
Blum said Cognian was going to market with the technology through a number of partnerships, including Schneider Electric.
“We are an open system. So a number of the sensor providers and luminaire lighting providers have partnered with us as well, and they are a good pathway to market.
“Consultants are another avenue. They say that it makes the design job easier and it keeps their creativity because they can choose whichever luminaires and sensors they want.
“Also very important are electricians and the systems integrators Schneider Electric have been very helpful because they’ve introduced us to all their partners.”
Another smart lighting mesh
Last December IoTAustralia reported Sydney based WBS Technology was marketing an IoT system for commercial buildings based on networked, communications-enabled emergency lights that communicate with each other and with other IoT devices using 6LoWPAN and RPL protocols over LoRaWAN.
