Remote-controlled lighting

Client

Evolux is a chilean company specialized in efficient lighting using LED technology. They provide lighting fixtures and other equipment to various industries throughout Chile.

Requirements & Context

As a service to their clients in the aquaculture industry, whose centers are usually in remote locations, Evolux wanted to develop a system to enable remote monitoring and control of their lighting equipment. These centers are located in places with very low or no connectivity at all, which presented a challenge to be solved on the physical layer.

Enclosures at these facilities are 30 meters wide and 30 meters long (~98x98 feet) and set out a few hundred feet from the shore.

They reached out to us to develop a first functional version of the product. For this MVP, we focused on connectivity, variable capture, information presentation and remote control.

Approach

To accelerate the development of the MVP and, at the same time, optimize performance of remote operations, we built the system using Crystal. This allowed us to deliver a fully functional product in under 3 months.

For connectivity, we used LoRaWAN as a backbone for the site, a low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) protocol. LoRa uses license-free sub-gigahertz radio frequency bands to enable long-range transmissions (more than 10km in rural areas) with low power consumption. We built a central, self-contained system, with the following components:

There is a secondary Cloud connection for monitoring and remote configuration purposes.

On the presentation and control level, we built a desktop interface that displayed the status of each lamp informed by the LoRa server, and allowed users to turn them on or off.

Results

The MVP we developed was implemented in a trusted client’s facilities. This effort required the installation of three devices: a conversor, a LoRa gateway and a site server.

The first tests were successful, allowing the client to control the lamps remotely without manual intervention. This meant a great deal of cost and time savings in logistics, considering that these centers are in remote locations, where access is somewhat difficult and operations are often complicated by weather conditions.

Lamps

The light dashboard displays the status of every lamp in a designated area, at a glance.

Photo period

The Lamp Admin view displays lamp activity over different periods, and allows users to establish automated on/off routines.

Multiple edition

Users can create automated behaviors for multiple lamps at once, setting on and off times, and intensity.

Energy consumption

The Energy Consumption view displays a comprehensive report of the levels of energy consumed over different periods of time, as well as insights on efficiency.

Wheather

The Weather Report view provides key information about external conditions that affect efficiency, like the temperature of the air and water.