These days, it seems like there’s an app for everything! Here are some of the latest lighting control products on the market.
Noon Home
This new company recently launched the Noon Smart Lighting System, designed to give homeowners the ability to change the way a room looks and create a specific mood with a single touch. Noon intelligently blends ambient, task, and accent lights to layer light simply and affordably.
“Using the best available technology, we were able to remove the complexity. Now consumers get a beautifully simple product that intelligently tunes itself to work with a homeowner’s existing bulbs and fixtures,” says Erik Charlton, CEO of Noon Home, Inc.
The Noon Smart Lighting System is powered by its Room Director switch and companion Extension Switches, which communicate wirelessly via Bluetooth technology. Once installed, all of a room’s lights can be adjusted with one-touch from the Room Director’s glass touch-screen OLED display.
Noon automatically creates three unique scenes – Relax, Everyday, and Bright – reportedly by analyzing information about each bulb, fixture, and room type. Customers can also create custom scenes to fit how they use their rooms, like Cooking, Entertaining, or Movie Time. These scenes can then be selected right at the switch or controlled via the Noon App from anywhere.
Noon’s patented “bulb discovery” technology reads electrical currents and uses advanced algorithms to identify bulb type. According to Charlton, Noon is the only lighting system to automatically detect bulb type, creating compatibility with virtually any residential bulb: dimmable and non-dimmable bulbs, incandescent, LED, CFL and fluorescent, as well as ELV (electronic low voltage) and MLV (magnetic low voltage) fixtures.
Noon’s smart features includes a Night Light, which turns on ultra-low light when you walk by the Room Director, and Vacation Mode, which “plays back” learned patterns to mimic the homeowners actual behaviors. www.noonhome.com
B.E.G. Controls
This manufacturer of indoor and outdoor motion, occupancy and vacancy sensors for both commercial and residential applications, struck a chord last year when it introduced the back to basics “Unsystem.”
The Unsystem is a stand-alone room solution consisting of three components: a MINI sensor, a dimming power pack, and a momentary switch. With this simple set up, the Unsystem provides advanced solutions including daylight harvesting and plug load control — capabilities normally found in more expensive networked systems.
This year the company has taken simplicity to the next level with RATIO, an easy to use, easy to install, unobtrusive, architectural solution for scene control. RATIO also uses three components: a FLAT sensor, a small power supply, and a matchbook-size push button controller.
Less than a millimeter thick, the FLAT is reportedly the only completely flat occupancy sensor/photocell on the market. The power supply can be installed on the first fixture receiving power and the push button controller can easily fit in a single gang switch box and utilizes any style of momentary switch from any manufacturer. RATIO can control as many as 35 LED fixtures utilizing intelligent drivers into four groups or scenes.
The scenes on a RATIO solution can be programmed using Bluetooth on any smartphone or tablet with a free app. www.begcontrols.com
LEDVANCE by Sylvania
The Apple HomeKit™-enabled SYLVANIA SMART+™ A19 Full Color Light Bulb is different from other smart lighting products as it doesn’t require a separately purchased hub or an internet connection. Set up is simple: Screw the Bluetooth-enabled bulb into any lamp in a home, apartment, or dorm room and sync it to the Home app. It can be easily controlled through Siri voice commands or the Apple Home app on any iOS 10 device. The user-friendly Home app allows users to control all HomeKit accessories in one place, including lights, temperature, locks, garage doors, lighting scenes, and more.
The SYLVANIA SMART+ A19 Full Color Light Bulb can be controlled individually or in groups as part of scenes. Features include turning it on and off, dimming, adjusting the color from a cool white for concentrating to a warm white for relaxing, and changing it to one of millions of colors to quickly and easily complement the décor of any room — transforming a living room from a home office to a fun party room for entertaining in seconds.
“Our approach is unique in the ‘smart’ industry because we focus on delivering quality lighting products first and only then adding ‘smart’ functionality second,” explains Aaron Ganick, head of Smart Business Americas for LEDvance. “Our customers expect their smart lighting to not only work with the latest and greatest technology ecosystems, but to look good while doing it.”
Crestron
The company has recently released a major update to its Pyng® platform, allowing it to support the integration of video and making it simpler to configure and control the full Crestron smart home experience — lights, shades, audio, door locks, security systems, thermostats, and now video.
“The addition of video and DM support elevates the power of Crestron Pyng to an entirely new level for homeowners and Crestron integrators alike, making it possible to modify scenes, schedules, TV presets, and much more,” says Michael Short, Global Residential Marketing Manager at Crestron.
The new release will support display and source control, room and source selection, volume control for groups and other rooms, video routing via DM® and DM NVX Series, audio and video grouping, user profiles, and TV presets based on zip code and provider. www.crestron.com
Häfele America
The Häfele Connect Smart Home now includes the new Häfele Connect BLE box — working in concert with the Häfele Connect app (currently available in the Android and iOS app stores) to offer customization of household lights, sound systems, and more.
The new Connect BLE box (BLE stands for Bluetooth Low Energy) is the hardware conduit between Häfele’s Loox LED Lighting System and its Connect app. With both of these in place, users can control individual lights (on/off, brightness, color temperature with multi white lights, and light color with RGB lights). The system also allows for custom light scenes or time-controlled changes to the brightness and light colors. Through the smartphone or tablet app, a user can control a single BLE box or an entire network of BLE boxes in various rooms throughout the home. The Häfele Connect BLE box can be easily retrofitted for use in previous Loox LED installations as well as integrated into new projects.www.hafele.com
EnOcean
The company has unveiled its wireless Easyfit LED controls for LED lighting control for various open standards. These enable simple commissioning, intelligent local control, and seamless integration with building automation systems. Lighting solutions using the EnOcean radio standard for North America include self-powered sensors and switches, actuators, LED fixture controllers, as well as a commissioning tool. In addition, the company has launched self-powered wireless solutions for Bluetooth® and Zigbee LED lighting systems.
The Easyfit LED controls portfolio is based on the 902 MHz frequency, which delivers maximum point-to-point communication distances within buildings. These wireless controls solutions can be easily added to existing buildings during an upgrade to LED lighting. www.enocean.com
