Global lighting industry player Zhaga Consortium, with its stated mission of standardizing the interfaces of components of LED luminaires, this month announced the winners of its inaugural Smart City Sensor Awards. Launched in September 2022, the awards program aims to encourage and recognize excellence in smart city sensors technology.
Per information in a press release, the global contest was open to any smart city sensors that can be installed on streetlights using the Zhaga Book 18 standard and that are suitable for Zhaga-D4i certification.
Book 18 is Zhaga’s specification of the smart interface between outdoor luminaires and sensing/ communication modules.
D4i is an extension of the DALI-2 certification program. D4i LED drivers have a mandatory set of features related to power-supply requirements and smart-data capabilities.
During a virtual awards ceremony on April 13, Francesco Martini, chair of the Zhaga Steering Committee, observed:
“When it comes to smart city sensing tasks, nothing beats the streetlight. Already ubiquitous in most cities, the streetlight not only offers a strategic location for smart sensors, it’s also a secure piece of powered infrastructure available at a low cost. Zhaga Book 18 is a universal platform for streetlighting connectivity, allowing streetlights to be the backbone of the smart city revolution. Each of our Smart City Sensor Award winners exemplify the innovations that are driving this revolution.”
Below, Zhaga's Martini and Axel Baschnagel, the consortium's head of marketing communications, moderate the ceremony with jury members that announced the winners of the 2023 Zhaga Smart City Sensor Awards.
Award winners
Judged by a panel of smart city and sensor experts, including city officials, utility companies and industry associations, the award program's jury evaluated qualifying submissions from sensor manufacturers. After careful consideration, the jury made awards in four categories:
- In the Mobility category, which includes solutions for counting vehicles, bicycles and pedestrian traffic and/or measuring vehicle speed, the award went to global lighting technology supplier Tridonic and its SensorX concept. Based on the Zhaga-D4i standard, this "game-changing CMOS image sensor," as reckoned by the jury, is designed to accurately measure traffic density and patterns in real time, providing data that urban planners can use to mitigate road congestion. The sensor can also recognize different road users. For example, when it detects a pedestrian crossing the street, the sensor can send commands to adjacent luminaires to raise lighting levels.
- In the Adaptive Lighting Control category, which includes motion detection and other sensors that control lighting levels, honors went to TE Connectivity, an American-Swiss company that designs and manufacturers sensor and connectivity solutions, which was awarded for its Lumawise Motion Sensor. As reckoned by the jury, this "innovative motion sensor and...versatile all-in-one outdoor luminaire controller" was designed specifically for street lighting and fits into the Zhaga-D4i ecosystem. The pluggable device enables energy savings by dimming or even turning off a luminaire without compromising safety and security. When it detects motion, it then brings the luminaire back to full brightness.
- Awarded in the Innovation category was Citilight, which designs smart IoT luminaire controllers, recognized for its CNODE IOT AMR sensor. As characterized by the jury, "a crossover between adaptive lighting control and multi-sensor" technologies, this "versatile and convenient" all-in-one outdoor luminaire controller provides advanced lighting control for a range of outdoor lighting applications. and also incorporates motion sensing and inclination sensing capabilities. This sensor also supports the Wireless MBus 868MHz OMS automated meter reading protocol, allowing utility companies to simultaneously read various utility meters from up to 600m of the luminaire controller.
- In the awards' Multi Sensor category, which covers sensors that combine two or more functionalities, honors went to Signify for its Philips Outdoor Multi Sensor (OMS) LRI8135. Built to support diverse smart city applications, the OMS connects to streetlight luminaires via the Zhaga Book 18 (edition 3) socket interface. Intended for use in Zhaga-D4i certified outdoor luminaires, the OMS includes several sensors to support different smart city applications. For example, it can serve as a radar motion sensor to automatically increase light levels in response to motion, as a light sensor to enable dusk-to-dawn operations, or as noise and temperature sensors to monitor ambient conditions near the light pole. When grouped via a local mesh radio network, the OMS can increase the light level of a group of luminaires. It also features tilt and impact sensors for reporting potentially unsafe light pole conditions.
Building the smart cities of the future
Each Zhaga award winner was presented with a digital banner badge and will receive public recognition of their award-winning product or concept, per the consortium.
As perennially noted in the pages of SBT, public safety is at the heart of the smart city movement, and with the lighting control systems market forecast to reach $26 billion by 2026, smart streetlight systems would appear to represent a not-inconsiderable level of capex and opex for critical infrastructure going forward.
Tangential to such observations, Zhaga Steering Committee chair Martini concluded,
“Not only do these Zhaga Smart City Sensor Awards winners celebrate the innovative solutions on the market today, they also challenge other manufacturers, innovators and researchers to create the next generation of sensors that will define the smart city of tomorrow."
Learn more about the Zhaga Smart City Sensor Awards winners.
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