A Switch and A Luminaire

Life was easy in the analog era. Enter the digital and it all "is complicated" (as Facebook would say). The relationships have become maybe not complicated, but at least complex. This is a subtle difference. Complicated is rather bad, complex does not have to be (if the complexity is nicely hidden). A jet engine is complex, but hey, we all love them.

So how about the relationship of a switch and a luminaire? It used to be very straightforward - connected by a single copper cable. It is way more complex in the realm of digital systems: in a commercial building luminaires belong to to a facility manager, while switches belong to tenants.

Luminaires are controlled by systems programmed with control scenarios. They have sensors and they "know" when to turn on or off. A switch is not required. But still is handy and may be used: to adjust the light level, to select a scene, to turn the lights off or turn them on at full brightness when cleaning.

And while facility managers don't want their tenants to reprogram the lights, they are usually happy to let them reprogram the switches. Tenants like the freedom of assigning functions to switches and regrouping or even moving them around (this is easy with wireless switches).

From the system perspective this requires fairly complex management of user rights: who can do what. Of course a facility manager will never allow their tenants to reprogram the lighting system but they would be more than happy to let the tenants rearrange the switches or even fine-tune parameters like dwell times. It is like a thermostat in a hotel room. You cannot reprogram the HVAC system but you can adjust the temperature setpoint within a certain range.

Access rights management is becoming a feature in lighting control systems and the latest communication standards (like Bluetooth mesh - of course!) support that. For example, a system installer may configure the dimming range for each luminaire (using his installer key he has access to this configuration set), while users (and the switches or apps they use) will be only able to dim the lights within that range. Lighting management platforms also allow for different access rights and it is perfectly feasible to give tenants rights to rearrange the system within certain boundaries. Yes it is all complex, but does not have to be complicated or difficult to do. And in the end we can nicely marry the hard requirements (like energy savings and high end trimming) with certain degree of freedom the users will enjoy.