Standardizing Light Bulbs

Source: CNX Software

I remember people's faces back in 2011 when responding to "what is your company doing?" question my answer was - software for light bulbs. That was almost two years before Philips Hue came out. Now fast forward 12 years, we have reached the level of elevating that software concept to the global standard level, through Bluetooth NLC.

Bluetooth NLC is the standard's body response addressing the needs of universal cross-vendor interoperability in the smart lighting space. Of course they are not exactly "light bulbs", as less and less people make and use them, but rather commercial / industrial grade lighting fixtures and luminaires.

With the proliferation of LEDs the bulb form factor has gone away nor there is a need to have them replacable. So the E26/E27/E14 screw standards are gone, but the lights now are intelligent and want to be connected.

At a glance the lightbulb functions seem very simple - turn on and turn off. Then there is dimming. And dimming is not just % dim level, but also all sorts of behaviors like the dimming curve (to make the perceptual appearance more natural to human eyes), behaviors related to the lights being power - cycled (should they remember their last dim level?).

And then when you realize the lights are wirelessly connected, they should respond not only to switches but also to all sorts of dimming / scene controls (wall panels) and sensors (occupancy / light level). Moving on, it is quite useful when the lights run their own real time clocks, as then they can be scheduled to perform certain actions at certain times. Lights should be able to be members of groups and groups usually involve different scene settings.

Then, invisible to users, is the whole wireless connectivity machinery. Mesh networking, cybersecurity, firmware updates, capabilities discovery and so on.

Long story short it took 8 years, two major specification releases (2017 and 2023), 1500 pages, 10 specification documents and countless hours of engineering work to accomplish "the light bulb standard" - Bluetooth NLC. Time will tell, but the expectations are very high and the initial industry response has been great - like everybody was waiting for that moment - to have the interoperable Bluetooth standard for a light bulb. It clearly marks the new era in smart lighting. And nobody had done this before.