
How to build a wireless street lighting system - adunk
http://www.thingsquare.com/blog/articles/smart-wireless-led-street-lighting/
======
CalRobert
Or just turn them off and enjoy more beautiful night skies, less blue spectrum
light interrupting your sleep, healthier wildlife, and reduced energy usage
with most likely no negative effects.

[https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jul/29/turning-
off-...](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jul/29/turning-off-street-
lights-does-not-lead-to-more-or-accidents-study)

~~~
dEnigma
Indeed. Slovenia, for example, has great anti light-pollution laws.

[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-11220636](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-
europe-11220636)

~~~
CalRobert
Visited Ljubljana for New Years' a few years ago and loved it. Yet another
reason to visit again!

------
Reason077
Being able to dim LED street lights would be very useful, and not just for the
power savings.

Many of the new LED street lights here in London are far too bright - to the
point of being dazzling and irritating to pedestrians. It's especially
annoying when you have them shining directly into your house!

I understand the safety advantages of having ultra-bright white lights at busy
throughfares and intersections, but on quiet residential streets they are more
than annoying and harmful to the character of our neighbourhoods.

~~~
ghouse
Nearly all of the most recent LED street lights can be dimmed. Though, for
most, it's something that done locally and generally at the time of
installation. You may be able to get someone to either 1) adjust the
brightness, or 2) adjust the lamp so that it shines less into your house.

~~~
Reason077
If it was shining into my house I'd certainly be trying to get this done!

My my complaint is more general: Some council boffin has decided that using
ultra-bright lights would improve safety, but actually they can have the
opposite effect - by being blinding and dazzling to pedestrians, drivers and
cyclists.

A redesign of the lighting units (perhaps with some kind of lens or diffuser)
would probably help too, so that the light is diffused more and you aren't
looking directly into the LED elements.

------
danbruc
Aren't existing street lights already remotely controlled with the control
signals modulated onto the power line? I am less sure about a back channel but
I am pretty sure street lights are not turned on by simply turning on the
power.

~~~
ghouse
Most are turned on locally by a photocell mounted on the street light.

~~~
danbruc
There is then probably considerable variation from place to place, but in
Germany they usually follow a schedule turning on and off at specific times.
It is also not uncommon that every second or so street light gets turned off
late in the night. Sometimes they also turn on outside of the usual hours if
it is especially dark due to dense clouds or heavy snowfall but I can not
really tell whether this is sensed locally at the street light or centrally
controlled.

EDIT: Just checked the German Wikipedia article and at least here all kinds of
different systems with varying levels of granularity and autonomy are in use.
Some cities seemingly even installed systems that allow turning on the street
lights in specific streets or areas on demand via call or SMS during the late
night.

~~~
zeeZ
In Germany the most common is centrally controlled. Usually a couple streets
are connected to a controller, which is either triggered by a signal modulated
over the regular mains from the local power provider or a central sensor, or
triggered by a sensor connected to the controller.

It's usually not individual lamps, but large streets, blocks, or entire
neighborhoods at once.

------
rz2k
I am curious about how the mesh topology based on Launchpad is superior to
typical star topology LoRa.

It looks like each Launchpad is $30 (multiple per light?) and Pi Zero W is
$10, yet an ESP32 development board _with_ LoRa is about $10. Given that
street lights have a constant power source the communication challenges seem
like they would be easy compared to when such devices are economizing every
milliwatt hour. They could be set to always receive, and send small packets to
a nearby peers to be relayed in very short windows.

------
bigbugbag
Let's save half a led worth energy some of the time by adding always on
wireless router and computer to each street light.

Seems to me someone failed at basic math and logic here.

~~~
beardicus
there's only a tiny microcontroller and radio added per light. the power
consumption of this additional technology is on the order of milliamps at 3v.
this is minuscule compared to the LEDs themselves.

------
whoiskevin
everything comes back around. i worked in a startup in 2002 and we developed a
mesh network street light controller.
[https://web.archive.org/web/20020605214609/http://www.telemi...](https://web.archive.org/web/20020605214609/http://www.telemics.com)

------
anotheryou
Why no ambient light sensors for automatic dimming and only report lamps with
weird voltages (shorted or burned out LEDs)?

~~~
Reason077
That's generally how they work today: each street light has an ambient light
sensor on top and switches itself on and off automatically. Occasionally you
see one that's staying on all the time, presumably because the sensor isn't
working.

I haven't seen any that do automatic dimming, however. That would be a nice
feature.

