Something bigger than us
Luca Ragaglia, VP of Sales EMEA, at Lighting + Building 2022
After connecting with so many friends, old and new, at Light + Building 2022, it’s wonderful to be reminded that our visions for the future are largely aligned. It means we’re on to a good thing! Something bigger than us. Luca Ragaglia, VP of Sales EMEA at Casambi, provides his reflections as this most influential lighting tech show draws to a close.
Trade shows have always been a fantastic reference point for industry updates, and they serve as a valuable litmus test for the latest and great lighting gadgets. After a four-year covid break, Light + Building 2022 returned with an altogether different feel and focus once again. As the world battles with the dual climate and energy crisis, there was undoubtedly a greater emphasis on connectivity, controls and innovations aimed at achieving sustainability and circularity.
Light has finally gone from being an architectural afterthought to being at the epicenter of an intelligently connected world. There was a broad array of products, services and interfacing management systems on display this year that promise to reduce energy consumption, increase safety, and improve overall operational efficiency across the lifetime of lighting and building assets.
Architects and lighting specifiers asked pertinent questions about the future-proof credentials of the smart solutions pitched to them. They asked about lighting and control solutions that can be retrofitted to existing buildings, helping real estate owners to transition towards smarter operations in an easy, quick and profitable manner.
Whether it’s promoting a luminaire design, control component, lighting project or macro values, a choir of experts is always distinct from the sound of a single voice. Watching and participating in the series of 50+ partner presentations that took place on the Casambi stand at L+B 2022, it really hit me; To transform an industry you really do need professionals from the entire spectrum of the lighting business to convene, to jointly inspire and to inform of the limitless possibilities afforded by the latest technology.
We had Erco talking about the transformative impact of smarter lighting on civic life, Tridonic presenting the need for holistic lighting asset management tools, university professors (the amazing Professor Andrea Siniscalco!) bringing scientific research and biological data to the discourse and presenting the case for dynamic lighting… and much, much more. It was amazing to discuss the major market-influencing trends and to realize that our visions for the future are largely aligned. It means we’re on to a good thing! Something bigger than us.
At Casambi, we believe that the future of lighting control is wireless. When Casambi was first conceived, we had the tech know-how with some of the brightest minds in the wireless game, but we knew that it would be impossible to transform an industry alone. We needed to find like-minded people who understood the life-changing potential of wireless lighting control. We set out to form a community in which all our individual strengths would combine to create lasting change.
We formed a tripartite model; Casambi’s platform offers technological solutions, expertise, and guidance on minimizing the barriers to going wireless. It supports all lighting industry players with their product development. The Casambi App is a comprehensive, easy-to-use lighting control tool that enables the orchestration of your greatest lighting ideas. It brings vision to life. But it’s the vibrant, global, Casambi Ecosystem that utilizes both these elements to facilitate, inspire, and motivate the lighting industry to digitally transform.
From Casambi’s in-house teams to luminaire and component manufacturers, service and training partners, data and IoT solution providers, lighting specifiers, and architects, to our global sales network…We are all inextricably linked in one brilliant, game-changing community.
We, at Casambi HQ, may have activated that community, but it really has taken on a life of its own. This was plainly clear at L+B 2022. Which is beautiful. Innovation happens through and within our community, where new ideas are sparked and novel products are created. In fact, thousands of projects happen without our active input every month. Our collective successes create greater reach and impact, galvanizing our movement with every success story told.
The Casambi community’s collective contributions are manifesting in some seriously impressive projects. It’s stunning to see how our community enables and brings these projects to life. Only together, do we provide all the elements needed for modern lighting projects. To date, we’ve been specified in over 150,000 projects and we’re currently growing at an incredible rate of 10,000 projects per month, with project references spanning every application from small high-end residential to 10,000+ node hospitals.
As a result, wireless lighting control solutions are gaining popularity. With every project completed, we have proven them to play a truly huge role in the provision of flexible, highly attractive spaces that offer outstanding user experiences, less energy waste, and improved occupant well-being and productivity. Sustainable building rating tools (like the LEED, BREEAM, and WELL building standards) are increasingly used to assess and recognize buildings that meet certain standards. The total sum of our combined efforts can play a key part in helping building owners to achieve such credits.
The increasing capabilities of smart, connected products are not only reshaping competition within the industry but expanding the boundaries too – industry players who were once our competitors are now joining forces with us, to the benefit of all involved. We’re moving away from the use of discrete, isolated products to product systems, and to systems of systems that all link together. Casambi riffs seamlessly with other ecosystems such as Crestron’s Zum and Zumtobel’s Litecom systems in a way that we can extend each other’s offerings. This proves that we have to make sure that the hardware and the solutions we’re delivering today are enabled and ready to be interfaced with in the future.
While this momentum gathers, proving that Casambi is bigger than the company itself, it’s still our objective at Casambi HQ to ensure that we support this movement through the provision of malleable software, hardware, support services, comprehensive training programs, and our global partner networks.
We just announced that we’re upgrading the SoCs used in Casambi products. The new chip is designed to support the latest BLE5 specification, accommodate future advancements of BLE, and offers increased performance capabilities, including long-range and high throughput modes. These units are ideal for outdoor lighting projects where intra-node distances can be longer.
This is, again, a great example of our philosophy in action. With open ecosystem thinking it’s possible to bring much-needed products to market quickly. We had numerous ecosystem partners who wanted to take us into the outdoor market. The way that Casambi operates, we can easily and quickly release new products catering to such movements. For example, street lighting was something that, before introducing our long-range series, we couldn’t tackle. Now we’re ready.
I see it as a huge personal privilege to play a part in this global movement. As our day-to-day realities continually evolve, and lighting needs change, it’s great to be part of a community that believes in the potential of wireless control to enable a better world. I, for one, really enjoyed L+B 2022 and feel so optimistic about the future. Together, we can achieve great things.
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