New Casambi products on the way
Casambi has announced upcoming new products supporting remote, long-range wireless lighting control implementation.
Casambi announced today at the Light + Building trade fair new products supporting lighting companies with the implementation of remote and long-range wireless lighting control projects.
The transition from legacy light sources to LEDs is progressing rapidly – especially now that the EU’s fluorescent ban is coming into force. With the upgrade to digitized LEDs, the industry is seeing a sharper focus and broader interest in software and user interfaces, and the augmentation of energy and data services through remote LED light controls and sensors.
‘The Casambi Ecosystem was established to cater to this movement.’ Said Kari Mettälä, Casambi CEO. ‘Wireless lighting control solutions are gaining popularity owing to their proven track record of boosting sustainability and energy efficiency – improving the overall quality of buildings and infrastructures through smart control’.
Speaking today at the Light + Building trade fair in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, he said,
‘While we provide the technology that underpins the transformation from wired to wireless lighting control, it’s really the vibrant Casambi Ecosystem that inspires the lighting industry to evolve. For example, our partners independently took the Casambi Ecosystem into yet another application area – outdoors. This really emphasizes the openness and enabling characteristics of the Casambi Ecosystem. The way that Casambi operates, we can easily and quickly release new products catering to such movements.’
Casambi Long Range
Casambi is upgrading the SoCs (System on Chip) used in products. The previously used nRF52832 chip by Nordic Semiconductor will be replaced by their nRF52840, which is a functionally richer technology.
The new chip is designed to support the latest BLE5 specification, accommodate future advancements of BLE, and offers increased performance capabilities which include long-range and high throughput modes.
This upgrade, along with our new improved antenna design, enables Casambi to provide a new hardware variant of existing products to offer long-range radio modes that meet the demand for robust wireless communication within lighting networks installed in vast outdoor spaces as well as interior lighting installations.
Although the communication range in radio technology may ultimately vary depending on the design of a product in which the antenna is housed and on the environment in which it operates, this new hardware upgrade will extend wireless communication to 200 meters for usual lighting applications.
The following will receive this upgrade: CBU-DCS, CBU-PWM4, CBU-TED, CBU-ASD, CBU-A2D, and Casambi Xpress. The CBM-002 is replaced by the CBM-003, which was introduced in January 2022 and also contains the newest SoC. Sampling of all the above-mentioned products will commence from Q1/2023, with full production thereof to be achieved during Q2/2023.
Casambi Cloud Gateway
Casambi has also unveiled a new industrial-strength cloud gateway for remote access and control of lighting networks. Designed to aggregate communication from light controllers and backhaul data via the cloud to a central management platform, the new Casambi Cloud Gateway opens the doors to remote control and real-time monitoring of lighting networks.
‘The product has been designed and launched to meet the demand for robust, industrial-strength remote control abilities. It affords many of the functionalities found in the Casambi App – such as luminaire control, the creation and editing of scenes and timers, and the collection of sensor and device usage data – with the possibility to integrate with third-party systems via the Casambi Cloud API [beta]’ said Tommi Tiira, Product Owner at Casambi.
Tipped as especially great for large-scale lighting projects, the Casambi Cloud Gateway has very high uptime and offers insights on the status of devices within a network. The closed Beta testing phase will take place between Q4 2022 and Q1 2023. The Casambi Cloud Gateway is expected to become available to the public in the spring of 2023.
Casambi Pro
Casambi Pro [Beta] is coming. This is a free planning and commissioning tool that simplifies the process of configuring lighting controls. It’s been designed for specifiers and commissioning partners who are familiar with the multitude of technical configuration properties that can apply in large lighting projects. The core idea is to enable the creation of configurations in advance, without the need to access real devices and networks.
‘In Casambi Pro, users can create lighting configurations offsite. This gives specifiers more control over the final outcome and reduces the time needed on-site to commission the designed system.’ Said Timo Korhonen, Head of UX Design at Casambi, stating, ‘This is because everything is done beforehand in the software. You only need to pair the devices onsite and the configuration happens automatically’.
Intended as an error-reducing collaboration tool and helpful for retrofit projects when lighting needs to be updated with minimal disruption to business, Casambi Pro [Public Beta] will become available towards the end of the year, 2022. Currently, it runs on PC (Windows 10 & 11) and on Apple iPad.
For more information, please contact sales@casambi.com
