ES2550687B1 - Intelligent lighting management system - Google Patents

Abstract

Intelligent node management system for lighting. # The system comprises at least one control center (1) that manages a plurality of intelligent nodes (2), so that each intelligent node contains an LED lamp (3) and a driver (4) that governs said LED lamp, and at least one router (5) to address the information between the control center and the intelligent nodes. The intelligent nodes (2) are grouped into domains, each domain corresponding to a given lighting zone or part of a lighting zone, each driver (4) comprising an information module (6) for configuration within a domain, and including each information module technical data of the corresponding intelligent node and the security keys for its configuration in wireless mode.

Description

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INTELLIGENT NODES MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR LIGHTING

D E S C R I P C I O N

OBJECT OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates to a smart node management system for lighting.

Thus, the invention has its application therefore in the field of luminaire management systems, and can be used to illuminate urban areas, roads, road tunnels, industrial areas, companies, etc.

The object of the invention is to provide a system that manages said nodes for intelligent lighting, allowing the lighting of a lighting zone or a plurality of lighting zones in an efficient manner that adapts to the needs of lighting of each moment, all with an easy configuration, based on the fact that its installation / configuration is carried out in an automated way, avoiding the training of personnel in the use and installation of these LED lamps.

Thus, it is the object of the invention that the installer can install the lamps immediately on each node, in a simple manner, without having to carry out previous studies of location and routing engineering.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Although there are a wide variety of lighting node management systems, this type of installation requires a complex installation and configuration, so that the operators or installers in charge of this task must have a high technical training, which evidently increases the costs installation tasks, to which we must add the high period of time required by said installation and configuration, all factors

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that have a negative impact on the cost of the installation.

DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

The intelligent nodes management system for lighting that is recommended solves the problem described above in a fully satisfactory manner, based on an extremely effective solution.

For this, the system of the invention comprises a control center that manages a plurality of intelligent nodes, each intelligent node comprising an LED lamp and a driver governing said LED lamp, and at least one router to address the information between the center of Control and smart nodes.

The management system could include, depending on the dimensions it has, more than one control center.

The nodes are grouped into domains, each domain corresponding to a specific luminaire zone or part of a lighting zone.

Each driver comprises an information module for its configuration within a domain, and each information module includes the technical data of the corresponding intelligent node and the security keys for its configuration in wireless mode.

In this way, each node automates its own installation avoiding the training of personnel in the use and installation of the lamps associated with said node.

The information module of each driver comprises an RFID tag or a continuous or two-dimensional barcode.

In the configuration of an intelligent node, said node is assigned the height at which the LED illumination is arranged.

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The control center defines the level of illumination needed in each lighting zone, so that in these zones a sensor is established for each lighting zone or for each actuation area comprising several lighting zones that sends information to the control center through a router associated to said lighting zone, said information being relative to the intensity level of ambient light, humidity, rain and / or wind.

For its part, each driver comprises a microcontroller that calculates the intensity at which the LED lamp has to be powered based on the level of lighting defined by the control center, a communications module to communicate with the router associated with the intelligent node and a power module that powers the LED lamp. These drivers also include a relay to cut off the power of the LED lamp when the control center defines the level of zero illumination.

The control center monitors the status of the LED lamps by requesting information from the drivers associated with said LED lamps, so that it can be known remotely if an LED lamp is burned.

Said control center also monitors the status of the power modules of the drivers by requesting information from said drivers, so that it can be known remotely if the power modules are degraded.

The communication between a router and the intelligent nodes associated with said router is carried out with a master-slave protocol, the router being the master and the intelligent nodes being the slaves.

In the configuration of an intelligent node, the router is associated with the highest strength indicator of the received signal (RSSI).

Finally, it is worth noting the fact that each router is adapted to transmit a signal every a predetermined time interval to the drivers assigned to said router, and the drivers are adapted to turn on the associated LED lamp if they do not receive said signal in a period of default time

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DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

To complement the description that is going to be carried out below and in order to help a better understanding of the features of the invention, according to a preferred example of practical realization thereof, a set of drawings is accompanied as an integral part of said description. where, with an illustrative and non-limiting nature, the following has been represented:

Figure 1 shows a representation corresponding to a schematic block diagram of a smart node management system for lighting performed in accordance with the object of the present invention.

Figure 2.- Shows a table corresponding to the configuration of the domains, nodes and routers assigned for the two lighting zones.

PREFERRED EMBODIMENT OF THE INVENTION

As can be seen in the figures summarized, and especially in Figure 1, the intelligent node management system comprises a control center (1) that manages a plurality of intelligent nodes (2).

Each intelligent node comprises an LED lamp (3) and a driver (4) that governs said LED lamp. The management system may comprise, depending on the dimensions it has, more than one control center. The management system comprises a plurality of routers (5) or routers to address the information between the control center (1) and the intelligent nodes (2). The number of routers (5) depends on the lighting area that you want to cover. In this embodiment, routers having a coverage of approximately 1.5 km radius are preferably used.

The intelligent nodes (2) are grouped into domains, each domain corresponding to a specific lighting area (a street, a neighborhood, etc.) or part of an area. Each driver (5) comprises an information module (6) for its configuration within a

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domain. Each information module (6) includes technical data of the corresponding intelligent node and the security keys for its configuration in wireless mode.

Thanks to this information, the installer can install the lamp immediately, easily and without prior studies of location and routing engineering.

In this embodiment, the information module comprises an RFID tag ("Radio Frequency IDentification") (7).

The fact that each driver (4) comprises an information module (6) in which both the characteristics of the intelligent node and the keys necessary for its configuration are specified, facilitates the process of configuring an intelligent node (2) to the system lighting. When it is desired to add an intelligent node to the system, the installer reads the information from the information module (6), and then places the LED lamp (3) in the final position. The installer connects to the driver (4) using the previously read keys, the control center manages the configuration of the intelligent node, assigning it the domain to which it belongs, the associated router (5) and the security keys for communication. In addition, the installer through an application will assign parameters such as the height at which the LED lamp (3) is arranged and the location of the intelligent node.

The installer will preferably have a GPS device to determine the exact coordinates of the location of the intelligent node (2). In other embodiments, the information module may comprise a continuous or two-dimensional bar code, in particular a QR code or rapid response code.

In this embodiment the management system comprises a gateway or gateway communicated with the control center that has a plurality of associated routers. The functions of a gateway are as follows:

- Glue and prioritize the commands for each node and domain,

- distribute keys and signatures to routers and nodes,

- manage all routers requests

- temporarily store the values provided by the routers before

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send them to each control center

This design is transaction in each layer but avoids an important workload in the control center servers since they receive the data already preprocessed. In the event that a gateway stops working, the routers can communicate with the control center through support gateways. The communication between the control center and the gateway is done online.

Similarly, the gateway and router communication is also done through the internet.

For control centers that manage small areas, such as a province or an autonomous community, it may be sufficient for the system to comprise a single gateway but if the area to be managed is large, it is convenient for the system to comprise several gateways to reduce traffic data from these gateways.

In this embodiment, the control center defines the level of lighting required in each lighting zone. Specifically, it defines the level of illumination necessary at ground level, therefore it does not define the intensity to which each LED lamp should be adjusted.

To calculate the lighting level, different parameters are taken into account. In this embodiment, the system comprises at least one sensor for each lighting zone or for each actuation area that comprises several lighting zones, that is, in the case of lighting of a town that would be an actuation area, it may comprise the less a sensor for each neighborhood or street or be enough to understand at least one common sensor for the whole town.

Said sensor sends information to the control center (1) through a router associated with said lighting zone or said actuation zone, said information being relative to the level of intensity of the ambient light, humidity, climatology (rain, snow , etc.), vehicle traffic and / or wind speed.

In this way, the management system, based on this information plus what it has on its servers (workday or holiday, daytime, etc.) can adjust the intensity level

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necessary in each lighting area to the needs of the area.

In this embodiment, each router comprises digital and analog inputs through which it receives the information from the sensors. In other possible embodiments, the sensors can be autonomous units that send the information to the router or directly to the control center by wireless communication, by Ethernet, by WIFI, by CAN communication or by other means of communication.

The fact of not having sensors in each intelligent node makes the maintenance of the system much simpler and cheaper and that the cost of each driver is lower.

The control center (1), taking into account the information received through the sensors and taking into account other parameters known by the control center, defines the level of illumination required at each moment in each lighting zone. The parameters known by the control center can be for example the time, whether it is a workday or not, the season of the year, etc. Thus, the level of illumination necessary at two o'clock in the morning is different, a work day or a holiday, in which there are probably more people on the street and therefore it may be convenient to have more lighting. On the other hand, if the control center knows that it is raining in a lighting area, more lighting will be necessary than if it was not raining. In this way you can adapt the level of lighting necessary for the conditions of each moment. In this way a very significant amount of energy can be saved, of the order of 50% in European countries, compared to traditional lighting systems in which the level of lighting intensity is always 100%, since it is set without Take into account the needs of each moment.

Each driver (4) comprises a microcontroller (8) comprising tables in which, depending on the level of lighting defined by the control center and the height at which the LED lamp is arranged, a control signal is generated for that at the street level the required level of lighting is reached.

Each driver (4) also includes a communications module (9) to communicate with the router (5) associated with the intelligent node (2) that in turn exchanges information with the

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microcontroller (8). In this embodiment the communication between an intelligent node and the associated router is performed in wireless mode using the LoRa protocol, since it is a protocol that offers adequate coverage in harsh environments. In this embodiment the communication is carried out on the 868 MHz frequency since it is more robust against the humidity and the necessary bandwidth does not require the use of 2.4 GHz.

In other embodiments, the communications module may use other types of wireless communication protocols.

In other embodiments, for the lighting of areas where wireless communication is not suitable, for example in tunnels, other types of communications will be used, such as CAN communication.

For the supply of the LED lamp (3) the driver (4) comprises a rectification module (10 ’), a power module (10) and a relay (11) arranged the rectification module and the power module. The rectification module feeds both the microcontroller (8) and the power module. The microcontroller (8) controls the power module (10) and the relay (11) based on the information it receives from the control center (1).

Thus, if the control center considers that there is no need for lighting, the microcontroller disconnects the relay so that the power module and therefore the LED lamp run out of power. This increases the useful life of the power module and the LED lamp significantly, more than double, since the elements that compose it do not suffer deterioration during the periods in which the LED lamps remain off. On the contrary, if the control center considers that it is necessary to turn on the LED lamps, the driver will receive this information through the corresponding router and the controller will activate the relay and send a control signal to the power module. The power module varies the intensity with which it powers the LED lamp depending on the control signal it receives from the microcontroller. Depending on the intensity the LED lamp will illuminate more or less. In this embodiment, the control center, in addition to defining the level of lighting required in each lighting zone, monitors the status of the LED lamps.

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To carry out the monitoring, the control center (1) requests information from the drivers (4) associated with the LED lamps (3), so that it can be known remotely if an LED lamp is burned.

In this way, the status of the LED lamps can be known remotely without having to go to an operator to see the status of each LED lamp in situ.

In addition, in this embodiment the control center (1) also monitors the status of the power modules (10) of the drivers (4). For this, it asks for information from these drivers, who receive information about the current and voltage of the power module so that comparing them with the nominal values known by the microcontroller, it can know if the power module is degraded and inform the control center .

All the information is visualized and controlled through the server management software, which constitutes a SCADA (Supervision, Control and Data Acquisition) explicitly developed for this application and which is fully configurable for each of the particular needs.

In this embodiment, the communication between a router and the intelligent nodes associated with said router is carried out with a master-slave protocol, the router being the master and the intelligent nodes being the slaves.

Smart nodes have no ability to communicate with other smart nodes, in fact they don't know the rest of smart nodes that make up the domain they belong to.

Although normally the commands will be issued by the master, the developed protocol also allows slaves to generate events, the slave himself initiating communication.

This master slave design avoids all the pre-study engineering required by classical systems based on mesh or mesh networks, for example ZigBee networks. This configuration allows the system to be simple to configure and also simple.

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add new smart nodes to the system.

In addition, it allows facilities to be made by personnel without specific network training and streamlines the installations of LED lamps and their maintenance.

When configuring an intelligent node (2), the router is associated with the highest strength indicator of the received signal (RSSI - “Received Signal Strength Indicator”). This is of great importance in populated areas, where signal reflections are unpredictable and therefore it is better to let the intelligent node itself decide which is the router that responds best at that point of use.

The configuration is done automatically and is managed by the control center (1).

Thus, the intelligent nodes of a given lighting zone can receive signals from different routers. In the example of figure 2, a first lighting zone RL1 and a second lighting zone RL2 are shown, each of said zones being able to correspond, for example, with a neighborhood. A plurality of intelligent nodes 20, 21, 22, 23 and 24 are arranged in the first lighting zone RL1, while another plurality of intelligent nodes 25, 26 and 27 are arranged in the second lighting zone. In addition, the system comprises a plurality of routers for communicating the control center with said intelligent nodes 20 to 27.

As mentioned above, there may be nodes that are in the coverage area of more than one router, so for example smart node 21 is in the coverage area of routers R1 and R2 and smart nodes 23 and 24 they are in the coverage area of routers R2 and R3. When configuring these nodes that are in the coverage area of more than one router, they will be assigned the router with the highest RSSI.

Thus, intelligent node 23 is assigned to router R2 while intelligent node 24 is assigned to router R3.

As can be seen in the table of the commented figure 2, each intelligent node belongs to a domain. Each router can be associated with several domains and each zone

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lighting can comprise a plurality of domains. The control center will define the level of lighting needed in each RL2 lighting zone, so two smart nodes that belong to two different zones will belong to different domains, even though they are associated with the same router. Thus, intelligent nodes 24 and 25 are associated with router R3 but since they belong to different lighting zones each belongs to a domain, DOM3 and DOM4 respectively.

In this embodiment a router can manage up to 1,024 domains and each domain can comprise up to 64,000 nodes. Therefore, a router is capable of managing without interference more than 64 million nodes within a radius of no more than 1.5 km, a density much higher than that offered by other intelligent node management systems.

In addition, as a router can manage multiple domains, nodes from different service providers can be installed by associating each with their own domain.

This design allows to ensure the privacy of communications between the nodes of each domain, since each domain has different electronic keys and signatures. In this embodiment, each router is adapted to transmit a signal every a predetermined time interval to the drivers assigned to said router, and the drivers are adapted to turn on the associated LED lamp if they do not receive said signal in a predetermined period of time.

This ensures that in case a router stops working, the zones associated with that router are not left in the dark.

Claims (1)

5 10 fifteen twenty 25 30 R E I V I N D I C A C I O N E S 1§.- Intelligent lighting management system, characterized in that it comprises at least one control center (1) that manages a plurality of intelligent nodes (2), each intelligent node comprising an LED lamp (3) and a driver (4) that governs said LED lamp, and at least one router (5) to address the information between the control center and the intelligent nodes, having provided that the intelligent nodes (2) are grouped into domains, each domain corresponding to a given lighting zone or part of a lighting zone, each driver (4) comprising an information module (6) for configuration within a domain, and each information module including technical data of the corresponding intelligent node and the keys of security for its configuration in wireless mode. 2§.- Intelligent lighting management system according to claim 1, characterized in that the information module (6) of each driver (4) comprises an RFID tag (7) or a continuous or two-dimensional bar code. 3§.- Intelligent nodes management system for lighting, according to any of the preceding claims, characterized in that sensors of intensity level of ambient light, humidity, rain and / or wind are provided for each lighting zone or for each area of action that comprises several lighting zones that send information to the control center through a router associated with said lighting zone. 4§.- Intelligent nodes management system for lighting, according to claims 1 and 2, characterized in that each driver (4) comprises a microcontroller (8) with means to calculate the intensity at which the LED lamp has to be fed (3 ) depending on the level of lighting defined by the control center (1), a communications module (9) to communicate with the router (5) associated with the smart node and a power module (10) that powers the LED lamp ( 3). 5§.- Intelligent nodes management system for lighting, according to claim 4§, characterized in that the control center (1) includes means for monitoring the status of 5 10 fifteen twenty 25 the LED lamps by means of the information received by the drivers (4) associated with said LED lamps. 6§.- Intelligent lighting management system according to claims 4 or 5, characterized in that the control center (1) includes means for monitoring the status of the power modules (10) of the drivers (4) . 7§.- Intelligent node management system for lighting, according to any of the preceding claims, characterized in that a master-slave communication protocol is used therein, the router (5) being the master and the intelligent nodes (2 ) the slaves. 8§.- Smart nodes management system for lighting, according to any of the preceding claims, characterized in that the drivers (4) comprise a relay (11) to cut off the power of the LED lamp (3) when the center Control defines the level of zero illumination. 9§.- Intelligent lighting management system according to any of the preceding claims, characterized in that each router (5) includes means for transmitting a signal every predetermined time interval to the drivers (4) assigned to said router , including the drivers (4) means to turn on the associated LED lamp (3) if they do not receive said signal in a predetermined period of time.