Modern ways of remote control of street lighting
In any settlement on the streets there are lighting devices. As a rule, these are powerful lights installed in accordance with the requirements of the infrastructure. Switching on and off lighting devices at the right time is made possible through the use of a time relay. Likewise, you can automate your backyard lighting and easily introduce optimization — in some places you can add motion or presence sensors — this is how you can significantly reduce energy consumption.
Also you can read : Smart lamps: device, types and their use
Control of street lighting. Modern methods.
Control cabinet
The heart of the lighting automation system is the control cabinet. There are installed circuits responsible for controlling loads, for distributing power, for protecting the luminaire relay against voltage surges and short circuits. This is a kind of automated control panel.
The control cabinet equipment must be maintained and updated from time to time in order to ensure safe and reliable cable and circuit operation. At the time of maintenance work, the cabinet is de-energized, and replace those parts that are time to upgrade.
The task of the control cabinet is mainly to control the operation of the correct relay depending on the current situation (depending on the time of day, on the lighting conditions, on the state of the presence sensor). In addition, the control cabinet allows a person using the remote control to quickly adjust the intensity of the glow of the lamps during their work, after the photo relay has already worked.
In principle, you can connect anything to the cabinet. Starting with street lamps on poles that will be activated by a photo relay or from a remote control, continuing with LEDs along the backyard paths that light up at dusk, ending with garlands on the front of the house and a lamp above the main entrance to the house. Basically there are no restrictions, a sufficient condition is that this or that lighting device on the street gets into the field of action of the cabinet and console.
Power and Control Circuits
In the power supply circuits in conjunction with the relay traditionally used: magnetic or induction ballasts. Less often - electronic ballasts (since they distort the radio signal, they give an unstable response). Most often - timers to control the calendar and the time of day (including holidays and weekends). One way or another, we can distinguish three types of devices for automated control of street lighting: a photo relay for controlling the level of illumination, a system with a timer, and a system based on an astrotimer.
Switching on and off lighting devices based on the current light level is the principle of operation of devices based on photo relay only.
In theory, this approach allows you to perfectly control the illumination on the street, depending on weather conditions and the time of day: in cloudy weather, the light will turn on earlier than on a clear day. But in fact, a lot of external factors influence such a system, for example, if dirt gets on the sensor or the temperature of the circuit changes, so errors occur in a normal, as a person would like, relay operation.
Triggering at a specific time is the principle of devices solely on the timer. It does not matter what the weather is, whether it is raining or snowing - in the morning the light of the night illumination will be extinguished, and in the evening it will be turned on - in accordance with the user-defined parameters of the adjustable timer. But what about the fact that the light day stays in summer, and decreases in winter? In this lack of schemes just on the timer, it will be necessary to carry out adjustment from time to time.
More flexible system - astrotimer . This type of controller is a timer, coupled with the program of tracking the theoretical movement of the sun on the horizon. The database regarding the dynamics of the position of the Sun over the terrain with your coordinates is loaded into the controller , and the more perfect the program is, the more accurate the work of the automation system. The user will have to change the power supply of the system and bring the clock to the controller every 3 years.
Automated site lighting
If you need to automate the lighting of the backyard plot, then, with certain financial opportunities, you can run a separate cable with your photo relay to each of the lighting devices. Control cabinets installed inside the house and near the gate. The shield will work so that the consumption of each unit will be proportional to the number of cable channels.
In order to optimize the system, one of the control cabinets is placed near the gate, and devices with a photo relay and presence sensor are connected to it , so that its controller can control, say, only the lighting along the garden path. The second cabinet (for remote control) is installed inside the house. The scheme is simpler: the luminaire channels come to the control unit, and control is exercised from the console.
Blocks with a variety of optional features are popular, such as, for example, remote control of a photo relay or when commands are sent from the shield, such as “de-energize the perimeter”. A standard cabinet can have just 6 channels, of which not all can be used, but how many are needed, for example, 2 or 5.
In the process of setting up the system, the cables are first pulled from the lighting fixtures to the control cabinet. Then you can improve the system. Each lamp is equipped with a battery-operated controller for remote control over the radio channel from the console with the first step of improvement. Another option for remote control is to install sensors for receiving radio waves from the console.
One of the most popular solutions is garden lights on solar panels. Here you will not need any cables or control cabinets, just put the sensors for the remote. Lighting zones may vary in control frequencies, but together they will be able to cover the entire area.
Ways of remote control of street lighting
Remote control of the lighting area is often associated with the mandatory installation of a switchboard. The transmission of the controller signal can be organized in various ways, and not just by automated digital means, but also:
- RF signal on the cable to a separate device with an individual relay;
- by controlling from a smartphone via GSM, especially in a large area;
- finally a radio signal.
In any case, the scheme in a hierarchical sense is built on the basis of the following algorithm: it controls the group of lamps or the relay, then the control cabinet for a certain area, and finally the main board for managing the district’s intelligent lighting network.
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