RAB Lighting designs, develops, and manufactures the Lightcloud family of high-quality, innovative, affordable, and energy-efficient LED smart lighting and connected controls. Lightcloud products make it easy for distributors to sell, electricians to install, and end users to save energy — all while minimizing environmental impact and ensuring safer conditions. RAB offers extensive product lines for indoor and outdoor applications, focusing on cutting-edge LED designs that prioritize energy savings and sustainability.
Smart Lighting: Rethinking The Lighting Landscape
In almost every vertical market — from education, healthcare, warehousing, and smart cities to manufacturing, retail, and real estate — smart lighting infrastructure represents the ideal intersection of increased safety and dramatically lower costs. The advent of LED lighting represented the first wave of immediate improvements. Wired connections gave operators greater control but required lengthier and more expensive installations.
Today, new-breed smart lighting systems paired with wireless controls and sensors are driving down costs further (as much as 60-80%), while accelerating payback periods, improving lit environments, and offering improved usability, safety, and of course benefits to the environment.
According to Jason Oliver, Senior Vice President of Technology for RAB Lighting, that combination of sensors, LED lights, and controls is unleashing exceptional innovation through the company’s Lightcloud portfolio of smart lighting. “When we tie together smart lighting with wireless networking and cloud connectivity, customers can optimize their lighting almost everywhere you can think of — airports, restaurants, parking lots, stadiums, amusement parks, factories, apartment buildings, and hotels — with a solution that’s powerful, easy, and secure that they can control from any browser on any device. What’s more, it helps them dramatically shrink their carbon footprint and improve their ESG score.”
Connectivity for Smart Lighting: Cheaper, Smaller, Faster
One of the keys to RAB Lighting’s Lightcloud solution is the wireless connectivity provided through the Digi XBee 3 Zigbee module, a low-power, low-profile 2.4 GHz module. At just 13 mm x 19 mm, Digi XBee 3 provides the compact footprint that RAB Lighting requires for its smart lighting applications. Digi XBee 3 modules are easy to configure and control from a simple, central platform. Built-in Digi TrustFence security, identity, and data privacy features to protect against new and evolving cyber threats. What’s more, Digi eliminates the need for an external microcontroller and creates smart end nodes using MicroPython.
“We’re very happy with Digi as our connectivity solution because it’s cheaper, smaller, and faster,” Oliver said. “And it’s great for rugged environments like hazardous lighting, oil rigs, or industrial sites. With Digi modules and software, we don’t have to design our solution at a lower level, and we don’t have to invent or maintain connectivity components. They’ve done an excellent job with pin compatibility and consistent layouts. We can drop in a new XBee 3 with very few changes.”
RAB Lighting’s Lightcloud platform leverages a Zigbee network of controllers, sensors, and wall stations that wirelessly send, receive, and repeat signals for a near infinite number of devices. The companion Lightcloud Gateway – built around the acclaimed Digi ConnectCore 6UL embedded system on module — connects to the cloud with a Digi XBee modem, so no Ethernet or corporate network is needed to remotely manage the system. All settings are stored in the cloud, so there’s no need to backup servers or devices.
A Meaningful and Rapid Payback
“Lightcloud is a carefully designed a multi-layered system,” said Oliver. “The lighting controls, sensors and light switches are all powered with 120V current. The Digi XBee components are also hard-wired for power — so we don’t worry about batteries — but we aren’t hard-wiring them for connectivity. They’re operating in a wireless Zigbee network that connects to our gateway, which uses a Digi XBee 2.4 GHz modem to connect to the cloud. We’ve also created apps to control and configure each lighting environment. From our app, the user can control and monitor devices at a granular level — dimming levels, time of day fluctuations, motion sensing, signal strength, or power status. We can capture lots of granular data on usage for reporting analysis.”
While the creative uses of smart lighting are broad and varied, they feature a common thread: significant savings and fast payback. “Some of our customers are reducing their energy costs by 60-80%,” Oliver said. “DLC listings means these products qualify for rebates and incentives that drive a rapid payback, sometimes in just six months.”
For instance, Lightcloud helps the University of Texas - Dallas manage its multipurpose gymnasium. Controllers on each fixture allow for luminaire level control, creating different lighting scenarios for each different uses use. During basketball games, the bleachers are dimmed, and the court is set to 100%. For graduation, there’s a spotlight look for the stage. Lights can even be dimmed for 5 a.m. yoga meditation. The university estimates it’s saved nearly 17,000 kWh per month, translating into an 82% savings. Over the life of the system, the university estimates it will save $286,000.
At an assisted living/memory-care facility, Lightcloud works with special fixtures to change color tones and dimming levels that align with circadian rhythms. Not only does that save money, it can also create a safer environment with fewer patient falls and better health. At the Paducah Convention Center in Kentucky, another multipurpose facility, operators estimate a 93% reduction in energy costs, a four-year ROI, and $339,000 in savings.
“In partnership with our thousands of distributors and electrical contractors, RAB and Lightcloud is helping hundreds of organizations completely transform the cost and quality of their lighting while improving sustainability. With Digi’s connectivity, we’re helping to deliver on the promise of smart lighting.”