Enlighted Inc. is offering LED lighting services that track people and objects by detecting infrared heat.
According to EENews.com, Enlightened Inc. is installing LEDs along with a tiny disk and antennae packed with a “light sensor, a temperature gauge, a power meter and a motion sensor, as well as wireless devices that communicate with the building-management system, with the other lights and with local smartphones.”
“The tracking systems work by means of the sensor modules, installed every 100 square feet with each overhead light,” explains Zach Gentry, the vice president of marketing at Enlighted.
Each sensor detects infrared heat and samples 60 times a second to distinguish between a still person and a heater, for example, according to EENews.com, “meanwhile, the light sensors watch for subtle changes in illumination as light reflects off a passing secretary. Computer servers, hosted in the cloud, stitch the data streams into an image.”
Then the system can mesh its data with other systems in the building as well as daylight and weather to “manage light levels,” or “pair room occupancy with HVAC data, so the building knows which rooms to heat and cool when,” reports EENEws.com.
Enlightened is also considering sticking “coin-sized beacons” on equipment such as company laptops to track where they are in case they get stolen, says EENews.com.
Gentry claims that LEDs not only use less energy than overhead fluorescent tubes”, but this upgrade can also “drop the electric bill by 90 percent.”
