Light management systems

Light management features should be defined on a room-specific basis as a matter of principle. Whether the requirement is simple dimming or complex control tasks is irrelevant in this respect. The reason for this is the fact that light is the basis for the process through which human beings receive more than 80% of their sensory impulses: vision.

Rooms can be subdivided into several areas with individual control (see figure). However, the areas within a room are permanently part of any single user’s field of vision. Therefore, the light should only be switched off completely once there are no more persons in any area of the room. Up until then, background lighting should be maintained in the entire room. This necessitates the consideration of presence information from adjacent areas. Whether this is achieved via an overall system for the entire room or through several interconnected individual systems is irrelevant.

Separate rooms, however, are not connected from their users’ perspectives and thus can be controlled independently of each other.

Many room-based systems open up installation-related advantages by means of integration of control device and sensors into the luminaire. This facilitates cable routing because e.g. control lines for connection to the control device interface do not need to be routed through the subdistribution in the corridor (see figure).

Where general features are intended to be realised, e.g. in representative applications due to overall building appearance, it is advisable to achieve this by networking individual, room-based systems or their control via a building management system (see section ). However, centralised remote maintenance and monitoring can also be realised today with increasing comfort and decreasing effort through suitable interfaces.