ams’ sensor-integrated smart lighting manager enables IoT-connected daylight harvesting

Unterpremstätten, Austria, January 19, 2015 -- ams AG (SIX:AMS), a leading provider of high performance analog ICs and sensors, today introduced its revolutionary AS721x Autonomous Daylighting Manager, the industry’s first integrated chip-scale Internet of Things (IoT)-connected smart lighting manager. This new class of sensor-integrated smart lighting manager solutions delivers cost-effective, IoT-connected, integrated control capabilities to luminaire, light engine and replacement lamp manufacturers. 

Photopic sensors built with nano-optic filters integrated into the AS721x series are designed to help lighting manufacturers address the growing challenges of energy-saving lighting mandates, including daylighting controls. These challenges are more cost-effectively met by bringing the controls, connectivity, such as Bluetooth, and high-granularity sensing into the luminaires themselves.

“The AS721X family of smart lighting silicon photonics sensor solutions create a natural Internet of Things (IoT) sensor hub within smart buildings, which results in an Internet of Awareness™ through the convergence of IoT-connected lighting and sensor fusion,” said Sajol Ghoshal, who is responsible for Emerging Sensor Strategies at ams. “The AS721X family, with Broadcom's groundbreaking, easy-to-use connectivity from their WICED™ Smart Bluetooth and SmartBridge platform, delivers a secure, plug-and-play connection to the IoT for big data aggregation and the anticipated wave of machine learning.”

The AS721x family is ams’ first platform technology of integrated sensor solutions that provide system-level sensing and control capabilities, greatly reducing system costs and shortening time-to-market. The AS721x Autonomous Daylighting Manager senses the ambient daylight and enables the delivery of constant lux levels in the space by managing subtle adjustments as the amount of outside light varies. Integrating a sensor-based manager into each luminaire optimizes the overall responsiveness and efficiency of the lighting system, maximizing energy savings. The approach also delivers accurate lumen maintenance over time and temperature variations, and allows fully connected luminaire systems to respond to building- or space-level command and control strategies.

“ams’ ground-breaking sensor-integrated manager series addresses head-on the lighting industry’s desire for technically feasible integrated controls that are also cost- and space-effective,” said Sid Shaw, Broadcom Senior Product Line Manager, Wireless Connectivity. “Combined with ubiquitous and standards based BT Smart connectivity, it’s a solution that will truly revolutionize the lighting industry, delivering the kind of network-connected system approach that exemplifies the power of the Internet of Things.”

Competitive offerings in the space are essentially “build your own” devices requiring discrete components, including sensors, processors, memory, and I/O chips, that require design, integration and time-consuming programming  of control and communications algorithms. In contrast, the AS721x family delivers a fully integrated solution, providing users with a high level of integration at far lower cost and complexity than using discrete components.

Additional attributes of the ams’ AS721x Autonomous Daylighting Manager:

  • 20-pin 2.1 x 2.3mm chip-scale and 4.5 x 4.7mm land grid array package options
  • Photopic daylighting sensor for accurate ambient light sensing and control
  • Integrates with industry standard 0-10v controls, driving 0-10v and multi-channel PWM outputs
  • Standard serial UART (AS7211) for expansion to any standard networking or integrated IR remote control decoding (AS7210)
  • Network-enabled architecture with a high-level, driverless smart lighting command set for IoT connectivity via Bluetooth 4.x (BLE) , ZigBee, WiFi, Ethernet/PoE or other networks
  • I2C sensor expansion creating lighting-hosted sensor-bridge capabilities

Pricing for the AS721x Autonomous Daylighting Manager family is less than $3 in quantities of 5,000 pieces. Selected high-volume customers are testing sampled devices now, with production devices available in Q3 2015. Contact CognitiveLighting@ams.com for product details.