Intelligent/activity controlled street lights

Archive New Product Ideas
1

Hi

I’m a student and trying to setup a small project at school and desperatly need some help with this

My plan was to do the following:

controlling street lights where I want to include a sensor (radar motion detector) in each lightpole, the lightpole will be fitted with leds, and I want to have 3 modes on these, all off, 30% and 100% light.

I want to have one controller/pc that is connected with the first light pole, and hopefully I will be able to have communication between the lightpoles (they will sort of be attached in a string, and not in a mesh or star topology) everytime a car passes a pole the next 10 poles should lite up 100% and the one you just passed will turn down to 30% light.

How many poles can I attach into one system? and if I’m at pole 15 for instance, then this pole should turn on pole 15-25, must this communication go back to the controll and then the controll forward the signals to each pole again?

I want to setup only 5 poles in my system, and they will simulate pole 1,2, 12, 22 and 32 to show the system in action.

Will I be able to do this with a zigbee/xbee system?? What components must I have? and what else do I need??

Could someone help me with this? If I get the system up and running I will also reward the one that help me all the way :slight_smile:

Best regards

student from Norway

2

Hello twg76 and hello from Norway! (small world :slight_smile: )

In this system you would need to focus on reliability and price. At least if you’re planning on selling the patent/idea/product to Statens Vegvesen(it’s the department responsible for road development and maintenance here in Norway).

So, regarding the price I’m not sure if ZigBee is a good choice. It’s one of the cheapest for sure, but it will raise the price pr unit with about $15-25. If Statens Vegvesen should buy and install this in, oh let’s say a 500 light poles, that would be about $12500 extra, just for the ZigBees you would need. It would work for prototyping for sure, but for the end product I would research for the posibility to use wired communication.

And, would it not be better if pole 1 turns on pole 1 to 10, and pole 2 makes sure that 2 - 10 is on and turns pole 11 on? And then pole 3 would make sure that pole 3 - 11 is on and turns pole 12 on? In that way you would have a cascading effect which would always light up 10 poles ahead.

Interesting project you have there. Good luck! :slight_smile: