Home automation giant Crestron Electronics has been making lighting controls for eons, but the company tends to skip Lightfair, the big lighting tradeshow. This year, however, Crestron did exhibit at the event, demonstrating SolarSync, a brand new product to automate indoor lighting based on outdoor conditions — a practice known as circadian lighting.
Installed outside, the new SolarSync 360-degree daylight sensor (GLS-LCCT) measures color temperature and luminous intensity. The measurements are shared with a Crestron processor, which can direct the tunable white lighting inside a space to match the color and intensity of the ambient light.
Living and working in environments that simulate natural lighting — so-called circadian lighting — is shown in study after study to improve productivity, moods, sleep and overall wellness.
It isn’t enough, however, to bring tunable white lighting into an environment if they’re not utilized properly. Manual controls have been “proven ineffective,” says Bill Schafer, executive sales director, Crestron Commercial Lighting Control.
Crestron already offers standard time-based circadian lighting system, but the new SolarSync sensor “reports back to your Crestron system to create a true reflection of the natural light outside,” Schafer says.
At Lightfair 2018, Crestron demonstrated SolarSync working with DALI tunable white fixtures. National design manager Nathan Dietrich used colored gels (as used in theatrical lighting) to change the “outdoor” lighting effects captured by the SolarSync sensor.
The DALI fixtures responded instantaneously with coloring and intensity to match the simulated outdoors.
“The solar information from outside the building can now be brought in,” Dietrich says, achieving similar effects as solar tubes or light shelves.
SolarSync offers manual and inclement-weather settings to optimize lighting effects “at all times, with no effort,” says Crestron VP marketing Josh Stene in a Linkedin post.
In response to that post, one pro commented: “Seems like a Ketra clone, how is this different?”
Indeed, Ketra is an increasingly popular provider of HCL solutions, with off-the-shelf systems that tune lights automatically “throughout the day, following the formula created by nature ….”
As such, Ketra does not utilize daylight sensors like Crestron’s SolarSync. In any case, Crestron dealers will want sensors and related electronics that work with Crestron controllers.
The tunable white lighting category, already invading the workplace, is beginning to take off in the home.
Crestron SolarSync tunable white lighting control
