Landscape Lighting Bluetooth and Wifi Technologies
Technology makes our life easier and more fun! Home automation is trending, and technology plays an ever-bigger role in our green industry as well. When your clients ask for color enhancement or warmth settings with their lighting, you want to be able to explain the landscape lighting Bluetooth and Wifi technologies available to them. Â
Why should you learn about landscape lighting? It is the way of the future and you want to stay in the know. And of course, adding lighting to your business means an added revenue stream. You need to understand the differences between these lighting technology systems so that you can explain their benefits and sell these products to your clients. Chuck Watterson gave insightful training at the 2021 ONLA Virtual Education Sessions that helped shed light on the matter.
LED and Colors Make Lighting Affordable and Fun!
Since LED technology hit the market, the consumer demand for landscape lighting has increased year over year. The energy efficiency and long lifespan provided by LEDs are well known by the consumer and the era of contractors selling a homeowner solely on energy efficiency and longevity have become commonplace. In order to impress your prospective customer, you must become accustomed to talking about new technologies such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth control, Cloud connectivity, zoning, dimming, color, and system automation.
Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technology paired with color-changing lights allows you to change the mood of your landscape right from your fingertips. Homeowners can show off their sports team colors, add fun to a 4th of July party, or create a soft romantic setting for an intimate anniversary dinner. Beyond setting the mood, the energy efficiency of LED lighting can be taken to the next level by dimming the lighting as a whole or even dimming individual lights. System scheduling and automation are critical functions that allow all other features to function without frustration.
Sample Project: Lighting the Front of a Home
Let’s do a sample project of lighting the front of a home with an entryway offset. The typical setup will need 3 fixtures on the garage, 1-2 between garage and entry, 2 fixtures for the entry, and 2-3 fixtures for the dining room, for a total of 8-10 fixtures. Adam Cornish, Territory Manager at our Cincinnati branch, explained this using the following scenarios:
- Existing Lighting Upgrade with WIFI
- Install Bluetooth Lighting on a Budget
- High-end New Lighting Install with WIFI
1. Upgrade Existing Lighting with WIFI
If there is existing lighting installed and the homeowner wants to add color enhancement and warmth settings, it is the easiest to retrofit the lamps, and each lamp connects independently to the internet router over WIFI. You will need:
- A modern router, made for the Internet of Things (IoT)
- MR16 bullet or PAR36 large lamps, for example Chameleon from Brilliance.
- The Brilliance app on your phone, or you can use Alexa or Google Home.
2. Install Bluetooth Lighting on a Budget
If no existing lighting is installed and the homeowner wants color enhancement on a budget, we recommend using Bluetooth technology. It is the simplest and most inexpensive way for the non-tech-savvy. Bluetooth does not use the internet; instead, the lights use built-in Bluetooth radio waves to talk with your phone app.
What you need:
- Integrated Bluetooth fixtures; there are many different manufacturers – we use and like the Alliance BL400-BT fixture.
- Install the manufacturer’s phone app. With it you can turn lights on and off, change color and lumens. The app is also helpful with service calls because you can instantly check if all installed lights are operational.
The Bluetooth Power Meters show the total watts used and available, and the percentage of capacity used. If a homeowner wants to add lighting to dark spots, you can easily see what is possible.
If you want a larger installation, then make sure the fixtures have Bluetooth mesh technology. Mesh technology works as a relay system and allows fixtures to talk as a group with your phone app.
Bluetooth Timers
The default app does not provide the ability for scheduling. If the homeowner wants to schedule, then you will need to either add Bluetooth timers to the transformer or install a transformer with a built-in timer (Alliance IT timer). This timer comes with its own app for scheduling.
3. High-end New Lighting Install with WIFI
Homeowners drive the requests for this technology when they want to control their lighting away from home. They often want this for the added security that lighting provides to their home.
High-end WIFI lighting technology provides much more functionality and is fully customizable. For example, the FX Luminaire ZDC system provides Zoning (Z), Dimming (D), and Color (C ). This is a true system; the Luxor transformer (150 or 300) provides all features built-in. It can handle low volt and high voltage lights so that you can also incorporate the existing post light on the sidewalk or sconce light by the door.
This Luxor system is super reliable because all fixtures communicate over the standard 2-wire path, which does not burden the WIFI system. Contractors can see this is similar to an irrigation decoder system. The controller is the only part that needs a network, and that can be achieved via 1) cloud mode, 2) network mode or 3) direct connect.
Phone App: A free added cloud service allows you/homeowner to connect to their system from anywhere through the internet using the phone app. If the homeowner wants a change made to the programming, you can handle that without even leaving your office. The Luxor app allows you to set up and name an individual site for each customer so keeping sites organized is a breeze.
Dimming: adjust the intensity from 0-100%. You can set a different intensity per zone.
Colors: Select from 30,000 colors! 40 custom lighting themes, using tunable whites and color scenes.
Zones: Use 250 Groups for different zones around the home or for individual fixtures. For example, the homeowner wants only the entry path to the house lit softly during the night but not the rest of the landscape on the property. You can create a group for that, set it to light at 50% of its capabilities, and the job is done. You can see how it works on the Luxor webpage.
Events: You can program Events for each day of the week that start certain themes to play at specific times or select Sunrise or Sunset.
“Lighting Up the Castle” with Wifi Lighting Technology
The images below show a demonstration installation of the Luxor system at Loveland Castle. This is not your average home, and as you can see, the tunable white at about 3000 Kelvin lights up the castle nicely. Also, typically when one uses colored lights, they lose intensity, but with Luxor’s lighting system there is no loss of intensity.
Give it a Go!
Are you ready to give it a go? Do you have a customer itching to get color in their landscape? Take inventory of the existing situation and note the wishes of your customer, then contact our staff at your nearest Wolf Creek branch and they will get you on your way with a landscape lighting technology project.
