LED Lighting Systems

Build smarter, more affordable solutions by adding Echelon controls.

LED lights are already a smart choice for lighting: They use as much as 90 percent less energy than incandescent bulbs with the same lumen output, and last 50 to 100 times longer. But adding controls to LED lighting systems with Echelon’s technology brings the benefits of control networks to light: greater business opportunities, enhanced functionality, and lower installation and system costs.

Benefits of Adding Control

Businesses can expand market share and deepen penetration in their existing markets by adding control to their LED lighting systems.

An Affordable Way to Enhance Functionality. Adding controls to LED lighting provides an economical way to change the color and intensity of light emitted from a single lighting fixture.

You can create real-time ambient lighting conditions for the home, including warmer or cooler white light, as well as configure lights at various dimming levels. Using Pyxos technology, you can easily change LED colors and patterns to create multiple moods for spaces such as lounges or hotels — without remodeling costs.

Reduce Installation and System Costs. Lighting system designers can work with LEDs without costly integration tools and services.

• Electricians can install lighting systems without any PC-based network installation tools, thanks to the Interoperable Self-Installation (ISI) feature included in LonWorks networks and the self-organizing feature within the Pyxos networking protocol.
• For the first time, consumers can create complex lighting scenarios with push-button ease — no need for technicians or network management tools.

LED Lighting Market

The LED lighting market has a number of segments, each with its own power and control requirements:

• Architectural/Outdoor
• Residential/Commercial
• Hospitality (restaurants, lounges, hotels, and warehouses)
• Theater/Stage
• Display/Shelf

Power line technology, Pyxos technology, or a combination of the two can solve the control requirements of most LED lighting applications.

Which Echelon Technology Is Best for Various LED Applications?

LonWorks power line technology is a great fit for architectural public lighting (such as lighting on a bridge or a large building) because it provides high-power, low-bandwidth communications.

LonWorks technology is a peer-to-peer technology with distributed intelligence across the network devices. When power line (PL) is used as the physical media, LonWorks technology lets you send control signals over the AC mains lines over very long distances (up to two miles on unpowered lines). This provides unlimited power to devices. It also greatly reduces installation costs because no new wires are needed.

The Pyxos platform is well suited for outdoor accent and landscape lighting, and theater, lounge, and nightclub lighting since these applications require much higher bandwidth and less power.

Pyxos FT technology lets you create a master-slave network with deterministic response times of 25ms or less and network throughput of 312.5Kbps. Pyxos networks use a twisted pair of wires as physical media and have cyclic redundancy check error detection as well as 2-bit forward error correction built into the protocol. Pyxos networks also support power and data over the same wire, a feature called link power. For information on our latest link power enhancements, contact Echelon sales.

White Paper

To learn more about how our technologies serve the LED markets, fill out the form and download the white paper.

Ready-to-Use Solution

We've partnered with the right companies to help you easily create LED lighting systems based on our technologies. For both Pyxos FT and LonWorks PL networks, we provide a solution that links to various LED drivers. Pyxos networks also include the source code for the API and drivers so you can easily port to your microcontroller of choice.