As Prolojik celebrates two decades in existence, Asela Rodrigo founder and CTO of Prolojik looks back at key milestones and what the future might hold.
If you go back twenty years, the only driver in terms of smart buildings was energy: how do you get more kw and that has moved on rapidly. The underlying technology of course has moved on from 10kw-20kw to way beyond that and then, in around 2009, to the DALI system we know today. Before its adoption, we didn’t have much feedback from lighting systems of old, up until then all you did was control things, it’s almost like driving without knowing what the conditions that you’re driving into are. What DALI gave us was the ability to control lighting, as well as other elements of the office. All of a sudden, the conversation moved on from we want to be as efficient as possible, to can we look at emergency lighting and reporting and doing that in a sustainable way.
We’ve been at the forefront of bringing that next phase, which is the network: wherever you’ve got people there’s Prolojik. Lighting control is everywhere, from the plant rooms to the car parks, to the office space and external areas. That got us thinking about, well, how do we utilise that, what can we do differently with sensors?
Occupancy mapping and heat mapping are possible with the smart technology we have available to us now. We can now look at the network of a building to tell us where people are and do things differently as a result – adjust the temperature down in summer or when there’s more occupancy and correspondingly turn up the heat in the cooler months or when there aren’t as many people. Perfectly balancing the amount of natural daylight versus artificial light is also possible. Technology is therefore a catalyst for being able to capture more and more data within buildings.
Over the last twenty years almost all the projects we’ve completed have been tailor made solutions. Smart building technology is heading in the same direction as other areas of tech such as CCTV and smart access. The knowledge level of end users is growing. Providers used to be able to charge for maintenance but now, for example, with home security systems, people just buy some bits of kit from Amazon. It democratised access to data. In many ways, we’re going to see that happening in all kinds of areas from lighting to building management, but we want to be part of the journey not overwhelmed by it.
One of the key markers in the evolution of smart buildings is the emergence of MQTT or message queuing telemetry transport. This is a protocol for the Internet of Things (IoT) that enables edge-of-network devices to publish to a ‘broker’. The Internet of Things needs a language that it can use to communicate between all of these devices. So, in a domestic setting, how does your washing machine talk to your garden lights or how does your doorbell talk to your smoke alarm? MQTT aims to define a way of doing that and that’s what’s known as a broker. It’s almost like an intermediary that sits there between the different disciplines that exist in a building. It’s basically arbitration for building controls.
In the last twenty years the stakeholders we engage with have changed too. Previously, there was a stratified infrastructure. We would work for an electrical contractor, who would work for a main contractor, it was very tiered. The kind of information that we’re bringing into organisations now means we’re cutting through that. We talk to our clients about what they want to achieve with the data, as opposed to the lighting.
In a post-Covid world, the future of smart buildings is about giving people insight, so that they can make informed decisions about how they use those buildings. For example, people can decide to opt for a quieter floor if they have the knowledge that a certain part of the building is busy or book a gym session when it’s going to be less crowded. On your way into the office, armed with information about how busy it is, you may choose to take a train earlier or later than you usually would.
It’s interesting that this is the first generation of users of offices where the tech they have on their phone or at home far exceeds what they had in their offices. You’ll have a smart thermostat, which will tell you when you’re in the house, and it will work out what time it needs to start the heating to have it just how you like it. Or your washing machine will tell you when it’s finished its cycle. I think to a degree smart building technology has been playing catch up. But projects we’ve worked on, like Bloom, clearly demonstrate where we’re headed. where we’re actually taking a genuinely open, sustainable approach to smart technology. There aren’t any heavy licensing fees or subscription models, it’s a much much cleaner approach.
The constant in our twenty years in the smart buildings sector is that we’re always going to be pushed by the end user. The demands of the end user are forcing consultants, contractors and manufacturers to be more innovative. You’ve got to really understand what’s driving that end user and what clients are demanding. We have to think beyond just the limitations of lighting control, even when we’re designing only lighting control. We have to think about how users are going to use the system. What kind of people are they? What kind of applications do they have? Everybody’s touchpoint with most systems nowadays is their mobile phone. A dial to adjust your heating or lighting is pretty old school now. Our aim is to predict how people are interacting with an office environment, based on the information your mobile phone is constantly broadcasting, which the smart building systems sees and reacts to.
If you think about what people try and achieve, whether it’s maximum revenue per occupant or maximum occupancy, the longer you can keep people wanting to be in a building and feeling comfortable, the better. It’s about how do I get under the skin of, and understand what makes you want to be there? Is it the lighting? Is it the temperature? Is it the coffee shop? Where and when do you spend your time? And as a building operator, how do I establish more of those kinds of spaces in a building? Tech companies have mastered this idea that everything is in the buildings, from the gym, to the laundry, to a variety of restaurants, everything is tailored to the demands of the individual. It’s about creating an individual’s digital twin based on the information from smart building systems.
We have the ability to build everything virtually before building in concert so we can make sure all systems align. Underpinning that is, of course, security. Most smart technology depends on or requires the Cloud as a route to manage. And with that comes a whole series of issues around vulnerability and security. Another key issue for smart building technology providers for the next twenty years will be which ones can prove themselves to be the most secure with the most resilient architecture.
About Prolojik: Prolojik is an innovative business that enables specifiers, installers and users of lighting controls to harness its extensive network for other purposes.
Prolojik engineers energy efficient, responsive, adaptable, inspiring places to work, live and innovate. Its open protocol lighting systems allow users complete control over lit environment; control that reduces energy output, saves money and creates amazing spaces.
All products are manufactured in the UK, to guarantee complete control over quality, whilst creating jobs and supporting British engineering and technology. In 2015 Prolojik was the first company to launch Power Over Ethernet (POE) controls to the UK market, in the form of our award winning revolutionary LIGHTMATRIX system. Prolojik’s Proxima and Go products utilising Bluetooth networking have all been recognised for their technical and design innovation securing both Lux and red Dot design awards.