DES Tech + wtec smartengine = Smart Building Success

In the winter of 2014, Dagostino Electronic Services moved its headquarters into an abandoned Pittsburgh elementary school in the Hays district of town. The 27,000 ft. facility had been shuttered for thirty years. Its structure was still solid and DES President and Founder, Bob Dagostino, saw potential in the building.

With a penchant for showcasing innovation, Dagostino decided to equip the newly renovated conference room with a Redwood lighting system. Redwood Systems had made headlines earlier in 2010 with their launch of the first network-based technology for LED lighting and building performance systems. This would be a natural pairing for DES. Now in its 50th year of business, DES was founded as a telecommunications integrator, steadily expanding its offerings to the full gamut of building connectivity and technology.

Traditional vs. Networked Lighting Systems

Incandescent and fluorescent lights sit on an alternating current (AC) electrical grid. Much has been written about their energy inefficiencies: over 90% of energy is wasted as heat, with only 10% being converted to visible light. LED lighting, however, innovated the ability to power lighting through direct current (DC).

To adapt an LED fixture to an AC circuit, each fixture must be fitted with an AC-DC transformer to change the current. These transformers are not durable, cannot withstand multiple power spikes and are typically the first part of the fixture to fail. The full benefits of LED cannot be realized when you must also change the fixtures every couple of years.

Redwood Systems understood that more must be done to create true energy efficiency and was the first to innovate a DC-only dedicated system for lighting. They placed the AC-DC transformer inside a managed networking closet—not at the light fixture—and used high-quality components.  Not only would cost savings be realized, but also a dedicated low-voltage system could then pave the way for data communication and a networked-based lighting system. Case in point: the LED fixtures in our conference room have never been changed since they were installed over 10 years ago!  

From Redwood to wtec

Redwood Systems founded in 2008 was acquired by CommScope in 2013, and by wtec in 2016 with key expertise and innovations continuing through wtec’s smartengine, a low voltage lighting and sensor technology that built upon Redwood’s innovative legacy. Once again, Bob Dagostino was ahead of the curve, and installed smartengine throughout several zones of DES’ building.

Each fixture is equipped with a smartsensor that detects light levels, temperature, motion, tracks power consumption, and also has the ability to generate and detect beacons. Most rooms have a wall controller with a built-in air quality sensor with data being able to feed a building’s BMS in real-time. Occupants in each room can dim or control the lights manually, or alternatively our facility director controls global and individual settings through the smartmanager dashboard. The fixtures and switches run back to the  smartengine via cat6 cable, installed by DES low-voltage technicians. The smartdirector and smartengines, which provide the power and data capabilities to the lighting system, are wall mounted in a data rack.

Why we like wtec

With the smartengine system up and running, we get granular visibility and control over our lighting system. We can do pretty much anything we desire that is lighting-related, plus we have visibility into the real-time and historical sensor data. 

• Scheduling: Lights turn off after the workday ends.

• Daylight Harvesting: Our legacy school building was built with very tall windows. When the sunlight streams indoors at midday, the smartsensors  trigger the fixtures to dim accordingly.

• Circadian Rhythm: We have the option to calibrate the lighting levels according to optimal lighting for human productivity.

• Scene Setting: We can control lights according to specific zones.

• Motion Detection: The sensors graph out motion events.

• Air Quality Monitoring: The air sensors detect air pressure, humidity, CO2 levels, temperature, and VOC levels.

• Power Consumption: We can see energy usage in real-time and see the consumption decrease when all optimized settings are in effect.

Most of all, though, our operators really appreciate the dashboard. They can check in and ensure the lights are off over the weekend, and get alerts if there is an unusual activity that requires more investigation.

Smart Lighting as the Gateway to Smart Buildings

As an advanced technology integrator, we are never satisfied with single siloed systems. Since smartengine communicates with other systems using standard networking protocols, we are already planning broader integrations with other building systems. The possibilities of integrations are numerous:

• BMS and HVAC: the smartsensor can relay current temperatures and occupancy to the building management system and have the HVAC adjust accordingly.

• Physical Security: when motion is detected, the lights can turn on and the security cameras start recording at a higher frame rate, providing operators with clarity when it matters most.

• Window Shades: Lighting and electronic shades can work in concert with the daylight sensors for optimal automated lighting.

We are excited to offer the smartengine lighting solution to our clients—and of course, we invite people to see it for themselves in our renovated school-building HQ.