Low voltage, smart building design and PoE Lighting firms form PoE Consortium
Seven smart-building manufacturers are joining forces to bring more attention to the value of Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) lighting and technology. All the companies are collaborating to create an industry organization known as the PoE Consortium. Their collective mission to educate stakeholders on the sustainable benefits of PoE over traditional high-voltage electrical infrastructure also highlights the key strategic value of the organization: more interoperability for the advancing smart building.
The PoE Consortium maintains an online hub of resources for education and training. This core of industry expertise enables anyone looking to install PoE technology to feel confident in their decision to take advantage in the sustainability, savings, and advanced amenities Power over Ethernet technology offers. On the site today are explainer articles, project calculators and case studies. Soon, the site will include training and qualification courses for installers and integrators to ensure the quality of PoE enabled projects.
This past summer, our GENISYS PoE Lighting Manager, Wendell Strong, was on the road again. Four times, to be exact. He was a part of Belden’s Digital Building Roadshow. Think of a traveling circus but instead of clowns, it was third-party technology experts, and instead of animal balloons, it was knowledge and expertise.
The more accurate description for the Convergence in the Digital Building Roadshow hosted by Belden, was that it brought together several third-party technology experts to delve into the digital building solutions that support the latest trends in building automation, security, PoE lighting, AV, and other converging applications.
This exclusive event was open to all and provided the opportunity to teach how each converging technology and application can be deployed to maximize building efficiency, reduce operating costs, increase safety, and enhance occupant productivity. Participants could take the opportunity to browse partner’s demo spaces and network with the experts during lunch.
These third-party technology partner’s included: Bosch, DASAN Zhone Solutions (DZS), Innovative Lighting/GENISYS PoE Lighting Systems, JMA Wireless, Kramer Electronics, NSCA, & Tripwire. The unique locations for each show included the Marconi Automotive Museum in Tustin, California; The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, California; Toyota Stadium in Frisco, Texas; and Nationals Park in Washington, DC which ended up being rescheduled a few weeks later due to a certain someone – but better safe than sorry, and we like safe.
Wendell said the shows were a great success and he loved being apart of them.
“They were truly great shows with lots of interest and excitement. It makes me so thrilled to see just how far the future of digital buildings will go.” Stated Wendell.
So there you have it. Our summer of roadshows has come to a close. If you’re bummed you missed out on our summer of roadshows, you better stay updated with our events and happenings.
Innovative Lighting receives Platinum Innovators Award at BICSI Conference
[Des Moines, IA September 12, 2018] – The 2018 Cabling Innovators Awards celebrates the most innovative applications of cabling and communications technology products, applications, and projects of 2018. Hosted by Cabling Installation & Maintenance, the awards were presented at the BICSI 2018 Fall Conference in San Antonio, Texas. BICSI is a professional association supporting the advancement of the information and communications technology (ICT) community.
Innovative Lighting, Waldinger Corporation, General Cable, & Panduit received a Platinum Award for their joint efforts on the Waldinger Corporation project. Waldinger is a full-service mechanical and electrical contractor. The Platinum Award is the highest honor given at the Cabling Innovators Awards. The Platinum Award is earned for demonstrating superb innovation that is characterized by a groundbreaking approach to meeting a need, or a groundbreaking level of performance, efficiency, or ease of use.
Harry Aller, Innovative Lighting CTO, and Howard Spencer, Waldinger Corporation Structured Cabling Manager, formally accepted the award on September 11 at the event.
“It’s always an honor to win an award like this, but we couldn’t have done it without the trust from the team at Waldinger Corp.” Aller said.
The Waldinger Corporation project consisted of replacing Waldinger’s open office lighting with GENISYS PoE Lighting. Their current lights were difficult to maintain and expensive to operate. By retrofitting Waldinger’s existing pendant fixtures and placing GENISYS inside, their fixtures became easy-to-use and customizable with money-saving results all while keeping the contemporary aesthetic that their existing pendants provide.
About Innovative Lighting
Innovative Lighting® is a U.S. based manufacturer of LED lighting and custom injection molded products. With three facilities in Iowa, Innovative Lighting offers quality engineered products for six main divisions including: commercial LED lighting, refrigeration LED lighting, marine LED lighting, truck & trailer LED lighting, GENISYS PoE Lighting Systems, & Injection Molding. For 25 years, Innovative Lighting continues being on the leading edge of innovative technology and product development. For more information, visit www.innovativelight.com.
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Innovative Lighting’s GENISYS Division Takes Cisco Live by Storm Three straight years with 4 locations in 2018
DES MOINES, IOWA Jun. 11, 2018 — Innovative Lighting’s GENISYS PoE Lighting division is attending Cisco Live for the third straight year. Cisco Live is an annual customer and partner conference where the foundation for your digital future is built. This year’s event in Orlando, FL is taking place June 10 – 14 at the Orange County Convention Center.
This year’s Cisco Live 2018 is special for Innovative Lighting. The GENISYS team will be supporting not one, not two, but four of their partners at this Orlando, Florida event. All powerhouse partners include Cisco, Siemon, Panduit, Belden, & TechData.
In addition to seeing the GENISYS PoE Lighting Systems integrated into the Siemon, Panduit, & Belden’s booths, attendees can catch a sneak peak of their new GENISYS 4D software that is currently under development. Stay up to date with the new software by visiting www.genisyslighting.com/genisys-4D.html.
About Innovative Lighting Innovative Lighting® is a U.S. based manufacturer and distributor of LED lighting and custom injection molded products. With three facilities in Iowa, Innovative Lighting offers quality engineered products for six main divisions including: commercial LED lighting, refrigeration LED lighting, marine LED lighting, truck & trailer LED lighting, GENISYS PoE Lighting Systems, & Injection Molding and for 25 years, continues being on the leading edge of innovative technology and product development. The GENISYS division consists of intelligent Power over Ethernet lighting hardware & software that powers, controls, and monitors lighting all through a safe, low voltage Ethernet cable that provides endless possibilities into the digital IoT world. For more information, visit www.genisyslighting.com
To meet with the GENISYS team at the event, please email genisys@innovativelight.com.
It’s fun to play around with smart technology. Smart phones, apps, gaming systems, doorbells, and even light bulbs these days are all smart. Everything seems to be getting smarter to the point of being simply a buzzword at times.
Furbo, a smart, wireless dog treat dispenser and camera. Yes, we really have seen it all.
However, is smart “smart enough” for the complex, changing world we live in? Maybe we should consider a higher benchmark, like intelligent, and what the difference is between the two in the world of lighting.
Let’s start with a simple definition that seems to fit well. Smart normally applies when a long-held level of performance has been greatly improved upon and has new capabilities as well.
Consider the evolution of the common medium screw base lamp.
Not-So-Smart Lighting
The incandescent lamp might be considered “dumb” by the definition above, but for its time, was brilliant (pun intended) being an awesome, breakthrough technology that enabled electrification to move swiftly forward due to increasing demand while rendering open flame oil lamps, gas lanterns, and candles to emergency backup light sources across time when power was down.
The compact fluorescent, or CFL, replacement wasn’t seen as smart because it failed the definition above. While lasting longer and greatly improving efficacy (lumens per watt), it lost the incredible, smooth dimming capability which the incandescent lamp became the standard.
The CFL was simply an adaption of fluorescent technology designed to displace a less efficient, shorter life light source. The fact that the CFL had to be recycled as well didn’t help its cause either. Maybe not “dumb”, but certainly not smart enough.
The standard LED lamp was a huge breakthrough technology which solved almost all the issues that the CFL had tried to address, and on proper dimmers, performed adequately. No hazardous materials requiring recycling was a huge step in the right direction as well. Smarter than the CFL, it still couldn’t match flawless dimming or be applied in all the sizes and shapes of incandescent lamps.
The creation of the wireless colored A19 LED bulb, on the other hand, was considered smart by the definition above. Color changing capabilities and dimming all the while being programmed and controlled by a “smart device”. Smart indeed, albeit basically as a fun novelty product.
If we look at the commercial lighting world, LED lighting is being deployed faster and faster, and is maturing rapidly. Wireless controls are now seen as the “smart component” being “layered over the top” of the A/C LED lighting and is viewed as a cost-effective control solution. Often these wireless controls need additional wireless access points and many of the sensor types run on batteries. Smart enough by our simple definition.
“Good Enough” Lighting?
While definitely creating a strong advancement in energy efficiency and sustainability, perhaps we should question just how smart this really is in the long run. Or, are we just continuing down a well-established road without stopping and challenging our long-held ideas and methods?
Is this road we have been on for so long and our methods of deploying lighting now limiting our progress and possibly blinding us from recognizing a better route?
Are we content and blinded from recognizing a better route?
Has settling for “good enough” become the greatest enemy of achieving our best as an industry and the world that relies so heavily upon us to do so?
Perhaps smart is not smart enough in today’s lighting environments and we should consider an equally simple definition or illustration of intelligent by contrast.
Game-Changing Lighting
Intelligent goes well beyond simply smart by calling upon many different disciplines. Much like a scholar draws upon many different fields of study and then applies them in unique ways to create that which was not known before. In other words, “Game changing”.
Perhaps there is a new road, one that doesn’t limit our progress but delivers far more value to those we serve than we ever dreamed possible before. I would humbly suggest that road is PoE Lighting Technology.
Power over Ethernet takes lighting on a completely new road.
In fact, truly Intelligent Lighting did not really exist prior to PoE Lighting Technology. Its remarkably simple design and unique method of powering is what produces the incredible granularity and control performance exceeding that of A/C based controls.
This paradigm shift of lighting being intrinsically as part of the electrical infrastructure of buildings and now becoming part of the networked operational systems of buildings is precisely what this new road is built of.
While this combination of LED lighting and networking is a high form of Intelligent Lighting based its control capabilities, what words do we use to describe its abilities to enhances other building systems and the wellness and performance of the employees? It quite frankly redefines our expectations of a ‘lighting system’.
Intelligent Lighting
Let’s consider the intelligent aspects of PoE Lighting on a few high-level points:
Since you must run wires to power a luminaire, is there not an elegant simplicity to use those same wires to communicate and control it? Check.
Since that luminaire is a LED based light source, would it also make sense to remove the number one failure point, the A/C driver, at the same time? And also provide the arrays precisely what they crave? Remarkably “clean” consistent low voltage DC power? Check.
Plug-and-play makes PoE lighting safe and easy.
If you could, in that process, make the power safe and utilize plug-and-play connections that prevent people from contacting live power in the first place, enabling them to reconfigure the lighting, would that not make sense as well? Check.
And, instead of layering controls over the top of that A/C powered lighting system as additional components, what if every known lighting control was built in at a DNA level providing 1% granularity of control and all connected devices are individually addressable? Check.
What if it was possible to provide up to 90% reduction* (and perhaps beyond) in operating costs (OPEX) compared to fluorescent systems of today? And the controls were highly intuitive and simple to manage? Check.
And wouldn’t it be a huge breakthrough if PoE Lighting in new builds and deep retrofits (brown walls) was the single most environmentally sustainable solution available while likely being capital expense neutral or below? Check.
So to answer the question is smart lighting really smart enough? That’s for you to decide and remember, smart lighting may or may not be smart, but PoE Lighting will always be intelligent.
* Gartner, 2012 Want to dive deeper into the world of PoE? Reserve a seat to attend a FREE webinar hosted by Innovative Lighting’s GENISYS PoE Lighting Manager on Tuesday, January 23 at 12pm CT.
Starting in October 2017, we’ll be lassoing up our things and moving from our Ankeny location, 10 miles south, to our new home in the heart of downtown Des Moines, Iowa.
We’re very excited about our future home and the opportunities that come with it. Having more square footage means more room to grow, and more room for activities. It also doesn’t hurt we’ll be within walking distance to one of our favorite taco joints.
Don’t worry, we’re still the same great company— just with a different location. Our other two facilities in Roland, Iowa and Albia, Iowa will still remain in their same locations.
If you have any questions about our move, or just want to say howdy, give us a holler!
The GENISYS 4.1 software update has arrived! The wonderful thing about GENISYS PoE Lighting System software is that we are constantly improving and enhancing it to perform top-notch. Our passion is making the workplace better through GENISYS Lighting Software improvements which create simplicity, and not complexity. Check out the seven best features of GENISYS 4.1 software.
1.) Multi-Function Sensor has Activated Temperature readouts for 3rd party systems
This feature was the result of temperature sensing being embedded in our feature packed multi-function sensors which now reports back to our system. We have the ability to record, and easily report, multiple temperature readings in a space with our system, so why not? The temperature readings are viewable in our web based GUI or integrate with 3rd party systems to benefit the building as a whole.
2.) Dry Contact Relay Interface Module Support (legacy input/output)
Dry Contact Interface Modules allow for a plethora of “magic” to happen. Allowing support for dry contact switches means that essentially any legacy wall switch or other device used to control AC lights can now be seamlessly integrated into controlling GENISYS PoE Lights. But that’s just the beginning, there are endless devices that can be used with our dry contact interface modules such as pressure mats, open/closed door sensors, foot pedals, or even just simple buttons. The fun doesn’t stop at input devices – we can also use the same interface module to control 5v devices ranging from simple lights to relays and actuators.
3.) Remote Monitoring Support
This feature allows the GENISYS system to be constantly analyzed and alert whenever something might not be functioning as it should be. Whether it be a PoE switch not coming online, or one of our IntelliDrives misbehaving, we could have the issue pinpointed before others are aware an issue exists! Peace of mind knowing that the technology is looking after itself.
4.) Data Exporting
With our new and improved data exporting feature, it’s easy to export data— and even easier to understand. Select a date range, devices or zones, and the type of format you want to export as (such as JSON and CSV) and the file is ready to be analyzed. As a result, actionable data insures your system is always capable of being optimized across time.
5.) User Management
With our updates to user management control, we’ve added convenience and simplicity. Users are more in control of their account, and administrators are still in charge of the zones and devices that each user can control.
6.) Sensor Notification to 3rd Party Systems Support
Not only can GENISYS be controlled by various 3rd party systems, but with added support of sensor and switch notifications, the same 3rd party systems now receive more information back from the system and with this update, it’s even easier to integrate.
7.) Scenes
With this feature, users can individually customize devices in zones down to the exact intensity and color they prefer for various tasks. Then, instead of taking time to modify every component over again, it’s easy to save and simply recall these created scenes from the web based GUI, a programmable wall switch, or even having the scenes activated with a dry contact device.
The GENISYS Quad Experience is like no other in the world of lighting. Never before could a world class commercial lighting technology be put in a prepackaged form and be shipped affordably and installed safely by nearly anyone. As you know, GENISYS itself is an intelligent lighting system. The GENISYS Quad is exactly that— only the GENISYS Quad is made to fit into four spaces for that trial run experience.
The GENISYS Quad is safe & easy to install.
The GENISYS Quad contains full tilt performance from day one including our revered full unfettered GENISYS 4.0 Software complete with a site license. It allows future expansion of the system without additional software costs. All you need for the software is to BYOPC (bring your own PC), and we take care of the rest.
The prepackaged pallet will ship directly to you.
Many wonder how is this even possible? Because our GENISYS PoE Lighting system runs on low voltage cat cable with RJ45 jacks, it is safe for anyone to deploy this full sized experience.
So what exactly is a Quad Experience? We have packed up to 4 standard size offices of white light color tunable 2×2 Leaf (fully recyclable) plug and play fixtures with full controls (multifunction sensor and touch capacitive switches) for each space with software on a pallet that ships at no added cost anywhere in 48 states. You must have the ability to receive a pallet of material at your place of business as a result.
Now a business can find out exactly what Power over Ethernet Lighting can do for them in a digestible and expandable format. Save up to 90% energy compared to standard fluorescent and reap the benefits of a fully featured understandable lighting control system that, once configured, can be run from smart devices to control personal zones.
If that wasn’t quite enough, you can experience white light color change on demand. From very warm and intimate, to highly energizing cool colored light, and every point in between. We have even built in sunrise to sunset Daylight Rhythm to mimic the natural sunlight changes during the course of day indoors. Each of the four spaces is completely customizable to the preference of the occupant.
Truthfully, there are simply too many features to even begin to cover. Much like your cell phone is much more than a cell phone, the GENISYS Quad Experience is much more than a lighting system. It’s a trial run of what GENISYS can do without diving into it all head first. It’s intelligent lighting. It’s shipped directly to you. It’s the pallet that powers four custom spaces.
A little about me
I’m Michele and I’m the Marketing Specialist for the GENISYS PoE team. Basically, I make everything look polished in this crazy world of PoE. I went to school at Iowa State University, (Go State!) and I joined the GENISYS team in May 2017. I love to bike, kayak, travel, and participate in long Netflix marathons.
Me ”eating” a bagel in Bratislava, Slovakia.
My Day to Day
One thing I love about working here is that there is no “average” day for me. Every day here is different. One day I might be on the back-end of our website updating content, and the next day I might be in the green room taking photos, and then the day after that might consist of me creating a campaign for a new product line.
I can’t work without…
I always start my day with a cup of cappuccino. That is definitely one thing I can’t work without. I’m not really a coffee person, but I’m all about that cappuccino life. Folgers French Vanilla —10/10 would recommend.
Me without my cappuccino.
My Work Playlist
When I’m not listening to Rodney‘s Jukebox, my go-to work playlist has a decent amount of variety. Here are five of my recent go-to songs: 1.) Sam Hunt – Speakers
My Favorite Lunch Spot
If I’m not eating my homemade turkey sandwich by the pond outside of our building, you can find me at Fuzzy’s with the team for cheap tacos on Tuesdays.
.5 seconds after this photo was taken, these tacos were inhaled.
Part of our GENISYS team flew out to Vegas in June to attend Cisco Live, the industry’s premier education and training event for IT, networking, and communications professionals. As a Cisco partner, this event is a big investment for us, and we had a great turn out. The guys shared a few of their own highlights from the event.
Jason and Harry selfie it up in front of the giant, life-size Cisco Live logo.
“• ‘Harry’s Sound Producing Troffer’ was a hit. Everyone was shocked to find out it emitted sound. Cisco partners always brought people by the pod to check it out.
• Show traffic was very steady with large corporations showing interest.
• The Digital Building Pavilion continues to grow more and more attraction from show attendees year after year.
• The Fire Farm light was another highlight for attraction. Everyone else just had standard fixtures and we got a lot of questions about it.”
LEFT: The GENISYS Booth was fully-functional and featured a Fire Farm light. RIGHT: Matt & Harry pose for a photo-op.
“Highlights: • Getting a Royal Straight • 118° weather
Oh wait…
Cisco highlights: • Definite transition from “what can we do” to “I have a client interested” from last year • The Digital Building is about Convergence •Pallet Program • Even the touchscreen computer was PoE powered • Had a fully-interactive display; others were static • GENISYS is ready to deploy!”
