Innovation Labs
Comcast's MachineQ Deploys Smart City Solution in Philly Holiday Hotspots
Innovation Labs
Comcast's MachineQ Deploys Smart City Solution in Philly Holiday Hotspots
By Bryan Witkowski
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Dec 20, 2017
We’re in the holiday spirit at machineQTM. Who wouldn’t be in a city like Philadelphia with so many things to do during the most wonderful time of the year? Two favorite hotspots are just a few blocks from our offices in Center City – City Hall’s Dilworth Plaza, with its giant Christmas tree; and the Christmas Village at LOVE Park.
Visitors to the City enjoy both attractions from morning well into the evening, and with the sun setting earlier and earlier with each passing winter day, the City of Philadelphia’s Streets Department wants to make sure these areas are well lit. So, we worked with the City to install a smart lighting solution that allows them to remotely control and manage the lights for the 2017 holiday season and into 2018.
The machineQ smart lighting system has added so much to the festive mood around City Hall this holiday season, but the capabilities give us other huge benefits: we can ensure appropriate lighting levels, better gauge energy consumption, and respond more quickly to power outages. It’s a great way to ring in the new year.
The project uses the LoRaWANTM network the machineQ team built in Philadelphia earlier this year. LoRaWAN is a global communications standard similar to Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, but one that uses significantly less power and is specifically designed to wirelessly deliver small amounts of data over larger geographical areas. We worked with Flashnet, a supplier of industrial lighting controls and management systems, to attach controllers to the street lights, as seen in the image below.
The streetlight controllers send and receive data over the LoRaWAN network to the Streets Department, enabling City officials to remotely turn lights on and off, set energy-saving dimming schedules, monitor energy consumption, and proactively manage outages. This image gives you an idea of what a Streets Department official controlling the lights would see on his or her computer:
Here is a diagram of how the machineQ network helps enable solutions not just for controlling lighting, but also for a host of other needs:
We’re thrilled to be able to work with the City of Philadelphia, our hometown, on this turnkey street lighting solution that has the capability to easily be scaled to stretch across an entire metropolitan area. From street lights and road signs, to critical underground infrastructure, LoRaWAN networks like the one we’ve built in Philadelphia are an effective and cost-efficient way for forward-thinking municipalities to meet their smart city objectives.
Happy Holidays!
