Casambi Stands Out as a Lighting Control Solutions Provider
The incandescent lightbulb, developed in the late 19th century, changed the way the world lived and worked. But then came semiconductors, and most importantly for our story, semiconductor diodes. It was discovered that in the right circumstances, applying electricity to a diode results in the emission of light.
Such specialized diodes were christened as LEDs – light emitting diodes. LEDs generate far more light per watt than do incandescents. There is far less extraneous heat, and LEDs last much longer than their predecessors did.
It is no wonder that LEDs have largely replaced incandescents for illumination. The versatility of these groundbreaking marvels has also led to their use in real-time information display. To take full advantage of their flexibility, new ways to control LEDs on a moment-by-moment basis had to be created.
Enter Casambi.
What is Casambi
Casambi provides robust, cost effective control solutions for today’s modern LED-based lighting. The company was founded in 2011 by Timo Pakkala, and Elena Lehtimäki. The company was premised on a then unique premise – the belief that smartphones and other wireless devices can form the basis of communication and control of everyday objects.
At that time, the idea of the smart home was just beginning to emerge, but each smart device had to be managed by its own dedicated controller, which proved to be an inconvenient solution, unacceptable to most homeowners. Casambi was one of the earliest companies to champion the idea of using readily available wireless devices as universal smart home controllers. These devices were already familiar to the general public. Dedicated controllers were soon abandoned, with other industry pioneers readily joining the bandwagon.
Design firm Afterglow provided an automated solution for a Sydney Penthouse owner using downlights, wall washers and LED strips coupled with the Casambi wireless lighting control system.
Difference between Casambi and other lighting solutions
Casambi solutions are based on Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), the lingua franca of all modern mobile devices. This universal communications modality is today built into even the most inexpensive laptops, tablets, smartphones and just about any other mobile device now available. BLE is now used for all types of electronic control and communications
But it wasn’t always so.
Casambi’s founders were employed at the Nokia Research Center, where BLE technology was first conceived and developed. These visionaries knew the future when they saw it, correctly betting on the nascent technology’s eventual universal adaptation. So, while others continued to rely on lighting control solutions based problematic copper cables, Casambi went all in on BLE technology.
The rest is history. And now, the rest of the LED lighting control industry is trying to catch up!
Casambi enables Sedus Stoll’s interior lighting to change in synch with our circadian rhythm
Why choose Casambi?
Being first has its advantages. The company enjoys a huge ecosystem of partners, so as a lighting designer, you can be sure that in whatever direction your project takes, Casambi components and software will enjoy effortless plug-and-play compatibility.
Some notables that chose to employ Casambi lighting control solution include the BBC and Finavia Airport.
When Finland’s Finavia Airport chose to upgrade to modern LED lighting, their chief concern was reliability. That’s why they chose one of Casambi’s partners, Airam.
Casambi’s Bluetooth mesh network, utilized by Airam, is a network of peers, with every device communicating with every other device. That way, if one device goes down, the controller’s message still finds its way to its intended target by instantly forging a new pathway through the mesh.
When it was time to Relight the BBC, saving energy was a top priority, and that’s why fluorescents had to be replaced by LEDs. But the BBC didn’t want to be locked into a single lighting manufacturer, and that was one reason for choosing Casambi to supply the new lighting control system. Casambi solutions are “lighting agnostic” and will work with just about any lighting manufacturer’s offerings.
And, both Finavia and the BBC can easily control the whole enterprise through the Casambi app.
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Casambi app
The Casambi app is the flagship interface used to control a Casambi lighting control system. A rock-solid, reliable system, it’s available free of charge directly from the Google Play Store or from the Apple App Store. It plays universally on both Apple or Android smartphones, tablets and laptops.
For the general user the app is easy to use; you don’t need to be a techie.
Casambi also supports an array of corporate partners who build products based on the app and the system that it fronts. While the inner workings are no concern to the end users, they are well documented and available to the company’s universe of collaborators, allowing them to quickly design and implement an endless array of lighting control systems for any purpose, based on Casambi’s stable and proven system.
Every lighting fixture is controlled by the Casambi wireless control solution at the Price and Princess of Wales Hospice in Glasgow.
Because the end-user only sees what is needed and relevant to their particular needs, the Casambi app is as equally appropriate to home users as it is to for most sophisticated professional lighting design applications.