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LA's Smart LED Street Lights Boost Wireless Connectivity (philips.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Los Angeles will introduce a smart street lighting system, featuring connected LEDs and fully-integrated 4G LTE wireless technology. In a collaboration between Dutch tech firm Philips and Swedish telco Ericsson, the SmartPole project aims to deliver LA citizens public lighting which is energy efficient and improves network performance in urban areas. By the close of this week, a total of 24 SmartPoles will be installed across the Hollywood area. The city plans to place 100 poles over the coming year, with a further 500 to follow.
So the cynic in me says "we'll be able to see you better, and monitor your cellphone activity better".
Oh, I see .. LA has been hoodwinked into funding someone's marketing drive, and LA will be the reference case for how they leveraged their synergies with emerging IoT technologies to deliver the blah blah blahs in an agile manner.
Give it a few years, it won't work, it will have cost too much, and will be found to have massive security holes which can't be fixed without spending huge sums of money.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
A strange claim given historically street lights have been shown not to have an impact on crime.
There is little evidence that lighting makes streets safer, or prevents traffic accidents, but there is overwhelming evidence that it makes people feel safer. Politicians receive a storm of complaints when streetlights go out.
The claim is that while sodium is more efficient per lumen, LEDs put out a directional light and so total lumens used is lower. This is also supposed to make the skies darker. LEDs are also supposed to have a longer life, reducing maintenance costs.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
High Pressure Sodium lamp produce somewhere between 50-140 lumens per watt depending on bulb size, bulb age, temperature, and the type of ballast used. LEDs have passed the 300 lumens per watt mark in the lab and real-word LEDs are currently running 70-120 lumens per watt and constantly improving. Unlike HPS lamps, LEDs are directional which can be lead to additional savings.
It is still not clear what the real-world bulb life of LEDs will be so it is difficult to calculate the total cost of operations. Since electrical power is usually abundant at night, power is only a small factor in the cost of operating street light. It is unlikely that further improvements in LED efficiency will have any meaningful impact on operating cost.
In spite of the relatively poor color rendering index of HPS lights, I also find the warm orange from HPS easier on my eyes for night driving. It is also possible (but not cheap!) to filter out most HPS light for sky viewing.
I wish we could re-think the whole idea of street lighting and use if more sparingly. It is very helpful to have intersections marked with lights but there is no need to light every street, every hour of every night. Dark can be quite nice!
Also much easier on the eyes while night driving.
How soon they forget.
I was working for the local utility when we made the switch from mercury vapor to sodium vapor lighting. The screams and howls about poor color rendition and visibility problems almost made us switch back.
Sodium vapor lamps may be more efficient. But just ask the cops who were around at the time of the switchover. Every hit-and-run vehicle reported was a muddy brown color and every suspect was black.
Have gnu, will travel.
Those are considered potholes? WTH man, those are cracks in the pavement. Potholes are when there is a hole in the pavement large enough for your tire to get damaged when it falls into it. You should visit anywhere that gets ice and see what a real pothole is.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?