Desktop Application for Designing and Configuring Industrial Lighting in the DALI System
Background
NowaLed is a well-known Polish manufacturer of LED fittings, primarily designed for large-scale industrial and warehouse facilities. They have been operating in the market since 2013, and besides producing industrial luminaires, they also provide assembly and lighting modernisation services, as well as offering implementation of an intelligent lighting control system based on the DALI standard. The quality of the products and services they offer is confirmed by the TÜV Rheinland certificate. NowaLed was included in the Financial Times 1000 list in 2020, which comprises the 1000 fastest-growing companies in
Challenges
At NowaLed they noticed that the specialised software used by their engineers during the configuration of the lighting system using the DALI protocol contained many functions, tools and elements that were not utilised by their employees.
Navigating through a complex interface unnecessarily prolonged the engineers’ work and reduced their efficiency. This overhead was particularly noticeable with large projects involving the installation of several thousand luminaires.
In order to optimise the work of the technicians, shorten the configuration process and reduce the assembly costs, the company approached us with a request to create some dedicated software that contained only the elements and functions that they used. They wanted to integrate the software with their proprietary lighting control system and for the configuration procedure to closely match the installers’ workflow.
Solution
Upon their request, we developed a desktop WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) application containing all the necessary functions for NowaLed employees during lighting configuration. Our solution focused on replicating the real work process of the engineers. It guided them step by step through the installation and configuration procedure, ensuring that no significant element escapes their attention. The application is intuitive and easy to use, resulting in a significant reduction in the time required for lighting configuration, even for very large industrial facilities, which translates into a real reduction in the overall process costs.
The resulting window application:
- runs on the Windows operating system,
- maximally simplifies the lighting configuration process for a new zone (minimising the number of clicks),
- offers project saving and opening functionalities,
- facilitates easy cloning and customisation of projects for a new zone.
Result
A distinguishing feature of our solution is the introduction of the ability to add new features that meet the requirements and needs of the client. They noticed that the lighting configuration in most warehouses is very similar. Hence the natural idea that emerged was to introduce functionality allowing the saving of configurations to files, which can be used in the future in the same or even in different facilities. By enriching the software with these capabilities, the process of configuring the lighting in different zones with similar lighting control systems now proceeds even faster and more efficiently.
The challenges we encountered involved transmitting documentation through the DALI network controller. The controller itself was not functioning correctly due to a software error. Our specialists developed external software for the controller that circumvents this issue and enables seamless documentation transmission by the controller.
Our specialists thoroughly understood the client’s needs and created a proprietary technological solution that significantly improved the comfort and efficiency of the engineers’ work, resulting in tangible savings.Our specialists thoroughly understood the client’s needs and created a proprietary technological solution that significantly improved the comfort and efficiency of the engineers’ work, resulting in tangible savings.
The course and manner of task execution has fully met our expectations. We also appreciate the atmosphere of cooperation and professionalism of all individuals representing ImpiCode and participating in the application development process.
Technologies
