Casambi | Three Common Misconceptions About Going Wireless

While sold on the benefits of converting to Casambi, the most common concerns we hear from new customers as they stand on the precipice of their wireless lighting investment are…

As human beings, we love control and choice. In fact, we need to have a certain level of control and choice in our lives. The accelerating demand for smart products is perhaps connected to the discovery of this psychological value behind the IoT. As consumers, we’re investing in wireless smart health and fitness devices, remote home security, and automated heating systems. The data harnessed through the IoT can reveal inefficiencies ripe for exploitation while going wireless is all about collapsing distance and using technology to enable people to live richer lives with minimal environmental impact. Whatever can go wireless, will go wireless. Not least – lighting.

Even though the benefits are multifarious, there still exists a certain amount of reluctance to operate over radio waves. At Casambi, we appreciate these concerns. We’ve spent decades cultivating mastery of wireless communications and we offer technical expertise, and guidance to minimize the barriers to going cable-free.

Today, people want to personalize their lighting experience and to do so with ease and within an instant. Casambi’s simple wireless lighting control system opens up a whole new world of possibilities in this respect. Our uncomplicated yet feature-rich application can seamlessly control all luminaires in any given lighting project. Users of our wireless system can free themselves from the physical constraints of wiring and the proprietary legacy systems of yesterday. And the ever-expanding features of Casambi’s control application can match the strictest of briefs and the wildest of imaginations.

While sold on these benefits, the most common concerns we hear from new customers as they stand on the precipice of their wireless lighting investment are related to security, interference, and robustness. Here’s what we have to say to help dispel any misplaced anxiety:

Firstly, it is possible to control access rights to your network and to define who interacts with the lights, if at all. An assigned ‘administrator’ can make all network changes and give access rights to new users. A ‘manager’ can make changes to all lighting control functionalities but cannot get access to passwords or decide who can access the network. A ‘user’ can only use the network but not make any changes.

Secondly, full encryption of communications and security for authorization means all data that is transmitted in a Casambi network is 100% protected and safe.

A connected device is needed for the setup (for communication between the app and the nodes). Once the network is set up, it does not require any outside contact, and the node-to-node communication is encrypted at each step – so even being able to “listen” to the communication in the network wouldn’t give you much.

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is used for communication between a mobile phone or the control device and the Casambi platform. BLE is the most popular, well-tested, and reliable low power radio technology found in all modern smartphones, tablets, and smartwatches today. It’s a wireless personal area network, which means that it can function without being connected to the internet. No additional network connectivity is needed (LAN or WAN) during normal operation.

However, if you wanted to connect a Casambi network with a third-party Building Management System, a gateway can aggregate communication from the light controllers and backhaul data to a central management platform. In this instance, communication between a mobile device/gateway and the Cloud is fully encrypted by multiple industry standards and proprietary encryption mechanisms. We have a network that we connect to the cloud through a gateway set up in the app. Once this gateway is set up, the network is connected to Casambi Cloud Service i.e. our servers. From our servers, there is an API connection to third-party services.

Thirdly, security is at the core of our platform strategy. Sharing the same hardware and software environment, all Casambi nodes run on the latest version of the available firmware while over-the-air programming allows us to push new security, software features, and additional functionality out to the entire fleet of installed devices at once.

Source: https://casambi.com/blog/three-common-misconceptions-about-going-wireless/