Robust Data Acquisition for Building Lighting Systems

In 2012, 12% of US electricity consumption was due to residential and commercial lighting. By 2030, LED lightbulbs will be more plentiful, projected to drive a 40% reduction in energy [1]. Yet today’s LED lightbulbs have bulky heat sinks that do not leverage modern thermal management techniques. Reducing the size of the heat sink offers lower cost and increased energy efficiency.To leverage modern techniques, it is valuable to understand how thermal performance degrades light quality as people utilize lights over weeks and months. However, using current data acquisition systems to obtain such massive data sets is expensive, time-consuming, and cable-ridden.We have developed a robust ground-to-cloud system to acquire temperature and luminosity data for building lighting systems. The data acquisition units are small and may be positioned in existing lighting installations. During acquisition, data is backed up automatically. Usability studies demonstrate that novice users can configure an experiment in less than four minutes.Copyright © 2015 by ASME