The outdoor luminaire was conceived to be installed in roadways travelled by tens of thousands of vehicles every day, without impacting the existing infrastructure. No support poles or excavations, just the use of the existing barriers to place the lighting devices in. 

We are talking about a grazing LED lighting system, which is adaptable to variable installation geometries and different types of paved roads, modifying its photometric distributions to always obtain the best possible result on each different road section. A lighting system capable of signalling unexpected events like in presence of fog, accidents, queues and each sort of danger: for example, in order to signalling a vehicle entering a junction in a wrong way. Or react to any system failures by modifying the photometric distribution of the individual luminaires, adapting and re-adapting to the changed geometries of the system. And by doing so it maintains high levels of uniformity even in cases of failure. A lighting system capable of signalling any impacts on the barriers and the loss of alignment of the various products installed.

Connected, interconnected and synchronized

All this is simply thanks to an interconnected system and a remote-control box. A single product, miniaturized to the point of being able to exploit any existing guardrail, capable of illuminating, adapting, signalling and transferring relevant data.

All this was tested in 2km of a pilot section of an important ring road in southern Italy, a project that began as early as 2021 and is currently nearing completion. In its multifunctionality, the system remains simple and intuitive and is made up of a few interconnected elements.

SIDEis One

First of all, the product, SIDEis One. A small compact light is to be installed into the standard guardrail. Only one control box is needed for every four devices. The control box powers each “SIDEis One” to allow the immediate replacement of the device in the event of a fault. They host the remote-control node thanks to a standard Zhaga socket: the remote-control system gateways can subsequently be installed on this architecture, through which the nodes communicate with the customer’s system management software.

The prototyping activities of the system proved to be particularly complex, as did the identification of the optimal photometric distributions according to different installation parameters. It was not “just” a matter of adapting the device to existing types of guardrails through the creation of brackets suitable for the different characteristics of the barriers, but the main issue was to adapt the photometry to the characteristics of the asphalt which depends on multiple factors, not least the frequency of use and deterioration.

Characteristics which are crucial to achieve the desired results in a grazing LED lighting system. In this context, the possibility of developing a “custom-made” product with its photometry, creating the right combination with other products already installed, was an element of fundamental importance. That is, changing behaviours through the system’s control and management system, without having to intervene with an operator to change inter-distance and orientation. This is to create a truly dynamic system, which “dialogues” with the infrastructure and adapts to its changing and sometimes unpredictable characteristics, which actively reacts to cases of failure and promptly signalling dangers or alerts the vehicles.

A compact, ultra-light product, easy to install and simple to maintain

A new concept of lighting, therefore, is capable of giving its best even in aggressive environmental situations. A dematerialized system, where the LED luminaire finally becomes “electronic” and capable of interfacing in the future different sensors and communication systems. Thanks to the first case used in Capodichino’s motorway SIDEis already started to experiment and install in different territories and environments its product, dealing with complex installations, from Scandinavia to the Middle East, where environmental factors sometimes demand higher standards of lighting parameters.

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Promotion by: Entity Elettronica Srl