ML completes LED lighting control system design

A ML Electronics product story

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Oct 7, 2009

ML Electronics has introduced a low-cost, two-wire light-emitting-diode (LED) lighting control system design that can be managed from an Iphone, a PC or another computing device.

The company has completed a reference design for a low-cost home LED lighting control system for 'retrofitting' into an existing standard housing as a replacement for - or an enhancement to - conventional lighting.

A key feature of the system is that the same 24VDC supply lines that power the LEDs are used for the control signals, using a protocol developed by ML Electronics.

The system is operated using one or more master controllers that address a number of slaves and each slave controls clusters of three red-green-blue/white LEDs.

The master can be controlled via Ethernet, wireless LAN (Wi-Fi), Bluetooth, DMX512, Dali or any custom control interface.

As part of the development, the company produced both PC and Iphone applications to address the master via Wireless LAN.

The slaves are connected to the master using a two-wire low-voltage 24V supply and each slave is capable of controlling the colour and brightness of up to 50W of LED illumination from data command signals superimposed on the power line.

A master unit injects control data onto the low-voltage supply line, controlling the slaves using the MLE protocol.

Each master can control two 'strings', each with 16 slaves.

These strings can be wired in parallel, so that each slave produces the same colours, or in series, allowing slaves to produce different output colours if desired.

No earth is required and there are no separate control lines.

The Iphone application can be used to control the lights, setting brightness levels and turning them on and off.

Control can be zoned, with a facility to pre-programme and store complex scenarios.

For example, in a kitchen installation, a user might set up a scenario with mood lighting around the worktop areas, white light above the eating area and no light by the entrance near the doors; the user will then implement it using only one or two clicks on the user interface.

The same facilities are offered on the PC application.