Ubicquia's UbiCell Streetlight Controller won the top Industrial IoT award at the 2022 Best in Sensors Awards, presented by Fierce Electronics and Sensors Converge in June. These awards recognize the most innovative sensor products, the companies that make them, and the people who created them across 13 categories.
“With over two years of development and more than 60 installations behind us, we have worked with our utility, municipal and distribution partners to deliver the industry’s most advanced and reliable streetlight controller while greatly reducing installation, operational, maintenance and network costs”, said Ian Aaron, CEO of Ubicquia. “We have done this at a price point of traditional streetlight controllers while integrating critical utility monitoring, location-based services, and smart city sensor connectivity.”
The UbiCell Streetlight Controller has been touted as the simplest, cheapest, and most sophisticated way for smart cities to control their lighting. It was built by Ubicquia from the ground up to deliver key smart city services, including utility-grade power metering and, of course, advanced lighting control. It can also connect to an array of third-party sensors using BlueTooth or Wi-Fi. This means it is not only a smart streetlight controller but also a router making each streetlight a smart hub.
Ubicquia was able to add all of this functionality and provide the UbiCell at the same cost as a traditional light controller. Essentially, the UbiCell Streetlight Controller gives smart cities a modular platform that they can use to deploy services like public Wi-Fi and edge video processing by adding low-cost modules to the same small device.
The UbiCell Streetlight Controller is compatible with and can replace the photocell on more than 360 million streetlights worldwide. By replacing current sensors with the UbiCell, cities will be adding advanced light control, utility metering, stray voltage detection, power theft detection, and tilt and vibration detection, all with one component. Users can also choose to add location-based services that track people's movement, determine congestion levels, and monitor dwell time. They also have the option of turning every streetlight into a Bluetooth Beacon to trigger Beacon messages in city applications.
The UbiCell can operate on voltages from 120 volts to 480 volts. It uses DALI, DALI2, and PWM technology for dimming and a 22 satellite global GPS and celestial clock for time. This one controller will fit most streetlights and auto-configures for any driver, so the setup is simple.
Founded in 2014, Ubicquia is headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
The company offers municipalities, utilities, and mobile operators a cost-effective and expandable platform for deploying smart city, broadband, and small cell services. To make global smart connectivity a reality, Ubicquia participates in organizations, including the U.S. Conference of Mayors Business Council, GSMA, the CBRS Alliance, and the Illuminating Engineering Society.
For more information on the 2022 Best of Sensors Awards and a complete list of the winners, read this article.