New nLight Autonomous Bridging Technology Greatly Extends the Range and Improves the Responsiveness of Wireless Lighting Controls

ATLANTA – November 12, 2020 – nLight®, an Acuity Brands company, introduced today its new nLight® Autonomous Bridging Technology (ABT), which greatly increases the range and improves the responsiveness of wireless networked lighting controls across indoor and outdoor spaces and around obstructions. Through ABT, networked messages are repeated across multiple, already-connected wireless devices. This bridging technology extends messages farther, increasing the wireless range from 3x to 4x in both indoor and outdoor environments. Also, ABT extends messages around obstructions such as corners, walls, elevators, and stairwells.

“ABT eliminates the guesswork from the design and installation of wireless, networked lighting controls by providing the same level of confidence assigned to wired lighting control products,” said Mark Lane, Product Director for nLight.  “By utilizing networked groups, nLight® AIR expands its star topology multiple layers, reliably bridging communication to a system controller from more end devices. This indirect connection allows nLight AIR networks to grow larger with information exchanges that are incredibly fast and secure,” said Lane.

Autonomous Bridging Technology extends the lighting controls network while allowing wireless groups to broadcast strong, uniform signals across long distances in unison, creating a robust network without adding unnecessary latency to general operation. Existing nLight AIR devices in a space can be firmware updated to deliver ABT capability. Plus, the device network is self-forming, eliminating the cost and installation challenges associated with dedicated repeater devices.  Over time, the intelligent network will automatically self-improve, ensuring reliable communication even in dynamic spaces.

Autonomous Bridging Technology Benefits:

  • Communicate around corners – Design with confidence, as networked messages will get where they need to go by repeating around obstructions using nearby devices.
  • Enables quicker startup – No additional programming required during setup – devices self-initialize to bridge other devices when needed.
  • Communicate farther, faster – Network groups and their corresponding devices are bridged only when necessary, extending the network and allowing groups to respond more quickly through the star topology of nLight AIR.
  • Creates an intelligent network – The automatically bridged network self-improves over time, eliminating waste.
  • Eliminates need for additional hardware – Repeating messages is possible by simple firmware updates to existing hardware, which reduces the need to add more devices for larger networks.
  • Secure connection – The 5-tier security of nLight AIR extends with the network, so all devices are securely connected to the ioXt® Alliance certified nLight ECLYPSE™ controller.

For more information, please see nLight Autonomous Bridging Technology.

About nLight

nLight®, an Acuity Brands company, is a wired and wireless networked digital lighting controls platform for both indoor and outdoor spaces. nLight seamlessly integrates an industry-leading portfolio of controls enabled luminaires and intelligent digital devices – including occupancy and daylight sensors, power packs, wall switches, touch screens, relay panels, and input/output devices – to create a system with unmatched levels of distributed intelligence to drive energy savings, enhanced user configurability and comfort. Visit us at www.nlightcontrols.com

About Acuity Brands  

Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE: AYI) is a market-leading industrial technology company. We design, manufacture, and bring to market innovative products and services that make the world more brilliant, productive, and connected including building management systems, lighting, lighting controls, and location-aware applications.  Based in Atlanta, Georgia, with operations across North America, Europe, and Asia, we are powered by approximately 10,000 dedicated and talented associates. Visit us at www.acuitybrands.com.

All trademarks referenced are property of their respective owners.

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Media Contact: Neil Egan
Neil.Egan@acuitybrands.com
770-860-2957

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