The Technical Working Group at the TALQ Consortium, a project begun in 2012 to create a globally accepted standard for software interfaces to control outdoor lighting, has published two technical white papers laying out the direction of the organization. One is an overview of the specification to define an application protocol for communication between a central management system and outdoor lighting networks. The other is on an application protocol for management of transactions between the network and the central system.
Driven by trends such as the increasing prevalence of LED luminaires, more efficient city operations management, growing social and legislative pressure to reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions, and an increasing move towards city beautification, the outdoor lighting market is shifting from traditional to intelligent lighting networks, TALQ says. Among other functions, these new networks offer remote monitoring, smart asset management, smart dimming and scene setting, and intelligent measurement of energy consumption.
In its new white papers, "Specification Overview" and "Application Protocol Transaction Management", the TALQ Technical Working Group lays out its plan for the architecture and application protocols that will determine how outdoor lighting works with central management systems (CMS). The application protocol follows a client-server architecture in which the TALQ bridge acts as a client that updates attributes of the CMS and can communicate asynchronously. The Specification Overview gives a more general description of the overall architecture of the systems.