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Lagg writes:
"Philips put out a press release detailing their new retail lighting system, which is designed for the purpose of saving power by tracking subjects in a room, then increasing or decreasing light intensity as needed. Philips also advertises a secondary feature for providing location based sale adverts to the customer directly on their smartphone. This will require the user to install an app to actually receive the sale alerts, but it's unclear exactly how this tracking will be done otherwise.
Any home automation types in the comments have a theory as to how this will work on a technical level? My best guess is that there are infrared LEDs paired with the lighting fixtures themselves that can be picked up by phones with IR sensors in them. Further, what advantages does this sort of system have in terms of lighting efficiency that an electric eye setup wouldn't accomplish just as well?"
(Score: 4, Informative) by SpallsHurgenson on Wednesday February 19 2014, @11:47AM
Several of the big box stores in my area (east coast USA) use them; I've noticed lights dimming and brightening as people moved about the store. In some cases they did this with actual dimmers, in other cases some (but not all) of the overhead lights were shut off, which created a similar effect. A few seemed to be based on motion detectors (stand still long enough and the lights dimmed), others seemed more sophisticated. At least one store seemed to dim the lights automatically based on how many people were in an aisle (nobody: very dim, just me: reduced lighting, two or more people: normal lighting).
No idea as to the specifics of the system, although I don't think any of the lights were LED. Other than that (and the creepy advertising thing), the Phillips systems does not seem that extraordinarily new in concept.