LEDs have come into our daily lives almost without our noticing them and suddenly they are everywhere. People visiting Las Vegas may notice that streetlights there are LED based. That in itself may not be very surprising, except that the LED streetlights in Las Vegas are able to not only entertain with videos and music, they care about what you say. Furthermore, LED lights even watch while you speak your thoughts. That gives credence to the inevitable quip: “What happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas.”
Las Vegas streetlights are acquiring modules named Intellistreets from a company in Michigan – Illuminating Concepts. The modules will deliver music and news for the entertainment of the passers-by. However, they can also eavesdrop.
LED streetlights are nothing new – New York has a retrofit project. Las Vegas, along with some other cities, made the switch several years ago. However, adding the power of vision and hearing to streetlights is something entirely out of the ordinary. A fascinated San Francisco is also mulling over something similar for its streetlights.
Depending on whether the application is a retrofit or entirely new, Intellistreets has a number of configurations. For Las Vegas, it is a retrofit application, where post-top modules are added to the existing streetlights. The audio and video from the streetlight is transmitted wirelessly to the public works department.
Lights that double up for watching have been around for a while. The oldest patent for such an activity was issued in 1973, for a 360-degree infrared surveillance along with a panoramic display. Others have offered designs of a fake surveillance camera, attempting to create the illusion of tracking with a flashing LED.
Privacy cultures vary in Europe and the US. While closed-circuit video systems are the norm in say, UK and accepted there, suspicion of the government in the US is more deep-seated and video surveillance is less welcome, whatever may be the type.
Therefore, organizations such as municipalities that intend to deploy video surveillance use equipment with IP networks for collecting video data and communicating with the devices. However, it is not so easy or cheap as it looks offhand. Although optical fibers do provide the highest capacity, installation of fiber-optic cables can be rather expensive. Instead, Intellistreets uses cellular or wired connectivity between collection servers and light poles. They have found that for adding to an existing lighting infrastructure, going wireless is the easiest.
According to reports, the surveillance business of Illuminating Concepts started with an indirect path. Its CEO Ron Harwood has a passion for music. Majoring in ethnomusicology at Wayne State and managing Sippie Wallace, Ron made his way into lighting systems on the strength of his liaison with the entertainment industry.
Harwood holds two patents. One of them is for the combination of a lighting and a media device, with the device being self-powered based on the movement of air through the unit. Illuminating Concepts carried the idea forward, adding two-way communication. This gave the streetlight the ability to produce a disembodied voice that offered to help lost visitors.
