1: Which energy savings can I expect introducing a telemanagement system?
2: Why does Owlet Nightshift use a wireless communication instead of powerline communication?
3: Will your communication be harmed by other system using 2,4 GHz, for example Wireless Hotspots?
4: Which kind of ballast / lamp can be plugged to your system?
5: Is the communication secure? Could the network be attacked by hackers?
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Q: Which energy savings can I expect introducing a telemanagement system?
A: Of course that depends on the type of your installation, but if you utilize dimming during times with less traffic density and the maintenance factor compensation functions of Owlet Nightshift, savings between 30% and 40% are not unrealistic.
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Q: Why does Owlet Nightshift use a wireless communication instead
of powerline communication?
A: Outdoor lighting installations vary from country to country and from city to city. Unfortunately not every lighting installation uses it’s own dedicated grid. In mixed installations where you have households, industrial plants, heavy machines attached to the grid, communication through powerline cannot be guaranteed. In other cases even a power grid plan does not exist, or your installation is linked to different power substations. In those cases you have to investigate pole by pole if a powerline communication is possible. That adds additional engineering costs to a telemanagement budget, even when a communication is not guranteed. Owlet´s aim was to build a system that will work anywhere inthe world, regardless of the grid structure, with minimum engineering effort. Therefore we use wireless communication
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Q: Will your communication be harmed by other system using 2,4 GHz,
for example Wireless Hotspots?
A: Many institutes and organizations, like Schneider Electric, the University of California and the ZigBee alliance investigated that matter in the past, stating that even in the presence of a surprising amount of interference, ZigBee devices continue to communicate effectively. Most of these surveys are published, please visit zigbee.org for white papers or run a web search. Based on our own field trials we experienced a decline in data rate, but even in worst case scenarios, the data rate was ten times higher compared to a powerline communication without interference.
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Q: Which kind of ballast / lamp can be plugged to your system?
A: That’s an easy one. Any! Any type of lamp or ballast, regardless if magnetic gear, bi-power, step-down, electronic ballasts with or without 0-10V interface or DALI can be managed by Owlet Nightshift.
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Q: Is the communication secure? Could the network be attacked by hackers?
A: Owlet Nightshift uses industry standard security mechanisms like 128-bit AES encryption and VPN which are well recognized for their high level of security. The complete data transmission is encrypted and secured; ZigBee places a strong emphasis on security mechanisms to prevent wireless tampering and eavesdropping, and to ensure high reliability and availability.
ZigBee provides four basic security services: authentication, message integrity, message confidentiality, and replay protection.
Authentication provides assurance about the originator of the message and prevents an attacker from modifying a hacked device to impersonate another device. ZigBee provides an authentication mechanism at both the network level and device level. Network level authentication uses a common network security key.
Message integrity protects against some person or device modifying a message from an authorized sender while the message is in transit and the receiver is not able to detect this tampering. ZigBee provides a strong message integrity mechanism with authentication code lengths of 128 bits.
Message confidentiality means keeping information secret from unauthorized parties and is typically achieved by encryption. ZigBee uses 128-bit AES encryption, and this protection is available at the network level and the device level.
A replay attack consists of some person or device recording a legitimate message between two authorized devices and then replaying the message later. ZigBee prevents replay attacks using a counter mechanism. Essentially, ZigBee devices maintain a count of incoming and outgoing messages, and reset these counters only when a new security key is created. If a person or device tries to replay an old message once the counters have been incremented, the message will be rejected. The counters are large enough that even devices which communicate once per second will not exceed the counter limit for more than a century.
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