Molex, LLC today announced that it has become a Cisco Solutions Technology Integrator for connected commercial LED lighting. With Cisco and luminaire manufacturer partners, Molex is creating the Transcend® Connected Lighting System to accelerate deployment of smart LED lighting control using highly secure network architectures in commercial buildings, educational facilities, healthcare facilities, and manufacturing and warehouse facilities.

“As new LED solutions are developed, architects, lighting designers, building developers and owners will have access to proven, integrated approaches that address energy efficiency, purposeful lighting control, and personal productivity,” said Mike Picini, vice president, solid state lighting, Molex. “Just replacing fluorescent lighting with LEDs reduces energy usage, but a controlled LED lighting system can produce energy cost reductions of 50 percent or more. In addition, controllable, adaptable lighting systems help create more comfortable environments for people, leading to more productive working, learning and healing experiences, and improvements in concentration, attention span, behavior and overall efficiency.”

The Transcend Connected Lighting System from Molex is an intelligent, low-voltage network that both powers and controls LED light fixtures and other devices. It also provides an array of applications that enable smart building convergence over IP. These applications feed multi-sensor data to a central host, providing building analytics and applications like real-time energy consumption, light status, temperature and humidity control, air quality monitoring, and more.

Transcend solutions are built on a leading edge technology that is based on standard and proven PoE applications, such as data and VoIP. The Transcend control system is open, scalable, and supports IEEE802.3x standards. The low-voltage, centralized PoE infrastructure allows unmatched performance and superior control to create a fully connected, reliable and highly secure system. PoE infrastructure is easy to install, program, integrate, maintain and upgrade, providing significant cost savings compared to traditional lighting systems.

The Molex collaboration with Cisco simplifies the convergence of Transcend Connected Lighting with building automation systems over IP without compromising lighting reliability, security, efficiency, maintenance, and system life.

“Today, LED innovation is leading to a major market shift,” said Todd Meister, vice president, Americas Partner Organization, Cisco. “By using the network to power lighting and adding sensors, Cisco and collaborators like Molex are bringing the Internet of Things to the enterprise. Network-based lights make it easier to connect to disparate building networks and use the available data to deliver truly personalized user experiences.”

The Transcend Connected Lighting System is a full system architecture that creates connectivity from Cisco network switches to lighting fixtures. It enables a broad offering of products from well-known and respected lighting luminaire suppliers by using standard IP structured cabling commonly used in data networking. Molex Transcend LED Lighting solutions include the soon to be released Transcend Lighting Fixtures, Transcend Gateways, Transcend Sensor Nodes, Transcend Local Controls, new Zhaga modules, and new, innovative Transcend lighting-specific control software. These products help create unique, end-to-end indoor lighting control system solutions for all workspace applications, such as conference rooms, classrooms, washrooms, common collaboration zones, lobbies, and many more.

Digitization can be transformative, noted Picini. “Collaborative LED lighting solutions not only enable more efficient and less energy intensive buildings,” he said. “They also have the potential to create unique lighting scenes and experiences that have positive impacts on people’s lives.”