ams AG, a leading provider of high performance sensors and analog ICs, today announced the AS7221, the industry’s first integrated white-tunable smart lighting manager. Lighting manufacturers designing with the AS7221 can now quickly integrate high-precision CCT, or “Kelvin-tuning”, capabilities into their Internet of Things (IoT) smart lighting offerings. The versatile architecture, which includes an I²C extension interface, positions the AS7221 to deliver Internet of Awareness™ IoT sensor hub platform capabilities for sensing functions such as air quality, temperature, occupancy, and presence.

ams AG introduces new smart lighting manager for IoT sensor hub applications. (ams AG/LEDinside)

The AS7221 is equipped with an industry-first embedded tri-stimulus CIE XYZ color sensor to enable precise color sensing with direct mapping to the CIE 1931 color space. This smart lighting manager is a fully integrated luminaire control system, compatible with standard 0-10V inputs and enabled for IoT connectivity and network control through standard clients such as Bluetooth Smart, ZigBee or WiFi, through a complete Smart Lighting Command Set. LED control for spectral tuning is implemented via direct PWM channel outputs, resulting in a high-precision solution that slashes development and integration time when compared with more bulky discrete component approaches.

“With LEDs having enabled the ‘digital lighting revolution’, the next logical step is control integration directly into the luminaires,” commented Philip Smallwood, Director of LED & Lighting Research for the respected photonics market research firm, Strategies Unlimited. “Two potential keys to that move, which make it both practical and cost-effective, are sensor fusion and core integration at the semiconductor device level. The result will take us right down the path of realizing the LED lighting industry’s long-standing vision of truly controllable, connected and human-centered smart lighting that will deliver well-being, productivity and efficiency benefits across the board.”

The AS7221 is the first extension to ams’ recently announced Cognitive Lighting™ smart lighting manager family. The compact AS7221 will be available in a 5x5mm LGA package, for flexible integration into both luminaires and larger replacement lamps. The device provides precise color point tuning, smoothly controlling CCT transitions between configured warm and cool white LED strings within a luminaire. In addition to the color- and CCT-tuning functions, the AS7221 includes automatic configuration support for ams’ TSL4531 ambient light sensor for turnkey daylighting capabilities.

“The next generation of lighting will be defined by three key characteristics: controllability, adaptation and connected architectures,” said Tom Griffiths, Senior Marketing Manager at ams. “Our new family of smart lighting managers meet those criteria. With this latest entry, we are addressing the luminaire manufacturers’ critical time-to-market challenge for developing and deploying a spectrally tunable luminaire that is cost-effective, accurate, and which smoothly integrates into the Internet of Things”.

Key features of the AS7221 include:

• Tri-stimulus XYZ color sensor for direct mapping into the CIE color space

• Serial UART for simple connection to standard networks and wireless clients

• Fully network-enabled architecture with high-level, driverless command set for a wide array of advanced integrated luminaire controls

• I²C expansion capability to enable IoT sensor-hub platform functionality