Lighting Controller Stacks Instructions for Entertainment Mode
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing connected lighting systems fail to manage conflicts between lighting effects intended for entertainment and home automation rules, often overriding or ignoring important lighting changes during entertainment sessions, leading to missed notifications and mismatched lighting states after the session.
Innovation Solution
A method that stacks incoming lighting instructions during entertainment sessions, prioritizing and managing them to ensure appropriate lighting effects are applied after the session, using a 'shadow administration' of virtual lights to maintain the entertainment setup's state and seamlessly transition to actual light settings.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If lighting effects are rendered based on video content during entertainment sessions, then the viewer experience is enhanced, but home automation rules (such as timer-triggered scenes) are either not executed or immediately overridden
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by capturing and storing home automation rules before they are executed. When an entertainment session is detected, the system preserves these rules in a queue rather than immediately executing or overwriting them. This allows the rules to be maintained and applied after the entertainment session ends, ensuring reliable home automation functionality while still enabling enhanced lighting effects during the session.
2Adaptability or versatility
If streaming flow of lights states is used to accompany entertainment, then the entertainment experience is improved, but important lighting changes are lost and lighting states become mismatched after the session
Solution Approach 1:
The system introduces an intermediary mechanism - a queue structure - that mediates between incoming lighting instructions and the actual lighting output. During entertainment sessions, this queue captures and stores lighting instructions that would otherwise be lost or overridden. The intermediary ensures that important lighting changes are preserved and applied after the entertainment session, preventing information loss while maintaining the immersive entertainment experience during the session.
3Ease of operation
If conventional lighting control approaches are used with wall-mounted switches and pre-programmed settings, then the control is simple, but the system cannot respond dynamically to entertainment activities
Solution Approach 1:
The system achieves universality by making the lighting control system serve multiple functions: it continues to support simple wall-mounted switch control and pre-programmed settings for basic operations, while simultaneously adding the capability to detect entertainment activities and dynamically respond with appropriate lighting effects. This multi-functional approach maintains ease of operation for basic tasks while enabling dynamic adaptability for entertainment scenarios.
Data Source
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AI summary
A method of controlling luminaires of a lighting system based on a current mode of an entertainment device, the method comprising: whilst the entertainment device is in an active mode: controlling one or more of the luminaires associated with the entertainment device to render an entertainment effect, receiving a lighting instruction identifying a plurality of the luminaires and a lighting effect to be rendered by them, determining that at least a first of the plurality of luminaires is one of the luminaires currently rendering the entertainment effect, controlling at least a second of the plurality of luminaries, which is not currently rendering the entertainment effect, to render the lighting effect whilst the first luminaire continues to render the entertainment effect, and electronically storing an indication of the lighting effect; and in response to the entertainment device switching to an inactive mode, controlling the first luminaire to render the lighting effect using the electronically stored indication.