Artistic Licence Engineering presents "The Future of Lighting Control" to the Society of Light and Lighting

	Society of Light and Lighting

Artistic Licence Engineering saw company founder, Wayne Howell, present a seminar to the Society of Light and Lighting entitled "Controlling Interest -- The Future of Lighting Control."

Taking place in mid-December at the London Transport Museum, the "Taking Control" evening was the final event in the Society of Light and Lighting's current program to inform and educate participants about trends in lighting, providing a forum for debate.

Lighting designer and chairman of the society's London events committee, Peter Phillipson, introduced Howell as the inventor of the lighting protocol Art-Net, a method of distributing DMX512 over Ethernet. Howell's company, Artistic Licence, makes control devices that use many lighting protocols.

Howell compared and contrasted the major control protocols in current use, explaining the respective advantages and disadvantages of DMX512, DALI, and Ethernet, including Art-Net, sACN, and KiNet. He delivered a brief history of how each protocol came about, and the context in which they are designed to be used -- emphasizing the message that there are no good and bad protocols, but only suitable and unsuitable applications for each. DALI, for example, is acknowledged as too slow to be suitable for real-time effects, but provides an economical, contractor-friendly solution for simple lighting installations.

According to the company, an illuminating Q&A session followed, with a high degree of audience engagement. Important (but not widely known) facts came to light, such as when Howell clarified that cat5 cable - familiar to all electricians - is approved for carrying DMX512 up to 300m. This simple fact confirms there is no reason why this protocol should not become much more widely used in sectors other than the entertainment industry. Post-seminar discussions also revealed that the challenge of retrofit LED dimming is a major emerging theme, the company says.

"It was successful event -- better attended than most, which tells us something about the growing interest and need for architectural lighting designers to get a handle on controls -- and, from what I saw, universally praised by attendees," says design director of Light Bureau, Tad Trylski.

"Wayne's jovial, honest, sometimes irreverent approach was well received. He addressed some fairly complex networking issues but in a thoroughly non-geeky manner. I'd like to think everyone in the room learned something and came away with a better understanding and allayed fears of this 'black magic'."

Howell was joined in the event by Brian Cuthbertson, who spoke on the latest state-of-the-art analog systems, and by Richard Perry, who explored recent improvements in photo-electric controls.

Artistic Licence will present at future industry events including: PLASA Focus Leeds, Showlight, and PLASA throughout 2013.