Light monitoring
The importance of monitoring light levels and the benefits it offers
News: New indoor air quality monitoring to limit the spread of Covid-19 and other aerosol related infections.
Monitoring specialists
Spook's award winning remote monitoring service called OmniWatch monitors light levels. Measuring light levels across many different assets and areas; OmniWatch presents realtime readings in an easy to use real-time digital dashboard.
Spook and OmniWatch was voted Specialist Technology Company of the Year and Most Innovative Solution of the Year at the annual UK CIR Business Continuity Awards.
Light monitoring for offices
The light level in a work environment can impact on an employees performance in a number of different ways from effects that damage their health to ways that reduce the individual's ability to perform a simple task.
According to the HSE (Health and Safety Executive) different levels of lighting are required for different types of work.
Close, accurate work such as soldering a control panel will require higher light levels than walking down a corridor.
However, when considering lighting, a number of different factors need to be contemplated such as colour, contrast, glare and so on.
Complexities of lighting
Lighting an environment is often a complex task, principally considered during the design stage of the building. However, lighting should be designed for the tasks that individuals are carrying out within that environment.
Guides to lighting can seem very complex technical documents, however, employers can take some simple steps to ensure staff and visitors have adequate lighting to carry out their tasks.
Key principles in lighting
Different activities require different levels of light. In general, the more detailed the task, the greater the light requirement. For example, a process control room should be lit at an illuminance of 300 lux, a corridor or walkway may only require 50 lux, whilst studying an engineering drawing may require 750 lux.
Where individuals are carrying out different activities, they will need control over their local lighting; for example a control and instrumentation engineer coming into a process control room lit at 300 lux may need a desk with a lamp to study a wiring diagram.
Open plan offices
Studies have shown that giving workers in open plan offices local control of lighting can increase job satisfaction and consequently decrease their experience of stress.
Directional sources of light can bounce off reflective surfaces such as display screens and cause glare. Using blinds, correcting the angle of the source of light and using glare filters can help control this such as using up-lighting.
Using light for security monitoring
Lights being turned on can be a good indication that a person is present in a certain area when you are not expecting or wanting them to be.
Setting up alerts to track light usage within areas where people are unwanted acts as further security and peace of mind for the protection of valuable and vulnerable items.
This can, of course, be complemented by installing boundary and IR sensors, motion detection and conventional door access monitoring.
OmniWatch key features
Cloud based
OmniWatch is cloud based and is accessed via any internet enabled device.
Digital dashboards
OmniWatch dashboards provide interactive and intuitive access to sensor readings 24/7.
Scaleable installations
Totally scaleable from a handful of sensors to a global solution monitoring 1000s of devices.
Trend analysis
Sensor readings are held in perpetuity; providing accurate historical trend analysis.
Automated reporting
Comprehensive reports can be scheduled to be auto emailed daily, weekly and monthly.
We monitor light levels as a byproduct of measuring CO2 levels within our study areas. The air quality sensors we use are intelligent and multifunctional and also monitor activity, temperature and humidity. This lets us track trends of when rooms are occupied or vacant. We rely on monitoring light levels for security reasons and to help conserve energy in areas that have excessive lighting that are energy hungry. Measuring light levels in conjunction with activity is especially helpful when the University campuses are unoccupied and for long periods of inactivity over term time holiday periods.
Munster Technological University, a multi-campus technological university with six campuses across the South-West region of Ireland in Cork and Kerry.
Fun fact
The difference between lux and lumens
Lux is a measure of illuminance (the total amount of light that falls on a surface) whereas Lumens is a measure of luminous flux (a measure of the total amount of visible light emitted from a single source for example, a lamp).
The SI unit of illuminance is the lux (lx). It is equal to one lumen per square meter.
1 lx = 1 lm/m2 = 1 cd · sr/m2
The SI unit of luminous flux is the lumen (lm). The lumen is defined in relation to the candela which is the unit of luminous intensity.
1 lm = 1 cd ⋅ sr
Spook monitors a wide range of climate conditions
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New to monitoring
We help organisations start monitoring projects from scratch. We have a wealth of experience that is free and helpful in creating an informed approach to monitoring.
We are also resellers to industry leading sensor and equipment manufacturers and can recommend the most appropriate hardware and sensors to fit any size monitoring project.
We had been considering monitoring for a while but did not have the resource or the knowledge to fully understand how to go about doing things from scratch.
We approached Spook as they have lots of experience in looking independently at monitoring projects. They recommended and provided the most appropriate hardware and sensors for us.
The sensors arrived pre-configured and were implemented on OmniWatch by Spook before we installed them.
Additional monitoring
Many of our customers have tried monitoring for themselves.
This ranges from institutions that rely on equipment onboard data loggers and communications cards; to organisations that have started monitoring projects but need help to extend monitoring to new areas and/or implement a central monitoring solution.
We needed a remote monitoring service that did not require an on premise PC and was independent of our network.
Spook provided pre-configured cellular routers for each of our five locations across the UK. The whole project was a simple plug-and-play solution with no involvement from us.
We had been considering monitoring for a while but did not have the resource or the knowledge to fully understand how to go about doing things.
When we Googled the various areas of interest we got more confused.
We approached Spook as they have a different outlook to simply buying hardware and sensors. Thankfully we now have a fully installed, joined up monitoring solution.
We had a series of climate monitors installed in our server rooms. Due to a change in our security policy we needed a remote monitoring service that did not require an on premise PC and was independent of our network.
Spook suggested a technology upgrade and provided pre-configured cellular routers for each of our five server locations across the UK. The whole project was a simple plug-and-play solution with no involvement from us.
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Get in touch with Spook
Please contact us if you wish for further information on how Spook can help with your environmental and power monitoring needs.