Piscataway, New Jersey, USA / Valencia, Spain – The TALQ Consortium, developing a global standard for interfaces to manage outdoor lighting networks, has made a significant step towards the official rollout of the TALQ Certification Program. During the first TALQ plug fest in Valencia, Spain, the specially developed Test Tool – to be used to test outdoor lighting products for TALQ-compliance – was successfully applied with various control technology implementations. Several central management and TALQ bridge systems were also tested for compatibility against each other. The results confirm that the test procedures are nearly ready for the launch of the Certification Program.
One important factor for cities and communities on their way to becoming a ‘Smart City’ is street lighting. Because road lighting on one hand has a huge impact on the safety and quality of life in a city, and on the other hand requires a significant spend on energy and maintenance for a smooth operation. For all entities maintaining outdoor lighting networks there are three key factors. Firstly, they want to build up future-proof systems, because investments have to prove their suitability for decades. Secondly, they want intelligent platforms to guarantee efficiency and flexibility in operation. And, last but not least, they do not wish to be tied to a single supplier but prefer a sound competition and strive for compatibility between components of different vendors.
To support all of these market needs, the TALQ Consortium, an open initiative composed of leading lighting industry players, is working on setting a global standard for the interface to control and monitor diverse outdoor lighting networks (OLNs).
TALQ Certification is not a walk-over
In 2012 the members started to develop the TALQ Specification which focuses on the so-called ‘application layer’ of the interface protocol, thereby allowing maximum freedom for manufacturers to develop optimized solutions within an interoperable framework. The TALQ Interface is built on standard internet protocols and security standards, such as XML/HTTP and Transport Layer Security, and is independent of connectivity technology.
To assure the highest level of security and error-free interoperability a rigorous test procedure and test tool were also developed. The TALQ Test Tool itself and several products of members were put to the test in Valencia, Spain, during the first week of December 2015.
“We were able to test each one against all the other corresponding products. On the final day we saw one central management system successfully controlling two other TALQ bridge products concurrently, all from different manufacturers.” reports Dr Nick Hewish, Test Tool Development Supervisor of the TALQ Certification Workgroup, about the recent plug fest sessions. “We identified a number of issues where the specification must still be updated slightly and where the test tool did not yet cover a wide enough range of options. These were things we could not have discovered without bringing together a range of implementations.”
In addition the plug fest was a perfect opportunity to share experiences and different implementations of the protocol between developers of TALQ products. With this extremely encouraging and helpful result the finalization of the test procedures is almost complete and the official certification of hardware and software products will start in 2016. The TALQ Test Tool will be introduced to a broad audience during the Light+Building show in March in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
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