Casambi | Smart Lighting | Apr 28, 2023

Casambi Launches Three New Wireless Lighting Control Products with Long-range Capabilities

Global smart lighting control company Casambi announced the launch of three new product variants – CBU-TED-LR, CBU-ASD-LR, and Casambi Xpress-LR – to offer long-range radio modes for robust wireless communication in vast spaces, outdoor applications, and certain complex lighting installations.

New chip, new long-range products for Casambi

In 2022, Casambi introduced a new chip, the CBM-003, which enables new radio modes and longer ranges of up to approximately 200 meters (650 feet) in real-world applications. Based upon Nordic Semiconductor’s nRF52840 SoC, this module offers lower energy consumption, greater memory for Flash & RAM, and supports the latest Bluetooth 5. Specification to offer long-range and high throughput modes. This has now been incorporated into three Casambi Bluetooth Units.

CBU-ASD-LR
The CBU-ASD-LR is a Bluetooth-controlled, long-range control unit for any type of driver with 0-10V, 1-10V, or DALI dimming interface. This is available with either analog 0-10V (and 1-10V) or digital Standalone DALI control interface. With standalone DALI output, the CBU-ASD-LR acts both as a controller and power supply, making it possible to connect directly to an LED driver with a DALI interface. With this unit, it’s possible to implement multi-channel lighting systems with adjustable color (RGB and RGBW) or color temperature (CCT), while keeping the wiring and the number of components to a minimum.

CBU-TED-LR
The CBU-TED-LR is a Bluetooth-controlled, long-range trailing edge dimmer for dimmable incandescent, halogen, LED lamps, and LED control gear. With this unit, any dimmable load can be easily converted to become a part of a Casambi mesh radio network. It can be installed behind a traditional wall switch, inside a luminaire, or into a ceiling outlet box. The CBU-TED-LR can also be converted to a mains-activated sensor device. When acting as a presence sensor, this device provides presence information to the mesh network when it is powered up.

Casambi Xpress-LR
The Casambi Xpress-LR is a Bluetooth-controlled, long-range user interface. This switch can be kept wherever the user needs it, providing direct access to all the important Casambi lighting control functionalities. It offers all the basic functions: Dim up, dim down, change color temperature in steps of 25 Kelvin, change indirect/direct ratio, control individual or luminaire groups, recall scenes and animations. Additionally, smarter functions, such as presets and multipurpose buttons, can be configured in the Casambi App.

‘It’s with great pleasure that we announce the availability of new long-range variants of our CBUs and wireless switch. If you are new to the idea, these are incredibly good options for introducing Casambi wireless capabilities to luminaires. This is about providing easy-to-deploy solutions for novel hybrid applications – vast sports facilities, parking lots, multi-building campuses, and more robust indoor/outdoor installations’ says Kari Mettälä, Casambi CEO.

New network modes
Three radio modes are now offered by Casambi: ‘Balanced’, ‘Better Performance’, ‘Long Range’. Long-range performance comes from two factors: Higher radio transmission power (now +8dBm instead of +4dBm), and use of a special (defined by Bluetooth 5 specification and supported in Nordic Semiconductor’s microcontrollers) hardware feature to encode radio transmissions in an error-resilient way, paying with lower transmission speed for higher sensitivity (~ effective range) for receiving the signals.