Woodwork space lights

Tags: #<Tag:0x00007fa497a7ac68>
#1

Hi, I’ve been actively using the woodwork space for a couple of months now on a regular basis and loving it! The community of makers with so much knowledge to share is inspiring.

Hope its OK to make a couple of suggestions about the space.

The lights are on a PIR (passaive infrared sensor) and go off if it doesn’t detect movement for a period of time. On several occasions I have been operating the chop saw or a router and the lights go out. Mid way through a cut this can be really dangerous. I understand its to save energy, but surely safety would come first.
Can we bipass the PIR and just have the lights on?

I also clear the bench at the end of my day even if I’ve glued up and likely to return the next morning. I wouldn’t want another member to have the responsibility to move my project and find somewhere to safe to place it. Can we adopt a clear bench at the end of the day. If work is glued up it can be rested on its side.
As I say, I love working on my projects here, and very happy to help, share my knowledge and learn from others.
Thank you

3 Likes
#2

@lewisss

#3

this sounds like a serious H&S concern, @directors

#4

I have been trying to help the directors and mark with this lighting system.

I have told the directors and mark that this isn’t how I would do it, but equally this is the system we have.

At work (a large university with hundreds of workshops) we would never put presence detection in a workshop.

There is another presence based technology which we could try using mmWave technology (better known as radar) to detect presence, and another simpler solution which is to use tool control as an interlock to keep the lights on when the tools are signed in.

The problem with all of these is much the same as the PIRs that it’s software control of a safety critical system or that it relies on members to turn it off when they leave (which they currently don’t with tool control).

The actual work to disable the PIRs and just use light switches is quite low but bills will go up.

I feel at this point it would be best to disable motion based power off and accept the higher bills. But I recognise the point that has been made before that no one is reporting these issues when they happen. Only weeks later which makes it hard to really prove the system could work.

EDIT: we could have a single press all off button if we wanted quite easily.

2 Likes
#5

Thanks Tom,

Yea, this is a problem and has been since the lights were first installed. People have had them turn off on them while using dangerous tools, and despite tweaks to PIR locations, timeouts, Wifi and other things apparently it still is not adequate.

We already have very high bills due to the power consumption of these lights. My suggestion is we disable some of the fixtures or replace with less energy intensive units, while still providing enough light? And reconfigure it to be on manual switch(es).

@directors - thoughts?

#6

An electrical setup where if a tool is using electricity then the local lights stay on.

#7

Just wanted to respond to the idea of an electrical set up where the lights stay on if a power tool is in use.
I’m in the workshop right now, no power tools are on and I’m using very sharp chisels!
Just as dangerous.

How about a low tech approach- a sign on each door - “Leaving the workshop empty? Please turn out the lights”

#8

A few things:

  1. Signs don’t work, I’ve worked in many places where they’ve tried to get people to turn off lights, using stickers on the switches, doors etc… it doesn’t work - people are blind to most signs.
  2. The lighting would only plunge someone into complete darkness if there was a power cut, there is a time delay between no movement detected and the emergency fire exit route lighting turning off.
  3. I don’t think less power hungry and thus dimmer lights is a workable solution either.

@joeatkin2 has noted these lights support 0-10V dimming, and we could retrofit them with an additional control circuit and some Shelly 0-10V dimmers to give them dimming functionality.

Using this we could:

  1. Set the light levels to the exact requirement for HSE/Building Regs.
  2. Slowly dim the lights when no movement is detected so that people have a chance to be forewarned.

I still don’t think it’s a good idea to replace the control of these with Home Assistant or another solution right now because it presents another bit which can go wrong, but it would allow us to add mmWave sensors which would be more likely to detect people as they don’t rely on movement at all.

Perhaps we could test this outside of the workshop, maybe on the Arch 1 clean room lighting?

EDIT: @lewisss the delay on the All On off scene is only 10 seconds, shall we extend this to 1 minute?

#9

I have a suggestion borrowed from the hotel industry. if you want presence based lighting that people won’t leave on, you can install something like a contactless card switch. The kind you have to leave your room key in to keep the power on. People are unlikely to leave the lights on when they leave if their fob, and therefor keys, are hanging from a hook in the wall.

You can also buy them commercially and they’re reassuringly simple circuits. They’re usually for cards rather than fobs. But it wouldn’t be hard to make an adaptor cradle for a fob.

The only risk I can think of off the top of my head is people needing to leave urgently and take their keys while someone else is using a powertool, but that can be resolved with a sign (And since no-one reads them, the sign can flash red Tom :joy:).

#10

Interestingly, that is how the old Tool Control was designed; you had to leave your key in. It used RFID to authenticate and a reflectance sensor to ensure the card was still there so you didn’t have it accidentally disconnect.

flash red

I thought we were looking for low tech :rofl:

#11

I believe most commercial and industrial environments today use DALI lighting controls, where each light and sensor is plugged into a central bus using a standardised plug and socket so it’s not so much of a pain to connect things up and move them around. It also supports dimming and ambient light detection to dim accordingly. Weirdly, when I’ve mentioned it to some people, they’ve never heard of it, but I see the hardware used in supermarkets, big stores, office buildings, etc. and are readily available to buy from electrical shops.

#12

I’ve spent more than an hour talking with @joeatkin2 about this, he also agrees that the lights should not be on PIRs and explained this was not the original plan.

He says his original plan was that the PIRs would turn the lights on when you need to walk around the space or use the fire exit route, but that Tool Control would control the lights in area area.

Therefore, he’s going to add the necessary wiring to sense whether each of the 4 tool controlled areas is signed in, and then we’ll reconfigure the Shelly scenes to make it so that when signed in, the given area will be fully illuminated, and when signed out, there will be motion based partial illumination to ensure people are able to clearly tell when the lights are in automatic mode or not.

This will be done using a 24VDC signal from each area back to an additional Shelly Plus i4 which can detect high/low signals.

We’ll also explore using a 0-10V dimmer later, but this will require replacing the lights in metal work which don’t support dimming of any kind.

Joe has asked me to order some cable and the Shelly Plus i4 and a single dimmer for testing.

#13

Given that almost every day several things are left signed into tool control overnight, we might as well just have a switch instead. It is far simpler and at least then whoever closes the shutter can turn off all the lights, vs. tool control keeping them on all night.

#14

I’m just passing on what Joe has said.

I can see the benefit of it being linked. It means there is a visual indicator of the tool control being signed in if the lights are all on too.

#15

I can see in theory, but not sure how practical it will be, especially if motion keeps them on also… but maybe?

#16

It solves the main concern which is that the lights turn off when they shouldn’t and does it without adding extra steps to turn them on/off.

If he can get dimming working the idea would be that when only activated by the PIR, i.e. not signed in the light levels are at (for example) 50% except the fire route and so you can walk through safely but clearly see it’s not fully on and is on PIR mode.

#17

When was this keith? Changes have been made to the system in the last couple of months

We have had issues when the sensors are being removed from their places when they are charged.

Biggest problem is where the scrap wood is kept, if anyone leaves something tall there it blocks the sensor , I would try moving the sensor to a different place first, maybe above the chop saw looking the other way!

This only activates after every other light is off

#18

Yeah, exactly so if we move this to 1 minute, if someone sits still they still have some light.

#19

Yea if the PIR mode is very different from tool control mode that would be good!

#20

We’ll have to see how the investigations and tests go. Adding 0-10V dimming could be relatively easy, depending on what lights we have and whether they’re galvanically isolated from the 230V AC to the 10V DC side.

I think the first version of this should probably just take advantage of the fact that we have a bunch of different circuits in each area and turn some of them off when not signed in.

For example the wood shop has a grid of 2 x 5 banks of lights wired in 6 separately controlled circuits as well as a separate circuit called Always On that runs the length of the Arch.

If we turned off 4 of those 6 circuits, we could still have 4 banks of lights on and the Always On circuit, which is enough to make clear that you need to sign in, but safe enough that you don’t trip over trying to walk through.

We can experiment with it once the Shelly is installed and see what works; if we can’t get a good combination, we can consider dimmers.