Since our phones don’t support Zigbee, we can’t send Zigbee messages directly to devices. That would be too easy. We’ve found a workaround by creating a Zigbee message on the app side that tells the device which group it will be a part of, and then send that message to the device over BLE. After receiving the message, the device firmware processes it and executes the appropriate actions.

After that, configuring devices is rather straightforward. First, the installer uses the intuitive app UI to configure how the devices should behave in the desired setup. The array of options is quite extensive here – from changing the brightness and color temperature to configuring occupancy sensing and matching the lighting with the human circadian rhythm. All the various properties are then converted into appropriate Zigbee messages that we send to a device using BLE. 

Once a device receives those messages, it configures itself and relays the messages throughout the device network using Zigbee. This eliminates the need to be close to all the devices and provides significant time savings in large-scale setups.

Once a system is configured, installers can back up all the necessary project data in the cloud, making it easy to share access between multiple installers. System maintenance can then also be transferred to the building manager or a person in a similar role, thus removing the need to hire installers for small maintenance work or system monitoring, e.g., reading the energy consumption report. 

An additional benefit of backing up data in the cloud is that it can always serve as a safety net. In case something happens to the phone that configured the system, or there’s a need to revert to earlier settings, it’s easy to restore the original configuration.

Philips MasterConnect systems are installed in public buildings, which means that security was a top priority for us. 

Whenever two devices communicate over BLE, they usually exchange bytes of data that both of them know how to process. Let’s use a simple example of turning a light on. 

To achieve this, the app needs to:

The light needs to:

If you look at the list of steps, you might see a potential problem here that applies to any kind of unsecured traffic – it can be sniffed and captured by various third-party tools like Wireshark and used maliciously. We needed to find a way to shield the data we were sending between devices. 

We came up with something similar to how Transport Layer Security (TLS) works with HTTPS traffic but applied to BLE – TLS over the BLE layer, one might call it. 

To increase security, we added an additional part to the process of establishing connections between the app and the lights – Authenticated Key Exchange (AKE). It is a method used to establish secure communication between two parties that ensures only authorized parties can exchange keys and share messages.

AKE typically involves the use of a “shared secret” that is known only to the two parties involved in the communication. This shared secret is used to create a unique key that is then used to encrypt all following communication. The key is exchanged between the parties securely, ensuring that it is not intercepted or tampered with during the exchange.

After this authentication is done, the messages between the app and the devices are encrypted and, if needed, fragmented as well, to ensure they can be properly exchanged.

Doing this was no small feat, but making sure our systems can’t be tampered with makes it all worth it.

Having covered the technical know-how, let’s move on to some elegant features. The system consists of more than just luminaires; we also have sensors and switches that integrate seamlessly. In case someone wants to push their setup to a higher level, there is also an option to add gateway support.

I’d like to highlight two of those features: daylight-utilizing and human-centric lighting. They work hand-in-hand to increase the occupants’ well-being.

Daylight-utilizing works in combination with sensors that detect the level of daylight in the room and adjust the lighting accordingly, reducing unnecessary costs. Growing up, we all probably had our parents telling us to turn off the lights because nobody needs them and we are just wasting electricity (and we probably stubbornly argued otherwise). Having LED luminaires that can be configured to emit less light, saving power and creating a pleasant mood using natural light, would have helped in such situations.

Human-centric lighting directly correlates with our human circadian rhythm. Think of it as an internal biological clock that regulates our sleep-wake cycle and other physiological processes to match the external environment, ensuring that we are alert during the day and sleepy at night. You might have guessed it, light is a key factor in regulating that behavior. 

To help improve occupants’ well-being, tunable white luminaires from the Philips MasterConnect line can be configured to match the human circadian rhythm – they will emit blue light during the morning and change to warmer, less intense colors as the day passes.

Pretty cool, right?

If you thought that we would do a blog post on lighting systems without a single pun about light, you probably didn’t read that many of our blog posts.  

We’ve shed some light on the inner workings of the Philips MasterConnect system – from the protocols used, hardware-software interaction, and security, all the way to benefits for people occupying the buildings and using the lights. 

Philips MasterConnect is not a standard IoT system. It is the result of years of innovation on all sides – hardware, firmware, cloud, and mobile. And we’re just getting started. The future is looking bright.

To find out what else we can do in the Internet of Things realm, check out our IoT solutions page.