smart-lighting
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Derek Richardson Spent Six Weekends Rewiring His House. Then He Rewired the Business of Light
A fiddly home project gave an electrical engineer a useful obsession: make the light switch easier to install, easier to upgrade and almost boring to use. Eleven years later, Derek Richardson is still chasing the same elegant click.
Sunny Han Has Spent 13 Years Making Strange New Light Feel Familiar
Before Nanoleaf’s panels became a familiar backdrop for gaming rooms and smart homes, Sunny Han had to explain a light bulb that looked like folded paper. Her career is a lesson in translating unfamiliar hardware into something people can picture in their own lives.
Nanoleaf's Solar Idea Had Nowhere to Sell - Then It Turned Light Into Lego
Three engineers began with a solar product nobody knew how to buy. Their escape route - a homemade Kickstarter video, a $35 origami-like bulb and, eventually, modular panels - offers a practical lesson in turning efficient hardware into something people can see, share and want.
Deako Put a $12 Backplate in the Wall - and Built a Smart-Home Beachhead in 350,000 Houses
Most smart-home companies sell gadgets one homeowner at a time. Deako persuaded builders to hide its upgrade path inside the wall - then made the humble light switch the front door to a much larger platform.
The Bernardsville Shop That Makes Your Smart Home Actually Work
A musician started a mobile recording business in 2005. Twenty years later, Tim Manning runs one of North Jersey's go-to smart-home shops - and the pitch is still 'it's not about us, it's about you.'
Signify Turned the Light Bulb Into a Data Business
The company that used to be Philips Lighting bet that a light bulb is really a data point. Here is how a 130-year-old lamp business turned itself into smart homes, connected cities and carbon-neutral factories - and where that bet gets shaky.
Quantela Inc.
Quantela is a smart-city technology company that helps cities and communities digitize urban infrastructure through an AI- and IoT-powered data platform. Founded in 2015, it evolved from a dashboard tool into a full urban infrastructure platform spanning smart lighting, traffic, public safety, digital advertising and citizen services. Quantela is known for pioneering an 'outcomes-based' business model, funding projects up front in exchange for a share of the resulting revenue or savings, and operates across the Americas, EMEA, India and Asia-Pacific.
Brilliant Smart Home
Brilliant Smart Home (Brilliant NextGen, Inc.) makes smart home control simple by replacing a wall of light switches with an in-wall touchscreen that runs lighting, climate, music, intercom, cameras, and smart devices from one panel and one app. Founded in 2015 in San Mateo, California, the company sells control panels, smart dimmer switches, and smart plugs to homeowners, home builders, and multifamily property managers. After a 2024 bankruptcy and acquisition by Almeida Strategic Investments, it relaunched as Brilliant NextGen with a builder-and-integrator focus and a second-generation Power over Ethernet platform.