Aesthetics and integration

Recently, a well-known Italian company leader in mobile phones accessories inaugurated its first flagship store.

The store, located in Novara historic center, is very well positioned and its visibility, besides its location, takes advantage of its architectural and lighting features, which make both the products and the brand stand out. Ekinex was chosen both by the customer and by the designer for the aesthetic value of its pushbutton devices and socket finishes, which perfectly fit the surrounding environment, and for its strong integration capability among all installed devices.

In this specific application, the functions to control are:

• Lighting, along with scene configuration in order to make the exposed products stand out;
• Temperature control and integration, acting both in heating (heat pump) and cooling mode;
• The possibility to remote control the system, changing a scene (when needed) or checking out potential anomalies and alarms.

The lighting system is built using LED technology and included both On/Off and dimmering commands. The selected Ekinex products for this application are the EK-FF1-TP actuator, for On/Off command of light bulbs and some remote-controlled sockets, and dimming actuator EK-GF1-TP, to regulate some light bulbs especially during scene activation.

Lights are locally controlled by a number of Series 71 wall mounted products, a simple and essential line which stands out mostly for its compactness. An ice white with red and white LEDs ‘NF (No Frame) version was chosen for its simplicity and aesthetic elegance. Temperature control is then carried out by thermostat EK-E72-TP, from the same product line, which is fitted with a backlighted LCD and four capacitive rockers.

The store covers an area of approximately 50 square meters, hence for its heating and cooling demands a ceiling air conditioning machine has been installed, properly interfaced with the E72 thermostat in order to allow the change of set-points and operating modes, both manually and through the “opening” and “closing” scenes.

The main programmed scenes, among others, are:

• Closing: all internal lights off, shop window and sign lights on, counter-ceiling LED strip dimmering at 40%, temperature control in anti-freeze mode.
• Night: at a time defined by an astronomic switch, all lights off, dimmering at 0%, sign light on.
• Opening: all lights on, dimmering at 100%, temperature control in comfort mode.

All scenes can be triggered by the proper pushbuttons inside the store. Obviously, all light bulbs can be individually triggered when needed. The system is suitable for a future integration with an upcoming supervision software. Thanks to a properly programmed EK-BB1-TP KNX-IP device, though, it is already possible to remote control and program the KNX system.

Thanks to this application, all subjects involved (customer, designer and integrator) had the chance to fully appreciate both the Ekinex products and the potential and benefits of adding the KNX protocol to their system.