Infra-Red System
Most of the lighting controls are situated out of reach of the customer and so, if changes are required, these would normally be difficult to achieve. To enable precise customer control of the units without reference to electricians or maintenance personnel an infra-red setup and configuration system was devised. The I.R system allows customers to force the lighting off or on, and also to set parameters like time delays and light level settings without recourse to ladders and screwdrivers.

Infra-Red Units
Two sizes of I.R. controller are used, the miniature key fob type and the hand held maintenance type. The miniature unit has a life of 6 hours continuous use which equates to six months or more of normal use. The hand held unit is continuously rated at 100 hours equating to over a year of normal use. The miniature units are normally supplied F.O.C. with the controllers and are designed to be disposed of once the controller is correctly setup and configured.
The hand held units have a PP3 battery fitted which is easily replaced and are used where repeated overriding is required for maintenance or slide show type use.


How the Infra-Red System Works
In order to prevent spurious operation, especially in open plan areas where one sensor per luminaire might be the norm, several safeguards have been made. To avoid the complexities of coding individual transmitters and receivers, the transmitters range is only 2-3 metres. Also the control being addressed must actually be ‘seeing’ someone at the time the button on the transmitter is pressed. Finally only one code word is transmitted no matter how long a button is pressed. This means that occasionally a button may need to be pressed twice for the control to respond but this is preferable to controls responding when they should not or the added costs and complexities of coded systems. The exceptions to this are: The I.R. controls for the H.F. dimmable ballasts the ITX3, ITX4 and ITX6. For fading the lights up and down, the codes are sent repeatedly as long as the button is pressed and the detection of movement is not required. The high power I.R. controls ITXnP and ITXnXP are for long distance use, i.e. for ELC1, and where n is the number of the standard control. Thus ITX1 is for 2-3 metres, ITX1P is for 2-8 metres and ITX1XP is for 2-12 metres.