Members in Focus: Luminext

Luminext was founded in 2007 and is based in the Netherlands. With 21 employees it's a very flexible and independent player in the field of smart lighting. As market leader in the Netherlands Luminext adheres to high quality standards and is ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certified.

We had a chat with Robert Tissing, General Manager of Luminext, about future trends for Smart Cities and Smart Outdoor Lighting.

Robert, what is your role in Luminext?

Robert Tissing, General Manager Luminext

As General Manager I have the privilege to mingle in all company activities, ranging from sales and marketing to product development and human resources. My role of course is to make sure that all activities are tuned to one another and that they all contribute to providing the best possible products and services to our clients.

What is the service offer of Luminext?

Luminext is a technology provider focused on public lighting. Our core product is our software platform Luminizer that provides an integrated cockpit view on the functioning of the public lighting infrastructure of a city. The platform optimizes the operational processes such as asset management, maintenance and project management and also provides uniform controlling capabilities of the various smart lighting systems in a city.

Additionally we provide a full range of smart lighting systems ranging from including PLC, RF Mesh and NBIoT technologies.
Our vision is that a city should be in a position to simply combine various technologies of different suppliers to apply the optimal technology to obtain the specific lighting requirements in each part of the city.

Why did your organization joined the TALQ Consortium?

To provide cities with a single view of their various installed systems we have been building a large number of vendor specific interfaces. The TALQ protocol helps our clients build a flexible infrastructure where they have a wider choice of technologies and suppliers.

Additionally, being part of TALQ we can contribute to further developing the TALQ protocol.

What are the biggest challenges for smart cities in the next 5 years?

We think the biggest challenge for cities will be making optimal use of the possibilities that new technology offers to them. As in any organization, the challenge is to adapt the organization and stimulate people to embrace the new features on offer.

For this purpose Luminext places a lot of effort in providing consultancy services to make sure the systems work for the people and not the other way around.

What do you personally like within TALQ?

I personally like the joint attendance on events, where the TALQ members jointly present themselves as a true consortium to promote the message of interoperability and its advantages for cities.

This way supports the adoption of smart technologies in general without distracting the market by focusing on individual systems.

Your favourite TALQ function?

I like the handshake mechanism that is used in the protocol whereby different systems set up communication by introducing themselves to the other system.

I like to imagine this procedure as a little roleplay of a polite mutual introduction whereby each system mentions its background and finishes with ‘How do you do?’.

And your favorite TALQ moment?

Best in terms both having fun and of spreading the message for me are the moments that the beers are opened in the TALQ booth at events!