TALQ Protocol Goes Public

Published on 2021-07-12

The Consortium decided to share the TALQ Specification to enable interoperability for smart cities worldwide

The TALQ Consortium, which developed the Smart City Protocol, a global interface standard for smart city device networks, is today making available the detailed TALQ protocol on GitHub. This allows software developers as well as project planners, consultants and city representatives around the world to use and benefit from the TALQ knowhow developed over the past nine years. The main drivers for this are to help cities understand better why they should include the TALQ standard as a request in public tenders across a range of smart city applications and to underwrite investments in interoperable and future-proof systems.

The key to a successful international standard is certainly that it should be technically sound with market-leading functionality. But another, maybe even more important, factor is to share the solution with many users and let them understand and experience for themselves the advantages of the approach. This is exactly the way the TALQ Consortium has decided to go in July 2021. After nine years developing a modern, functional and flexible software protocol to enable interoperability of smart street lighting systems and other smart city applications from multiple vendors, the consortium is pleased to share with the smart city community the detail of the TALQ OpenAPI Specification in the public domain.

From today, the TALQ protocol (both the data model and API definitions) can be found openly and free-of-charge on GitHub. This provides cities and other municipal authorities, commentators, consultants and potential members with the opportunity to view the details of the specification and to understand the advantages it brings.

“Personally, I believe that this is a very exciting time for the consortium as membership continues to grow, new TALQ certifications are confirmed nearly every month and TALQ branches further out into smart cities. We are confident that greater exposure of the standard will drive yet more progress in the industry.” reports Rui Peixe, Chairman TALQ Technical Workgroup.

The benefits of OpenAPI
Making the specification public allows manufacturers of Central Management Software (CMS) and Outdoor Device Networks (ODN, so called ‘Gateways’) to consider integrating the protocol into their own systems and to become interoperable with the solutions of other vendors.
The benefit to the smart city community is that there will be even more awareness of the specification – both vendors and cities – allowing them to profit from decades of Smart Outdoor Lighting and Smart City experience and prepare future-proof solutions, whilst at the same time opening the specification up to public scrutiny.

The TALQ OpenAPI definition provides developers with access to an extensive set of tools. Widely available documentation generation tools can be used to display the API, and code generation tools can create servers and clients in various programming languages. A wide range of testing and other tools is also available, all of which dramatically reduces the development effort for system manufacturers.

How to become TALQ-compliant
Compliance with the specification will remain restricted to member companies, who will retain access to the carefully designed Test Suite with which they can test their systems internally until they are ready for official TALQ certification. These test tools provide valuable diagnostic information to accelerate the integration of the TALQ OpenAPI Specification.
The consortium provides other valuable resources to members, including technical videos, an exclusive member communication platform, a clear and updated view of the specification roadmap through a web application, technical support for individual members as well as regular virtual and live plug fests to test systems for interoperability against systems from other member companies.

Furthermore, certification of TALQ-compliant systems and the inclusion of a product in the official list of certified products is reserved for TALQ members only. Regular Members can certify as many products as often as they wish without additional charge; Associate Members pay a small fee per certification of each product. Members can request certification by passing a complete set of test cases with the Test Tool and sending the results to the TALQ Certification Work Group. This makes the certification process agile and quick.

Entire press release (English) as pdf

NOTA DE PRENSA (Español)

El protocolo TALQ se hace público

El Consorcio ha decidido compartir la especificación TALQ para mejorar la interoperabilidad para ciudades inteligentes en todo el mundo

El Consorcio TALQ, que desarrolló el Protocolo para Ciudades Inteligentes (Smart City Protocol), una interfaz estándar global para redes de dispositivos de ciudades inteligentes, hace público hoy el protocolo TALQ en GitHub. Esto permite tanto a desarrolladores de software como a directores de proyectos, consultores y representantes municipales de todo el mundo aprender y beneficiarse de los conocimientos desarrollados por TALQ a lo largo de los últimos nueve años. Los principales motivos para ello son, ayudar a las ciudades a comprender mejor por qué incluir el estándar TALQ como un requisito en las licitaciones públicas en una serie de aplicaciones para ciudades inteligentes, así como asegurar las inversiones en sistemas interoperables y preparados para el futuro.

Nota de prensa Español (pdf)

COMMUNIQUÉ DE PRESSE (Français)

Le protocole TALQ devient public

Le Consortium TALQ met les spécifications de son protocole dans le domaine public, en vue de permettre l'interopérabilité des systèmes intelligents pour les villes du monde entier.

Le Consortium TALQ, qui a développé un protocole pour piloter et contrôler les systèmes Smart City de façon standardisée, publie aujourd'hui le protocole TALQ sur le service GitHub. Les développeurs de logiciels, les intégrateurs de projets Smart City, les consultants et les responsables des villes vont ainsi pouvoir profiter du protocole développé par TALQ au cours de ces neuf dernières années. La décision du Consortium TALQ de publier son protocole repose avant tout sur sa volonté d'aider les villes à disposer de systèmes interopérables et durables, en exigeant de ses fournisseurs le standard TALQ dans ses appels d'offres d'applications Smart City.

Communiquè de presse française (pdf)

PRESSEMELDUNG (Deutsch)

Das TALQ-Protokoll wird veröffentlicht

Das Konsortium macht die TALQ Spezifikation öffentlich, um die Interoperabilität in Smart Cities weltweit zu erhöhen

Das TALQ Konsortium, Entwickler des Smart City Protocol (globaler Schnittstellenstandard für Smart-City-Gerätenetzwerke), stellt ab heute das detaillierte TALQ-Protokoll der Öffentlichkeit auf GitHub zur Verfügung. So können Softwareentwickler, Projektplaner, Berater sowie Verantwortliche von Städten und Kommunen auf der ganzen Welt das in den letzten neun Jahren aufgebaute Wissen nutzen und davon profitieren. Die Veröffentlichung soll vor allem dazu beitragen, dass Kommunen besser verstehen, warum es sinnvoll ist, den TALQ-Standard als Anforderung in öffentliche Ausschreibungen für verschiedene Smart-City-Anwendungen aufzunehmen, um Investitionen abzusichern und zukunftssichere, interoperable Systeme zu gewährleisten.

Vollständige Pressemeldung auf Deutsch (pdf)