Why Did We Spend a Whole Year, Facing Six Failures, to Achieve This "Simple" Remote Control Technology Breakthrough?
For many people, the functionality of a remote-controlled light seems simple, but we spent an entire year, going through six failures, to achieve a seemingly simple yet highly challenging remote control breakthrough—one remote controlling 50 lights. If you ask, “Why did we spend a year on this seemingly simple function?”
In reality, the challenge behind this breakthrough wasn’t just implementing the control, but understanding that we needed to provide customers with a better user experience. Especially in commercial spaces like restaurants, we not only had to deal with operational convenience, but also with concerns like energy consumption, signal stability, and security.
The Market Today: The Limitations of Regular Remote-Controlled Lights
On the market, most remote-controlled lights typically only support RGB lighting and brightness adjustment, and the control is usually one-to-one, meaning each light can only be controlled by a single remote. Moreover, these products lack timing functions and touch-lock features. This means restaurant staff need to operate each light one by one, which is neither convenient nor reliable. What’s worse, many lights with touch controls are easily triggered accidentally, interfering with the dining experience of customers.
Customer Requirement: One Remote to Control 50 Lights, Precise and Smart
Our client’s request seemed simple, but the challenge behind it was much greater. They wanted us to create one remote to control 50 charging table lamps in an 80-square-meter restaurant, with the additional requirement that the lights be touch-locked to prevent diners from accidentally changing the settings. They also wanted the lights to have timing functions to reduce waste and extend the lamps’ lifespan. What seemed like a simple request involved several technical difficulties, and it took multiple attempts and failures to fully understand and solve the problem.
The Technical Challenges We Faced
Signal Conflict: Since multiple lights used the same frequency band, we initially faced signal interference. We found that when multiple lights responded at once, the response delay was as high as 3 seconds, which severely impacted the user experience and did not meet our client’s needs for quick responsiveness.
Distance Attenuation: In the large 80㎡ space, especially in the corner areas, some lights were often disconnected from the remote control due to distance limitations, making the overall control ineffective.
Excessive Power Consumption: What we hadn’t anticipated was that the standby power consumption was far higher than expected. The standby power usage exceeded industry standards by 200%, leading to both energy waste and shortened battery life, which would increase maintenance and replacement costs.
Our Solution: A Fundamental Breakthrough
In the face of these challenges, we decided to restructure the entire system and tackle the problems at their core, using the following technological innovations:
Rebuilding the Communication Protocol: We discarded the traditional universal solution and developed a custom time-division frequency hopping algorithm with three leading chip suppliers, similar to Bluetooth 5.0, but with much lower power consumption and better signal stability. This technology not only solved the signal interference problem but also significantly reduced power consumption.
Hardware-Level Optimization: We customized the firmware in the chips of each lamp, reducing the response time to just 0.2 seconds, drastically improving the speed and stability of the lights’ response. This hardware-level optimization made a huge difference in improving the performance of the entire system.
Stress Testing: To ensure the stability of the system, we conducted a 72-hour continuous testing in an electromagnetic shielding room to simulate extreme environments. This ensured that the system could remain stable even under high interference, temperature, and humidity conditions.
The Final Result: A Perfect Match Between Technological Breakthroughs and Customer Needs
After extensive technical improvements, we successfully met the customer’s requirements, achieving the following results:
The synchronization error of 50 lights in an 80㎡ area was reduced to less than 0.3 seconds, significantly improving the control accuracy and ensuring that the lighting experience was not disturbed during the dining process.
The standby power consumption was reduced to one-fifth of the industry standard, greatly improving battery life and reducing maintenance and replacement costs.
Core Features Realized:
Remote Control Disable Switch: To prevent diners from accidentally changing the lighting settings, we added a remote control disable feature, allowing restaurant staff to lock the lighting settings and ensure that customers wouldn’t tamper with them.
Timed Auto-Off Function: The lights can be set to automatically turn off after a certain period, such as 15, 60, or 120 minutes, reducing energy waste.
Remote Control Function: The system can control up to 50 lights simultaneously, covering an area of 70-80㎡, fully meeting the needs of large restaurants.
Auto Shutdown Protection: The chip in each light has a built-in 8-hour auto-shutdown function, preventing lights from being left on by mistake and helping to extend battery life.
Stable Signal Control: The optimized communication protocol completely solved the signal interference problem, ensuring that the synchronization error between lights is less than 0.3 seconds, achieving perfect light management.
Conclusion: The True Value Behind the Technological Breakthrough
Through this year of technological challenges, we not only solved the client’s most urgent lighting management problems but also pushed forward the innovation of remote control technology for lights. We know that customers don’t just want a “remote control,” they want an invisible, reliable control system that allows them to manage multiple lights in large spaces efficiently and seamlessly, improving the user experience and reducing unnecessary operational interference.
This year of persistence, despite the challenges and failures, brought us a more efficient, smarter, and energy-saving remote control technology. Now, this technology not only meets the needs of restaurants and large spaces but also provides a solid foundation for future innovations in smart home and commercial lighting products.
Was the year worth it? We believe the answer is yes.
