Smart lighting project grabs first prize in Coimbra challenge

Municipal technicians will get reliable warnings from the IoT-connected application

Luxifer, a solution that controls LED public lighting, was the winner of the first edition of Coimbra's “Future City Challenge” competition, which challenged participants to create innovative solutions that can have an impact on the community. The application can adapt the urban illumination to create comfort and safety, as well as send reports on issues related to its maintenance, thus increasing the public service efficiency.

The Municipality of Coimbra is an official partner to the competition, which was organized by Critical Software, a local information systems company with a global outreach.

Coimbra reinvents itself as a city of the future

Nine teams were in the competition for the final prize. All of them developed their prototypes, taking advantage of The Things Network, a long-range wireless network, or LoRaWAN, which has a significantly wide area coverage in Coimbra and is suitable for IoT (Internet of Things) projects. The network is an open-source initiative present in 151 countries, with the aim of helping start-ups and developers working on IoT apps reduce their costs.

The winner was announced at the ceremony that took place on 23 July, at the Convento de São Francisco, in Coimbra, with the winning team set to receive a prize of five thousand euros offered by Critical Software, in addition to three-month access to the Nest Collective incubator, including mentoring and use of its spaces and services.

Two of the elements of the winning project were presented at the ceremony and it was explained that the developers had identified that “there was a problem with the lighting infrastructure in Coimbra, since whenever there was a malfunction, the situation had to be reported by a citizen, which made no sense”.

“Luxifer will have the ability to control illuminating bodies and communicate their current status and any malfunctions automatically to the technicians in charge. We are very happy to receive this distinction in an area with which we identify a lot - the Internet of Things - the objective is to continue to learn and evolve,” stated João Cardoso and João Ferreira, members of the winning team.