GOOEE: THE FUTURE OF SMART BUILDINGS

WHILST FLORIDA IS USUALLY KNOWN BY MANY AS ONE OF THE WORLD’S MOST POPULAR HOLIDAY DESTINATIONS,
IT IS ALSO RAPIDLY BECOMING PLACE OF TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION FOR THE INTERNET OF THINGS.

Gooee is a St. Petersburg based company that designs and engineers a sensing & data analytics platform for the global lighting industry. Founded in March 2014 by Andrew Johnson, Simon Coombes and Neil Salt, Gooee officially launched in 2016, starting the roll out of development kits to its increasing number of lighting manufacturer partners and beginning pilot installations with major global brands.

Simon Coombes, Chief Technology Officer at Gooee, says “Smart Buildings is a really exciting sector to be working in and we see a lot of innovation happening, including technology in complementary fields. Being based in Tampa Bay, we have been excited to find access to resources and expertise required to develop and grow our business, which is essential for us to remain at the forefront of this sector.”

Designed to meet growing business demands and requirements for smart buildings and simplistic, easy-to-use systems, Gooee combines sensing microchips, wireless communication hardware and a cloud-based data platform to capture and display smart lighting installation data, environmental information such as room temperature and ambient light levels, human activity such as motion and motion direction, LED lighting performance, space and energy analytics, and enable human engagement via beacons.

Working alongside lighting manufacturers, and by using the lighting infrastructure as a host, Gooee’s vision is to build a network of sensors that connect the four dimensions of building activity; People, Products, Location and Time. Secure access is then provided to this data for third parties to develop a range of applications, reporting tools and integrations, to compliment the features Gooee offer.

FUTURE-PROOFED IOT PLATFORM
Gooee’s comprises a full stack of technology from sensing, gateway, data engine, service layer, analytics, machine learning and eventually AI. These components integrate with an enterprise-scale cloud platform, providing a service-driven, scalable framework for commercial, retail, hospitality and industrial applications.

To control Lighting Products, Gooee has developed their Gooee Core – a module designed to handle communication and sensing data, that integrates into Lighting Fixtures or LED Drivers. This manages device activity, power monitoring along with other sensing data and communicates this back tot he cloud via a gateway. The Core also provides Beacon functionality for human engagement enabling indoor navigation and physical product tracking.

Connection across a multitude of different environments requires a network that is cost-effective to deploy, easy to install and secure. Using interfaces such as Bluetooth Mesh, Zigbee, Thread and TCP/IP, Gooee’s technology is interoperable thanks to its IoT gateway, and can cater for large amounts of data exchanged between the building and the cloud.

Using its primary communication stack; Bluetooth Mesh, vast amounts of data can subsequently be transmitted to improve efficiencies or highlight areas that could enhance revenue. It also provides the stability required to ‘manage’ thousands of lights, and in an inter-operable way that future-proofs new configurations.

A NEW IOT TEST LAB & GLOBAL EXPANSION
Gooee has a rapidly growing team of more than 50, most of whom are part of the software engineering team based at the modern St. Petersburg Headquarters. The executive team consists of technology, LED and semiconductor veterans with decades of lighting industry experience. Through a growing number of global partnerships, expansion has led to the establishment of additional offices and facilities in London (UK) and Hsinchu (Taiwan).

One of Gooee’s most recent and largest ventures is the establishment of its new state-of-the-art 14,000 sq. ft. IoT testing lab – equivalent in floor area to seven tennis courts – based in St Petersburg. The company began fabricating the Test Lab in November 2016 before commencing full automation testing in February 2017.

Coombes says “Establishing our IoT Lab in Florida has allowed us to focus on continuing to test existing and new products. We have developed a suite of robots to simulate motion and activity, allowing fully automated testing over prolonged periods, giving us a rich set of data to analyze. Data is also stored in the Cloud for analysis between product releases and various scenarios we design.”
Where lighting brand owners and end-users might traditionally have trialled their products on a small scale in an engineering office, the large-scale IoT Lab now gives customers adopting Gooee’s platform the opportunity to comprehensively test commercial lighting implementations at scale in real-world scenarios, before committing time and money to further development and deployment.

UNPARALLELED FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES
The lighting sector has an almost unparalleled opportunity for development, improvement, and innovation.

“The fundamental technology is over 100 years old, which means for new buildings and lighting installations there is an opportunity for enormous installation, energy and maintenance cost savings,” said Coombes. “We are focused on the challenges that the future brings, and with our base in St Petersburg we can easily expand and develop our expertise and give back as much to this community as we receive.”

LOCATIONS
St. Petersburg, USA, London, UK, Hsinchu, Taiwan

Simon Coombes, CTO
Email: [email protected]
YouTube: youtube.com/gooee
Facebook: facebook.com/gooee
Twitter: twitter.com/gooee
Website: gooee.com