Philips Smart LED Lights Beam Promos To Your Phone!

France is known for the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, its wines and cafes and it’s chic boutiques. Now a Carrefour supermarket in Lille has got cool new LED lights, that have been designed by Philips. These lights transmit codes via light waves, which are undetectable to the eye but can be picked up by a phone camera, and which doesn’t need any additional accessories.

In a  Philips release, Director of Commercial Models and Innovation for Carrefour hypermarkets in France, Celine Martin said, “We are always on the lookout for innovations to facilitate customers’ navigation. Thanks to this new application, which uses Philips technology, we are now able to provide our customers at the EuraLille Carrefour with a new service, enabling them to quickly search and locate their preferred promotions or detect all the promotions around them.”

 According to BBC News, the Philips system requires 50% less electricity than the old lights it had replaced, with 2.5 kms of these new LED ones. These lights work by making each of the LEDs transmit a distinct location code. So, if users have a compatible app and let their smartphone camera look upwards, it helps determine their location, (which is accurate up to 1 metre) and the direction they are facing.

Gerben van der Lugt, Head of LED-based indoor positioning at Philips Lighting commented, “We are leading the way with connected lighting for retail with Carrefour,” commented Gerben van der Lugt, Head of LED-based indoor positioning at Philips Lighting. “Our connected lighting system has the potential to transform shopping into a more interactive and personalized experience. At the same time it will enable retailers to differentiate themselves, enhance customer loyalty and provide new services to shoppers.”

Carrefour’s mobile app ‘Promo C’ou’ has the Philips software and cloud-based location database integrated into it. The app was created by Think&Go and can be downloaded from Apple’s App Store in France. This is an opt-in app and Philips reassured users that the “patented indoor positioning system does not read information on a shopper’s smartphone.”

Written for Ericsson's blog Networked India and you can watch a video of how the lights work here.