Lighting Controls Podcast #80: Smart Cities Can’t Operate Without AI

Webster Marsh of the Lighting Controls Podcast speaks with Marissa Wright, Chief Revenue Officer for Tondo Smart USA about Tondo, roadway lighting controls, and the implications of AI on managing complex lighting and smart city connected infrastructure.

Transcription

Disclaimer:

The opinions expressed are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the sponsors, advertisers, or presenters. Advertising does not imply endorsement by the sponsors and presenters.

Webster Marsh:

Welcome back, everyone, to the Lighting Controls Podcast! We’ve got a great conversation for you coming up. But first, before we do, just want to let you know that this episode is presented by the Lighting Controls Association, as well as LightFair. Hopefully, we’ll see you guys there; it’s going to be a really great show. It’s going to be in Vegas this time, so hopefully, you got your tickets booked and you’re looking at going down there.

But at any rate, also it is financially supported by the National Association of Innovative Lighting Distributors or NAILD. Check out our website lightingcontrolspodcast.com, where we’ve got all of our episodes, a newsfeed, a merch store, training opportunities, as well as our Council on Lighting Control Startup and Integration.

And additionally, huge shoutout to our sponsor for this episode. We could not do this without your support. Tondo is supporting this. You’re going to learn a lot about them in just a moment because they are also our guest on this episode. But check them out: tondo-iot.com. That’s their website. They are a great Smart City lighting solution. They really have some excellent products really worth your time to check them out.

Again, hopefully, you’re going to learn a lot about them in this episode because they really have a lot to talk about. So, let’s get into the conversation here with Marissa. Marissa, do you mind just giving us a quick breakdown on who you are and what you do?

Marissa:

Thanks, Webster, and thanks for having me here today. Who am I? I’m the Chief Revenue Officer for Tondo Smart. My background comes primarily from the IT world. This is year number 42 for me in the industry—started when I was 17 years old, so that tells you how old I am. But yeah, and this has by far been the most interesting and enjoyable experience of my career, and that’s saying a lot. I think I’ve had some pretty diverse experiences, but Tondo has been the most.

Webster Marsh:

Well, thank you so much for joining us. Joining me—unfortunately, Ron’s sick today, so he won’t be a voice on this podcast, but, you know, thanks—thanks for joining us and sponsoring this episode.

And so, you know, with Tondo—I mean, I fortunately got a chance to talk with you about this company before this podcast recording—but just for people who are unfamiliar with Tondo, do you mind just telling us the quick elevator pitch of what it is that you do?

Marissa Wright:

Yes. Well, essentially, we make smart lighting controls for roadway and outdoor area lighting. And we have a cloud-based platform for managing that. But in addition to that, we’ve built a controller that allows the connection of a variety of sensors and other connected devices. So we’re really not just lighting but more of a Smart City platform.

Webster Marsh:

Yeah. So basically Smart Cities. So, for—for people who are listening who may have heard that buzz term before, do you mind just explaining that a little bit more?

Marissa Wright:

Yes. Specifically, what I mean is we’re talking about connected infrastructure. And so wherever a sensor has to monitor infrastructure health, the environment—it could be anything from a flood area, which is something that we’ve done in a project, to obviously lighting. But, uh, it could be controlling gates; it could be, you know, checking for groundwater pollution. Obviously air quality—we’ve seen some of that. Anything that can be switched on, off, or anywhere in between, we can control.

Webster Marsh:

Yes, and I think, you know, a lot of the focus when it comes to lighting, especially because of the fact that you have power running to the light fixture anyways, and lighting needs to kind of be pretty much ubiquitous in a lot of cases with urban environments, it just makes sense to kind of attach to that resource for these kinds of applications.

Marissa Wright:

It does, although, you know, we don’t want to take power to the pole for granted. In many cities, that’s not a 24/7 connection; that’s a dusk-to-dawn connection. And so where you’ve got cabinet-controlled lighting, of course—and I’m preaching to the knowledgeable here—we, we have to take that from a dusk-to-dawn to a 24/7 situation. And that’s one of the things our controls enable.

Webster Marsh:

And so how does that exactly work if you have a dusk-to-dawn system that you’re trying to upgrade and enable to this 24-hour system?

Marissa Wright:

Well, good question. You know, with the advent of LED retrofits and the movement from analog to digital—nothing new to the audience here—that gave us the ability to do digital control as opposed to analog control. Back in Europe, DALI-2 emerged as an open and now global standard that was initially dominated by the Philips SR system. Then DALI D4i came along soon afterward and gave us sensor standard control.

We saw that opportunity to build a controller where you plug into that empty socket that’s on top of most LEDs—not all of them. I have run into situations where customers have purposely ordered fixtures without sockets, which is an interesting decision. But that empty socket—I tell people—is the most valuable real estate in your city on a square footage basis. What you can do with that socket is not just lighting control; it opens the world to connected infrastructure. It’s simple: plug, twist-lock, and with all the technology we have now, we can automatically activate and provision that securely. There’s nothing for anybody at the top of the pole to do other than look at their smartphone and say, “Oh, there’s a green light. Okay, I’m down the pole again.”

Webster Marsh:

So, part of this infrastructure does require some level of connectivity. What about cases where you don’t have those sockets on the fixtures?

Marissa Wright:

Interestingly enough, we’ve done an on-pole version of our controller. For example, in the city of Jerusalem—Tondo is originally a Tel Aviv-based company, and I’m leading their market entry here in the US and Canada—all of our controllers were internal to the pole. In Jerusalem, they had decorative fixtures in the old city, and you don’t want to disrupt the aesthetic.

We’ve recently received a US patent on that control that flush-mounts to the fixture itself. Instead of having a socket, you have our controller sitting flush-mounted to the top, and you still get that capability. The challenge with doing that is connectivity. When you mount it, you have signal issues. But in Jerusalem, we were able to get signals not only out of the pole but also, with our new patented controller, we can get GPS, Bluetooth, and cellular signals out of the controller itself at the top.

Webster Marsh:

So, really, you’re leveraging a lot of different data points, not just for the communication bus line between the fixtures, but also to leverage additional IoT-type data and metrics that you monitor. You also have a software platform that collects all this data. What do you do with that?

Marissa Wright:

Can I tell you a little bit of a story behind that? It’s one of my favorite things to talk about. Originally, the Tondo platform wasn’t made for lighting—it was made for industrial IoT. Our CTO, Eliav, had customers like PepsiCo and Varta Batteries and others in agriculture, medical, and other industries.

Tondo was actually a customer. Tondo subcontracted a lot of the early design work to Eliav and his company. That platform was device-agnostic, in the sense that we didn’t care what we were controlling; we just wanted to control everything. Eventually, Tondo ended up acquiring Eliav’s company to bring that talent and technology in-house.

Webster Marsh:

That’s fascinating—how you’re adapting something so robust into lighting. How do you address concerns about quick response times, safety, or secure communication in this new lighting application?

Marissa Wright:

That’s a great question. First of all, the platform was originally built with redundancy and scalability in mind. It was never intended to be a one-off solution. We built in features like baked-in artificial intelligence and automation, so we could adapt to various use cases, even ones we didn’t anticipate.

For example, our controllers combine cellular data with Bluetooth mesh, so if one fails, the other can take over. We’ve seen situations where new buildings go up in cities, and suddenly a cellular signal is blocked. But with our redundancy, the system automatically adapts.

And as for security, we manage everything on our end. Cities don’t need to worry about provisioning devices, managing IP addresses, or maintaining security certificates. We handle all that complexity. It’s seamless for the customer, which is how it should be.

Webster Marsh:

That’s really interesting. I imagine a lot of cities appreciate not having to deal with those technical details.

Marissa Wright:

Absolutely. I had a call with a large city in Canada recently, and they were talking about IP addresses and routing. I told them, “Why are you even dealing with that? That’s not your problem.” They had a solution in place that required them to manage gateways, routers, and so many moving parts. With us, all that complexity is taken care of.

Our goal is to make it simple for end users. They get the data they need—like real-time energy metering or system status—without having to worry about the backend. They don’t even have to manage cell phone plans. We handle all that, including redundancy across multiple carriers.

Webster Marsh:

So, I’m guessing there’s a subscription model for this service, right?

Marissa Wright:

Yes, there is. Typically, there’s an upfront cost for the controllers and a low monthly subscription fee per device. That covers everything—data, connectivity, and support.

What’s unique about Tondo is that we’ve also innovated on the business model side. We’ve worked to make these projects cash flow positive for cities. That’s been a huge barrier for entry in the past. Most smart lighting projects have been cash flow negative, which makes it hard for cities to justify the investment unless they bundle it with an LED retrofit. We’ve changed that.

Webster Marsh:

That’s impressive. Can you elaborate on how you make these projects cash flow positive?

Marissa Wright:

It comes down to automation and efficiency. For example, we use AI to apply dimming profiles according to ANSI standards like RP-8. Without AI, managing dimming for a city with thousands of fixtures would be impossible.

Here’s the math: If you have a dozen fixture models, each with different luminance levels, pole heights, roadway classifications, and dynamic pedestrian traffic, you end up with thousands of lighting profiles to manage. Doing that manually isn’t feasible. But with AI, we can dynamically adjust lighting levels based on real-time data, ensuring safety while reducing energy consumption by 40–50%.

That’s where the savings come in. Cities save money on energy while maintaining safe lighting levels, and those savings offset the cost of the project.

Webster Marsh:

That’s the thing that I’m hearing a lot of people tapping on my shoulder right now going, “Well, how do you ensure that this is safe?” If the lights are dimming down or shutting off, are there nuisance switching issues and stuff like that? The chatter that you hear when they hear, “Oh, well, you can save a lot of money if you switch your lighting off.”

Marissa Wright:

Good question. First of all, we’re talking about having the AI apply the ANSI standard. If you think that ANSI is correct, if you think that RP-8 is correct, then it’s safe. But let’s say you have some specialty cases. Let’s say a city has policies or preferences or things like that. That’s where you can manually put those lighting profile curves in to deal with the anomalies. That’s scalable. You can deal with anomalies scalably.

When you have to manage the entire system manually, that’s not possible.

Webster Marsh:

Absolutely. And to your point, you’re dealing with thousands of different fixtures. You might be dealing with thousands of different sensors. You’re not going to go and calibrate and deal with every single sensor manually to address the unique conditions of that particular location.

It does make sense to try to leverage that analytics and the power of AI to really kind of manage that for people.

Marissa Wright:

I mean, the Smart City doesn’t happen without AI automation, and it doesn’t happen without lighting controls either because that’s where the powered platform is. It’s the least expensive, feasible, perfect place to platform all those outdoor sensors.

Webster Marsh:

We’re almost out of time here, but I just want to kind of encapsulate this because it’s really fascinating to hear about this. Five years ago, stuff like this was kind of unheard of.

So it’s like, wow, this is huge. Tondo is a company that really has this platform of data and analytics as well as AI to leverage the technology that also is being provided by Tondo, which provides smart dimming but also sensing technology throughout a city for the purposes of really providing a holistic Smart City approach, which is customized to the city’s needs.

It’s not just cookie-cutter “everything gets the same thing,” but what it’s using is existing or upgraded infrastructure to really facilitate that by incorporating it into the lighting and becoming a lighting control platform. Additionally, because the platform was originally just for industrial IoT applications—it wasn’t originally intended for lighting—it has this robust capability that expands past lighting.

Talking about RP-8, that right there—anybody who’s in the lighting industry should be able to go, “Oh, they actually know what they’re talking about.” They’ve read at least a manual on lighting, which is much further down the road than a lot of other groups that come in and say, “Oh, we know lighting.”

But you have the background, the understanding of what is required for good lighting, so it makes sense that you layer on top of that platform additional components. I think this is really fantastic stuff that you guys are providing here.

It’s really exciting, and I definitely want to get you back on this show to talk more. There are some great projects that I’ve heard about that you guys are involved in that I’d love to kind of go through with everybody listening and find out what’s going on.

But all of this is really critical to that baseline that you’re talking about, which is how do you save money. Cities really are struggling to keep the lights on—literally. The argument is there, and additionally, I’m guessing with these kinds of metrics, you can give them an idea of what a return on investment would look like—how long until they’ve actually saved money and are now paying back from what they’ve originally invested in.

Marissa Wright:

Exactly. A couple of comments on what you said before we wrap up. In terms of my background—having come from IT and now in lighting for the last two and a half to three years—I’ve almost committed to memory the section for RP-8 at 6.10. Go look it up. That’s where your adaptive lighting savings are going to come from.

I’ve been up and down that document more times than I can count. I think 9.3 has a piece in there too. But yeah, it’s in the standard. I can quote it verse and chapter.

Webster Marsh:

I love that. That is so nerdy, and I love it.

Marissa Wright:

I started off in nerdville. How else is a 17-year-old going to jump into this stuff—technology? But lighting is fascinating. It’s fascinating stuff, having to learn all the photometric stuff as best I can.

The interesting projects—I’d love to talk more on another episode, particularly about our smart highway project for the national highway authority in Israel. That’s a 5,500-mile project, 205,000 pieces. We’re at 75,000 deployed so far.

We’ve done a couple of cool projects out of that that I’d love to talk about, including that flood control thing but also the electricity theft and wire theft sensing that we do with the AI.

Webster Marsh:

Being able to detect electricity theft and wire theft as a spinoff from the lighting that we didn’t expect—that’s a cool project.

Marissa Wright:

Absolutely.

Webster Marsh:

And again, I imagine a lot of city officials would want to know about that capability because that is a huge issue with municipalities where people will just tap right into the grid, and it’s like, “Well, we can’t control for that.”

Marissa Wright:

I had no idea until I fired up research on wire theft from street poles. It’s in Tacoma and St. Paul and Los Angeles. There are sections of LA where 40% of their lights are out because of theft. There’s a city near me that spent $9 million ripping the copper out to put lower-quality wire in place.

It worked out to $210 a light to fix that problem that way. We can do it for $10 a light.

Webster Marsh:

Wow. That right there—regardless. Marissa, it was awesome having you on the show. This was a really great conversation. Thank you so much.

And if people want to learn more about Tondo, tondo-iot.com—that’s their website. They are a great resource. If you aren’t convinced already, please check them out. They really have some fantastic resources and want to be involved in your next project.

Just want to remind everybody that this episode is presented by the Lighting Controls Association and LightFair. Hopefully, we’re going to see you at LightFair next year, 2025.

Also, this is financially supported by the National Association of Innovative Lighting Distributors or NAILD. Check out our website, lightingcontrolspodcast.com, where we’ve got all of our episodes and a whole bunch of other stuff.

And again, check out our sponsor for this episode, Tondo—tondo-iot.com. We really appreciate the support for this podcast. We could not do this without our sponsors. Thank you so much, and really can’t say enough great things about this product.

Marissa, thank you again. This was really great.