[b]Mazeteam[/b]
I know what you mean about the radio-switched lanterns, certainly quite unexpected, but very clever. I guess the radio-controller thing is inside the huge photocell that's located on an odd lantern, as the rest that have been done have little black antennas on them. The controller is often on the original lantern as well, meaning that you get an odd MRL6 with the controller, whilst the rest are Vectras with antennas. I wonder whether only newer lanterns can be adapted?
Well, all I know about is the Zodion 'Vizion' system, as I read up about it after I got my QSM with it fitted! Essentially, the system is set up with one lantern having the pigeon-sized controller sitting normally where the photocell goes (and the zodion one uses the same sized hole as a minicell), and then you have anywhere between 1-200 additional lanterns with radio antennas fitted. The engineer who sets up the system can then log in to a special section of the Zodion website (yearly fee applies for use of "the host") whereby they can set data and instruct the controller what information to relay back to the site, and what commands are applied (ie part night dimming, dim levels etc). This information is sent from the website server via WiFi and 3G to the pigeon-sized controller (the controller, I think, has it's own little WiFi moden inside), and the controller then makes sense of the data and relays it back to the lanterns via the antennae. Each antenna is connected to the special ballast via a data cable, and so 2-way information can be passed. If a radio controlled lantern is dayburning, that will be because it has lost it's connectivity to the system - and the ballast is "fail safe" so it'll switch the lamp on if a radio connection is lost. When the full York system now present along Coney Streer, St Helens Square, New Street, Market Street, Spurriergate was first set up, there was a period of 2 weeks whereby random lanterns were dayburning.
Most lanterns can be adapted, as it only required changing ballasts and using a minicell-sized hole (20mm) for the wireless device (which may also include fitting a part blanking plate to the NEMA socket hole so that it is reduced to a 20mm hole). Quite why the older lantern is being used as the controller I have no idea - but when York were trialling the system, the main controller ended up on loads if different lanterns - every other week it was on a different light, before finally settling on the QSM I now own.
The 'posh saucer' was still there a few weeks ago, and in fact the town has three of them! As I recall, a couple are on old Stanton and Staveley columns (as pictured on my site) and the other one is on a newer painted metal column, so will have been retrofitted, which is great, as they obviously were (and hopefully still are valued). In answer to your question Urbis Satern Land, I think they all run on SON, certainly one does, as it was dayburning.
That's briliant, that there are three of them!
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