Colour Malmi with light!

A Street Smarts programme’s pilot will soon illuminate Ala-Malmi park.

Ala-Malmi park has been chosen for testing a browser-based open interface that allows residents to change the colour of the park’s outdoor lighting using their mobile phones. The pilot is the first of its kind in Finland and will run at least until the end of the year.

The purpose of the pilot is to find out how convenient the lighting is to adjust and how the new lighting affects the atmosphere of the park. In addition, the aim is to collect ideas and thoughts on where this kind of lighting solution could be utilised in the future. The collected feedback steers the future development of the service.

C2 SmartLight Oy provides the service, and the City of Helsinki’s Municipal Engineering unit is responsible for the procurement and installation of lighting. The pilot is part of the Helsinki Innovation Districts project’s Street Smarts pilot programme, which has previously sought innovative lighting and sensor solutions for Helsinki.

You can adjust the lights everyday when the regular streetlights turn on in the city.

1. Open a web browser on your phone and navigate to fvh.io/malminvalot. Select ‘Let’s try’. When using the service for the first time, you will be asked to allow the service to access your phone’s location data, which is mandatory for using the service.

2. You can change the language to Finnish, English or Swedish via the drop-down menu in the upper right corner of the page.

3. After the start window, you will be presented with a map view. The application will search for nearby controllable lights and display them on the map. The circle shown on the map indicates your location. You can only control lights that fall within the circle.

4. You can differentiate between the available lights by zooming the map window in and out using the plus and minus buttons. The symbols on the lights indicate the colour of the light. Select a light to open the control window.

5. Change the colour of the light by selecting a colour from the menu. The selected colour will be highlighted. After this, press the ‘Use’ button to apply the colour.

6. After selecting a colour, you will be asked to complete a captcha before the change is applied.

7. All done! After the colour has changed, the symbol on the light in the map view will be updated to reflect the new colour.