New way to connect sensors is being tested in Veberöd

Since Lund Municipality has started the work to replace street lights with LED luminaires, it has also become easier to connect sensors to obtain data that facilitates planning and provides support for actions. The old lampposts were lit and extinguished centrally, but the new ones with LED luminaire are not only more environmentally friendly, they are also controlled separately and have fixed voltage around the clock. Lund Municipality started work on the lampposts in Veberöd, where the work to replace the more than 1,300 luminaires has now been completed. This gives participants in FLOW, a project about measuring flows with sensors, a good opportunity to test how the new lampposts can be used.

- We do this both to see how we can measure traffic and flows and to evaluate the technology in different ways, says Anders Trana, project manager in The Flow Project. We can examine what is needed to easily connect sensors, how we solve the data transfer, what security aspects need to be taken into account and how to think about liability issues. It will also be a test for the Technical Administration for how they can work with sensors on lampposts in the future.

The Technical Administration of Lund Municipality is also involved in the project and takes care of and approves the set of units used by the project.

- The basic function, i.e. street lighting, is of course the most important, but even we at the municipality have an interest in pursuing innovative ideas, for example to access data. If you can use the existing infrastructure for this, it is good. Then we need to make sure that we can control what technology and equipment will be used in different projects, and that we have clear agreements to lean on. This will happen through a business model that we are developing now,” says Stefan Jönsson at the Technical Administration in Lund Municipality.

In April 2024, work was started on creating a test area in central Veberöd at the place where Sjöbovägen and Dörrödsvägen meet. There has The power ring prepared the work by pulling fiber to a lamppost that now forms a WiFi base. Through this, the data of the sensors can be passed on. Subsequently, it was added AXIS radar unit and a communications box up. The radar unit can read when vehicles are approaching and their speed. The data is then forwarded to Sensative's IoT platform, where analyses can be performed. There are also plans to set up the AXIS image sensor that performs an anonymised analysis of vehicle impacts directly in the device before the data is passed on and, over time, additional devices from Sigma Technology.

- We have chosen Veberöd because the village was the first with the possibility of continuous power thanks to the new lampposts, says Anders Trana. It is also easier to set up certain devices in the villages, for example because there are fewer houses that the signals can bounce against. For us, it is also important to Smart Villages have channels for dialogue with the residents on site so that we can more easily explain what the unit does. At the moment, we do not use the data collected, but this is only a technology test.

In Veberöd, Smart Villages is testing how different smart solutions can be used to benefit a village and the people who live there.

- The technology we use is a tool to create engagement among the people in the village, says Jan Malmgren from Smart Villages. It is important to work on behavioural change if we are to carry out a green transformation of society. We need a whole ecosystem of solutions in order for us to make a system move, and I think this is much easier to do in a village where people know each other than in a city. After that, you can move the solutions to the city.

The FLOW project investigates how to collect data using sensor technology and then connect the data on a digital platform. IoT Sweden is funding the project, which started in 2022 and runs until December 2024. Project partners are Lund Municipality, Mobile Heights, California, Axis Communications, Sensative, MiThings, Smart Villages and Acconeer.