Choosing a smart city system means thinking beyond today’s needs, writes Dimonoff founding president Bernard Têtu in the first installment of a three-part series on future readiness. This opening piece focuses on hardware, the foundation that every other layer of a smart city system depends on.
In street lighting, only LED fixtures equipped with a standard ANSI C136.41 7-pin connector can really be considered future-proof, since they support the advanced functionality smart city applications require. Beyond the fixture itself, hardware purchased today should be ready to accept the sensors cities will want tomorrow, whether built in from the start or added later through configurable inputs and outputs, without needing custom code for every new sensor type.
Upgradability matters just as much. Devices should support wireless firmware updates rather than manual, device-by-device work, backed by a genuine bootloader and, ideally, a real-time operating system that allows secure updates with a reliable backup process. Têtu also points to the growing role of edge computing, where devices analyze data locally instead of sending everything to a central system. A sound-recognition sensor, for example, could detect a gunshot or a crash and alert authorities directly, without transmitting large audio files, cutting bandwidth needs and improving response times.