Case Study - W Hotel Edinburgh

Guests to the new W Hotel in Edinburgh will have many great landmarks on their doorstep; Edinburgh Castle, Arthur’s Seat, the Royal Mile, and Calton Hill are all within a short walk from the beautifully modern hotel foyer. But before visitors embark on a day of history, sightseeing and whiskey they will experience some beautifully subtle automation, triggered by some tiny Faradite motion sensors.

The hotel is finished to an impressive standard, giving guests comfort and luxury and all rooms benefit from a simple, intuitive Lutron myRoom system. The system is also integrated with the Oracle Opera Hotel property management solution. The project was designed and commissioned by Link Media Systems, a London-based consultancy who have been delivering control solutions in both the residential and commercial markets for more than 20 years.

We spoke with Sohan Perera, managing director of Link Media Systems who explained why Faradite sensors were chosen to deliver the automation throughout the hotel, “[The sensors] were well received by the designers, the clients and also our technical people’s functional requirements”. Our range of Volt Free sensors are designed for integration with control systems and provide a dry contact output that makes them almost universally compatible.

In main living spaces, the Motion Sensor 360 - Volt Free is used to great effect, triggering lighting when guests first enter the room. Due to the room design, doors separate the toilet and the shower cubicle from the rest of the room, in both these spaces, Faradite motion sensors are discreetly installed to immediately bring on targeted light circuits in each space. Naturally, for the shower area, LMS opted for the robust, waterproof Motion Sensor 360 - IP67 - Volt Free.

Lutron Palladiom keypads provide guests with a simple interface to trigger the lighting scenes, as well as indicate whether or not they want their room made up, controlling subtle indicator lights outside each room.

The Faradite motion sensors are also used to provide important room vacancy reporting back to the central guest room management system (GRMS). Where rooms are unoccupied for an extended period, the GRMS will ensure the HVAC system is set back to avoid wasting energy heating/cooling empty rooms.

With more than 400 Faradite motion sensors installed throughout the hotel, guests are being treated to automated lighting from one of the smallest, most discreet PIRs on the market. The advanced GRMS system delivered by the team at LMS ensures the entire facility is running at maximum efficiency whilst giving guests a beautifully automated stay. The only decision guests need to worry about is which is the next dram of Whiskey they want to sample.

We now know what the ‘W’ in W Hotels stands for: “Wow”.