Apparatus and method for power management of a system of indicator light devices

A system comprising:

• a wireless network;
• a plurality of indicator light devices physically associated with respective physical locations in a facility to indicate a condition of interest or a plurality of conditions of interest at the physical locations in a manner viewable by a user of the facility, the indicator light devices being self-powered and without a hard-wired connection to a power source, and wirelessly networked over the network;
• and
• a synchronization controller networked to the indicator light devices over the network to provide synchronization information to a first subset of the indicator light devices to synchronously flash the first subset of the indicator light devices with coordinated flash patterns, flash rates, and flash duty cycles configured to save power, the first subset of the indicator light devices being physically associated with a first subset of the physical locations having a first condition of interest to visually indicate at a single glance the first subset of the physical locations to the user;
• and further to render dark a subset of the indicator light devices physically associated with a subset of the physical locations for which an available supply criteria for the first condition of interest meets a predetermined threshold, the synchronization information being provided to the first subset of the indicator light devices when the first condition of interest is rare relative to the no condition of interest.

An indicator light device for use on a wireless network in a facility along with a plurality of networked indicator light devices physically associated with respective physical locations in a facility for indicating a condition of interest or a plurality of conditions of interest at the physical locations in a manner viewable by a user of the facility, the indicator light device comprising:

• a light source configured to provide the visual indication;
• a wireless communications node configured to connect to the wireless network;
• a controller coupled to the light source and the wireless communications node;
• a non-transitory computer-readable medium accessible to the controller, wherein the computer-readable medium comprises program instructions executable by the controller to:
• identify a first subset of the physical locations having a first condition of interest, a first subset of the indicator light devices being physically associated with the first subset of physical locations;
• provide synchronization information to the first subset of the indicator light devices via the wireless communications node to synchronously flash the first subset of the indicator light devices with coordinated flash patterns, flash rates, and flash duty cycles configured to save power and visually indicate at a single glance the first subset of physical locations to the user;
• and
• render dark a second subset of the indicator light devices physically associated with a second subset of physical locations for which an available supply criteria for the first condition of interest meets a predetermined threshold, the synchronization information being provided to the first subset of the indicator light devices when the first condition of interest is rare relative to the no condition of interest;
• and
• a self-power source coupled to the light source, the wireless communications node, the controller, and the computer-readable medium.