London to Get 14,000-iPad Controlled Street Lights
Smart lights to save on energy and repair costs.
A council in London, UK is set to install 14,000 street lights that can be controlled via iPad. West London Today reports that following a successful pilot scheme, Westminster City Council is to replace all of its street lights with smart street lights over the next four years.
When the council is finished, all 14,000 street lamps will be controllable via iPad, and engineers will be able to tell technicians when they're broken or in need of replacing. In addition to this, engineers can alter the brightness via an iPad app. The system, which West London Today says is the first electronically monitored lighting infrastructure in the UK, will be able to detect when one of the street lights in the network is likely to fail.
The scheme is expected to cost in excess of three million pounds, however, it's thought this cost will be recouped in energy and maintenance savings. The council expects the scheme to have paid for itself in years.

Then why did they start with one of the most expensive and difficult to repair devices to do this? Some cheaper tablets and a lot of mobile phones are just as capable, but with smaller screens.
Then why did they start with one of the most expensive and difficult to repair devices to do this? Some cheaper tablets and a lot of mobile phones are just as capable, but with smaller screens.
Try moving to Greece, i hear things are going well there.
Exactly. The control system just happens to have a browser interface, which will run on an iPad. I'm sure it runs on Android also, or anything else that can run a web browser.
Soon London will be seen from the ISS as that flashing spot in the SE of England :-)
Oh yea government they love wasting money
There are many businesses that built apps for IE6 without regards for future web browsers. And they still use IE6 because they say it's too expensive for too little improvement.
I bet 10 years from now, London might be forced to use ancient iPads without Apple's security patch support (if any) because OSX would've been very different in that time.
And they're going to refuse to rebuild the browser because it will cost too much money.