Cut cost per service
One installation serves several functions. The 2019 pilot spent HK$272 million on 400 lampposts; a clip-on retrofit avoids the civil works that made it expensive.
Pilot network live · 24 poles / 18 districts
Every pole, a service hub.
Hong Kong already owns millions of lampposts. Urban Pulse clips solar, charging, connectivity, shade and emergency modules onto the ones already on your street — installed in hours, without digging up a single road.
Live alerts
24
Pilot poles reporting live
18
Districts covered
10
Clip-on modules available
0
Road excavations required
The idea
The city already built the network. We just give it a second job.
A lamppost is already wired, already legal to stand on the pavement, already within fifty metres of somebody's front door. What it lacks is purpose after dark.
Our modular design clips new functions onto that existing structure. No trenching, no new substation, no months of road closure — just a survey, a bracket and a connection. Because the hardware is shared, one pole can carry charging, connectivity and emergency response at a fraction of the cost of three separate installations.
Typical pole loadout
Illustrative loadout for a commercial street. Every pole is surveyed before installation.
Clip-on modules
Ten things a lamppost can do besides shine.
Every module shares the same mechanical bracket, power bus and mounting height. Mix them per street — that is the whole product.
How installation works
Hours, not months.
STEP 01
Survey the pole
A two-person team records age, structure, power capacity and footfall. Unsuitable poles are skipped, not modified — a weakness we designed around.
STEP 02
Clip on the modules
Brackets clamp to the existing column. No excavation, no new concrete, no lane closure. Most modules go up in under two hours each.
STEP 03
Switch on the platform
The pole registers with the network control centre, publishes its services to this map, and starts earning from charging, connectivity and partnership fees.
Match the neighbourhood
Commercial streets get chargers. Districts with older residents get shade, seats and SOS. School zones get air-quality sensors and lockers.
Keep working in a crisis
With a battery module, a pole keeps lighting, communications and AED access alive through a grid outage or a typhoon.
Our process
Six steps from a walk down the street to a working platform.
The group report follows the six-step experiential learning approach. Each step is a card you can open.
The approach follows Kolb's experiential learning cycle: a concrete experience on the street, reflection on what was missing, abstract conceptualisation into a business model, then active experimentation through the Type A workshop and this website.
Energy
Solar first, grid second.
A 1.2 kW canopy shades the pavement and offsets the pole's own consumption. In the pilot, the sunniest poles generate more than they draw.
- Battery-backed night mode during outages
- Charging pauses automatically in a storm
- Environmental data anonymised on the pole
- No cameras or Wi-Fi probe tracking — by design
Daily energy per district
kWh / dayPrototype telemetry from 24 pilot poles. Values refresh on this mock feed, not from live hardware.
Get involved
Vote for what the next 400 poles should do.
Four colour schemes and eight functions are on the ballot — the same vote we will run at the Type A street workshop.