BACnet / Modbus / Other protocols
Open source software
Encrypted communications / behind firewall connections
Automated alerts / Notifications
7 x 24 process monitoring
Engineering assessments and reports
Control algorithm analysis
Professional consultant support
Test and balance verification support
Equipment performance verification
We began working with building automation systems 30 years ago when the technology was proprietary. We were encouraged by BACnet as an emerging open method of reading data. Smaller BAS competitors embraced BACnet for their products while the big dogs continued to strangle customer's for ever more support charges, while promising to cancel support if the "wrong" people were allowed to work with their systems.
Today virtually all building automation systems can be accessed by BACnet/IP, either as an integral feature of the products or by installing a BACnet protocol converter.
Our systems routinely gather 50 million data points a year from a single building; we have the data. And we don't rely on a spreadsheet with 250 columns - those days are done. We use high-speed SQL databases for fast reads. And we don't rely on the native BAS installation to store our data - we keep our own separate copy.
Interpreting data has always been the biggest problem for solving complex HVAC equipment performance and relationships. Even a 50 column spreadsheet is too many to work with. Manual plotting is a gigantic time sink. What complex buildings need is a new way of presenting data. It has to be easy. And it has to be fast as well as elegant. That's why we use Grafana.
We live in a visual world. YouTube is the single biggest educational tool in the world. And it's all visual with over 100 hours of content being uploaded every minute (albeit some is useless). It's the visual response to Grafana that is the most impressive to users. Closely following that is the graphical response speed - simply astounding.
We use the power of modern browsers, and the graphical libraries in Grafana, to create a daily building workhorse application. Our specialty is delivering content in massive detail within an easy to understand graphical framework.
It's not enough to see the data. Seeing is believing if you have the time. The kicker is to analyze data continually. We believe in continuous processing for recommissioning or retro-commissioning. We leveraged Grafana's ability to generate alerts using SQL expressions. In fact, Grafana runs on SQL, the database workhorse language of all modern analysis systems. Data access in Grafana is driven by SQL and the query variations it offers to sum, find max and min values, current values, differential, and percent differential values. SQL opens building data to a new level of analysis, free for the taking. And we've taken it.
Of course you don't. But our alerts do not replace, (often suspended) building automation alarms. They still provide the first level notification of HVAC system problems. But it's difficult to find a BAS installation that does more than deal with operating fundamentals. That's where our alerts can help building operators with daily managing responsibilities. We look for the subtle operating issues that measure HVAC equipment operating efficiency. And we deliver our alerts by email as they occur, or better, the next day as an abridged summary.
Need more details? We can go one better than text-based alerts. Each alert is automatically assigned an annotation on the chart where it occurred. Mouseover alerts to see not only the time line but the actual values on the chart when and where they occurred. Make your own annotations. Click on the X-axis and add your own comments that will stay with the graphic indefinitely - even years later.
BAS alarms are simple - pump on or off when it's not suppose to be. That won't cut it for evaluating building HVAC equipment efficiency. Instead of simple on-off alerts we create issue-based alerts where individual equipment performance is evaluated on-the-fly. Heat pump water loops, for example, should operate within defined boundaries. These are engineering boundaries and we apply them to alerts so that marginal equipment or system performance is recognized. It's the marginal performance that gets overlooked for 99.9% of all buildings today.
Yes, you can expect our alerts to generate more warnings. And that's useful because you now have a guide to which equipment is experiencing the most operating problems. Count the number of occasions an alert turns up in the abridged summary and you have an indication of the severity of the problem. Too many alerts coming in? Are you sure the system is operating as intended? No problem. Anyone with permissions can change alert limits, easily. Or email the abridged list to someone more experienced with this type of equipment for another opinion.
We've solved this problem too. With building IT permission we can provide a secure link capable of connecting to BAS information behind firewalls. Choose from super-secure encrypted peer-to-peer connections, to cloud-based encrypted connections. Or use both.
Control access by login and password if that works. Otherwise, restrict access using peer-to-peer connections that are rigidly tight. Don't have time to fire up your laptop, then use your smartphone or tablet. Grafana runs just as well on small screens as it does on large ones.
Want to show off building performance on a giant TV screen? No problem. Grafana works in both TV and kiosk modes with the ability to flip between screens on regular intervals.
Want casual users to interact with the graphics, maybe even on a giant TV? Use an inexpensive remote touch pad to provide quick and portable user access.
Need to manage 50 buildings? Or maybe 500? No problem because Grafana supports thousands of dashboards running multiple graphical panels - to any size network needed.
Yes it is. Small controller companies jam out great products. Bigger BAS companies try to shoehorn customers into their view of the world. Skip beyond both limitations and jump to our product for a bigger, better, and open source solution.
Controls
HVAC
Databases
Communications
Energy
IAQ
Performance