AutomatedBuildings.com Review

Every month there is a blizzard of information contained in the emails and newsletters that cross my desk on their way to AutomatedBuildings.com. Some of this information is not in the form of any type of content we can publish but I feel I should share with you these snippets, blog bits, and url links that are about to fall off my desktop.

The strength of a system is beholden to its weakest point. This concept is the reason that security in the Internet of Things is an altogether different brand of security than in the past. In a world where objects and environments are digitally connected and placed onto networks, objects themselves become windows of data transmission and collectors of potential insight and utility… but also potential vulnerabilities. Harbor forecasts some 36.4B devices will come online within the next four years. This exponential growth of new devices and sensors will emerge in mixed environments, with incumbent and legacy technology, equipment, gateways, controllers, routers, databases, all communicating over a plethora of protocols. As organizations digitize their internal and external processes, services, and products, they enable countless devices to send and receive information over the Internet. This data transmission has powerful potential to drive tremendous efficiency increases, from supply chain automation to software updates, to self-monitoring, self-adjusting, and self-optimizing smart systems. But these useful interactions also create potential new attack points for malicious entities.

BAC0 is the first open source effort to bring a common tool to DDC programmers so they can test efficiently the sequences they are working on. Scriptable, easy to learn, once it’s connected to your device, every exposed variables will be kept in memory so you can document your tests. Thanks to Jupyter Notebook, all this work can be done in your browser.

Building Management System (BMS) controls specification for a customer who needed a controls upgrade. It was an excellent opportunity to flex a new engineering perspective and see what energy savings could squeeze out by retrofitting an existing mechanical system with a new control system. When it came to the sequence of operations, decided to consult ASHRAE Guideline 36.

OPC UA .NET Server and Client Development Toolkits Fast development of OPC UA Servers and Clients for Windows with .NET The OPC UA .NET Development Toolkits enable the fast integration of OPC Unified Architecture (UA) connectivity capabilities in .NET-based automation applications for Windows. It consists of a comprehensive set of libraries featuring a simple and documented programming interface, relevant example applications as well as test and simulation tools, allowing short time to market of OPC UA enabled programs.

Can wearable technology addressing air pollution turn people into citizen scientists? Technology doesn’t get much more personal than wearables. The enviro-tracker is a personalized air-quality monitor from the San Francisco-based startup Tzoa. In the same vein as BreezoMeter, the enviro-tracker app collects local air readings every day. Through this data collection, users are able to track their exposure to pollutants.

Ask someone what they dislike about working in an office and the list will probably be long. It is likely to include: workload, the boss, colleagues, uncomfortable chairs, lack of light, no decent food in the canteen and Arctic air-conditioning. Technology may soon be able to ease the last of these, offering a better working environment by allowing workers to control their heating via a smartphone app. But does that come at a price? Do the sensors that are increasingly making the office environment smarter also mean that workers are under constant surveillance? Welcome to the brave new world of the smart office.

22 Internet of Things(IoT) Courses to Help Build a Connected World By 2020 2 billion devices will use IoT technology. Learn this marketable skill now!

IoT-X Evolves LoRaWAN Functionality Stream Technologies, a world leader in IoT technologies, today announce their latest LoRaWAN network server. Stream's award winning IoT-X platform now has full support for LoRaWAN. Customers can now manage their full LoRaWAN implementation directly from IoT-X. This is the latest step in Stream's vision to manage all IoT connectivity on a single pane of glass. "Until now we've run our LoRaWAN server as a managed service for customers, with this version of IoT-X we've put the customer in control. Customers can now create and manage their LoRa applications directly from IoT-X, this will allow customers to create and deploy public and private networks quickly and easily using IoT-X." said Alan Tait, Stream's CTO.

Yet Another Wireless Protocol Synapse Takes 802.15.4 in a Different Direction by Bryon Moyer The wild and wooly world of wireless is still bubbling with new things. We’ve become accustomed to three contenders for short- to medium-range wireless: WiFi, BlueTooth, and ZigBee. And we saw before that there is a profusion of longer-range, lower-power protocols vying for primacy. Well, today the plan was to look at a couple of new protocols (or, at least, new to us) that are based on shorter-range familiar technology. One, from Synapse Wireless, shares the bottom of its stack with ZigBee; the other, a new WiFi variant newly branded as HaLow, shares the top of its stack with conventional WiFi. But I still have questions outstanding to the WiFi folks, so we’ll have to push that off to some other time. So today we look at SNAP.

Karl Jónsson, IoT Architect at Tridonic presented some interesting facts, figures, and ideas about IoT and the future of lighting in his speeches about “The Internet of Things and Lighting”

A Simple Guide to Understanding Open Protocols in Building Automation Building automation today can be a lot like that. For a building to operate, all of its parts need to communicate with the rest of the system. From sensors and lights, to equipment such as chillers, boilers, air handlers and electrical panels—everything must be linked and in communication with monitoring dashboards that give managers visibility and control.

Noesis’ new service is the industry’s first to offer both extended terms and promotional periods for financing commercial building equipment. Payment terms include up-to-84 months to pay for unexpected, big-ticket equipment replacements, such as broken boiler and chillers. In addition, Noesis’ service offers a promotional period of 6 months with no payments that is designed for building owners making energy efficiency upgrades who prefer to wait for energy savings or rebate checks.

Usable Buildings is a free resource for practitioners, managers, building owners, developers, students and anyone else who wants to make buildings more suitable for the people who use them, less damaging to the natural environment and a better long-term investment. Usable Buildings is run by the Usable Buildings Trust.

Yaaa!! Whooo! U R now data wrangers.........just in from friend Jack McGowan Data wrangling provides the knowledge about whether a building is operating within its preset parameters.[an error occurred while processing this directive]

In the World Green Building Trends survey, participants were asked to select the most important benefits of green building in their market from a list of 10 options, with no limit on the number that could be selected. The infographic below illustrates both the highest and lowest percentage of respondents from given countries that chose each benefit. Lower operating costs By a wide margin, the most popular reported green building benefit was lower operating costs. A global average of 69 percent of respondents chose it as a benefit. This was particularly high in the Americas, with the United States (81 percent), Colombia (79 percent), Mexico (73 percent) and Brazil (65 percent) selecting this factor. Other strong factors............

Samsung is developing a new operating system for the Internet of Things, hoping to make a bigger role for itself in the millions of smart home appliances, wearables and industrial equipment that are coming online. The OS, which will be open source and hasn't yet been named, will help devices to execute simple tasks quickly without human intervention. For example, the software could instruct a door lock to open and the lights to come on as a person approaches their home. More details are due to be spilled next month during a technical session at the Samsung Developer Conference in San Francisco.

In this Insider, SkyFoundry partners provide a glimpse of how they use SkySpark to help data center operators understand and improve operations, reduce costs, and insure reliability.The focus on data centers highlights another key point about SkySpark – its applicability to facilities and equipment systems of all types. SkySpark is used in colleges and universities, multi-site retail stores, the largest commercial office buildings, small footprint fast food restaurants, government facilities, military bases, hospitals, hotels, and industrial facilities.

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