Editorial
Comments by Ken Sinclair
Editor/Owner, AutomatedBuildings.com
“with our feet on the ground and our
heads in the cloud”
Our last few issues have been pointed toward the cloud and all of its power
and how this will revolutionize our industry. It is very important that
while we understand our new found powers that we keep our feet on the ground
and connect this cloud to real applications and real people. Once you get it
and start bantering with your fellow "cloudys" you will find that when you
talk to normal folks (your clients) whose heads are not clouded you talk
funny.....real funny. Take the time to explain how the connections to the
concepts of SaaS, ACC, Smart Grid etc are affordable and real. Do not speak
in AAA's ( Annoying Arrogant Acronyms) share your decoder ring with your
audience and try to speak English the best you can. We are all ambassadors
from the cloud and our future depends on our ability to walk in with our
feet on the ground and talk about successes and working examples of cloud
connections.
In Gordon Holness', presidential address to ASHRAE members "Sustaining Our
Future By Rebuilding Our Past" which deals with Energy Efficiency in
Existing Buildings he states in his conclusion; "We need to remind ourselves
that today we are in a virtual world. We are in the era of iPhones and
Yahoo, of Google Earth and Wikipedia, of Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. If
we want to continue to be leaders in this industry, we must deliver the
goods today, Tomorrow is not good enough."
Gordon' s background in Building Information Modeling BIM and
Interoperability has provided him great insight into the power of the future
to solve the problems of the past. Change is everywhere and Tomorrow is not
good enough.
Our articles have today's solutions and Sarah Erdman
of Quality Automation Graphics in her article
Energy Dashboards Inform and Educate
shows us with pictures and powerful graphics how to stop talking funny while
showing your stuff and even flings a few AAA's at us but provides good
definition.
Lots of great articles in this issue:
Bringing BIG Building Automation to The Small Building Market
Trevor Palmer, Viconics;
Pneumatic Energy Savings Control
George Fincher, Energy Controls Co.;
Smart or Dumb Meters
Mark Hunter, ION Controls;
How Do We Measure The Performance Of A Building?
Jim Sinopoli, Smart Buildings LLC;
The Price
of Energy Toby Considine, Smart Grid,
Standards;
Brivo ACS Webservice™ Deployed in Project
Upgrade Bruce J. Doneff, Brivo Systems, LLC;
Hey, Don't
Take My Word For It… Robert
Beverly, Engineered Systems;
Brivo ACS Webservice™ Deployed in Project
Upgrade Bruce J. Doneff, Brivo Systems, LLC;
Building
Cloud Connections
Ken Sinclair, www.AutomatedBuildings.com
September Columns:
BACnet …
from the Outside In
Andy McMillan;
Collaborative Energy Toby Considine;
The Coming Evolution of BAS DesignPaul Ehrlich & Ira Goldschmidt;
Understanding Specifications
Steven R. Calabrese;
OPC Technology finds its’ place on the map
Manny Mandrusiak
September Interviews:
The Multi Protocol Router
David Oshoway;
Smart Building Product Ratings
Jim Sinopoli;
Energy
Storage
Mark M. MacCracken
September Reviews:
Wailing of Wireless Woes
“Digital Signage is a Vortex”
The
news just
keeps flowing thru our web site and RSS feeds daily, and of course the only way
to truly find what you are looking for in the vast quantity of information on
our site is with our site search engine
http://www.automatedbuildings.com/search/sitesearch.htm
As always lots of
new products,
plus be sure to check our
event calendar
to see the number of events we have in our future.
Several of our advertisers have provided links to their
very informative newsletters and blogs
please check them out.
Please welcome our
newest sponsors:
ION Controls offering
Freedom through Openness, with free issue CreatION and ION Core
graphical authoring and programming applications for the BACnet,
Modbus, OPC capable ION SuperVZR Web Server and low-cost ION Micron
controllers.
Energy Controls Co.
The PESC-F100 Pneumatic Energy Savings Control
is an alternative
to costly DDC retrofits of pneumatic systems which can cost
$2000/Zone.
PESC-F100 costs 1/4 of the price. To become a dealer
www.energy-controls.com
We welcome return
advertiser - Quality Automation
Graphics is a leader in the building control industry;
providing energy efficiency education display dashboards, 3D symbol
libraries, 3D design, and graphic outsourcing.
Tell our sponsors you saw their ad on the AutomatedBuildings.com web site
and thank them for supporting your free access to evolving Automated
Building Industry information. Click on their ads and view their valuable
products and services. Please review all
Our Sponsors.
Building Cloud
Connections
When we started AutomatedBuildings.com we joked
that our purpose was to "join the dots" of our Building Automation
industry...the dot coms, the dot org etc . Eleven years later all these
connected dots to our web site have led to the new focus of building cloud connections.
The
cloud contains
Software as a Service
(SaaS, typically pronounced 'sass')
. Our new mission is to expose how the dot com & org are using the cloud to
provide their products and services. The identification and use of these
valuable industry cloud connectors is essential to propel our industry
forward at warp speed so it can radically change to survive.
After dropping my aging pocket pc phone into a tidal pool...(the jury is
still out on whether it was intentional or not) the replacement iphone
provides me a hand held cloud connector designed for that purpose. While
the pocket pc struggled to run its own apps on a small, crash often,
operating platform the iphone simply connects to powerful web services
running on secure servers and with bullet proof operating systems. The
fact that the iphone once connected to the cloud can self heal, update
its firmware plus completely replace its operating system including features not
originally provided raises the bar for our industry's products to follow
this example. This device is a harbinger of our near future and does
complex things simply with a little help from the clouds. That has to be
our new mission doing complex things simply. OK I am done now, time to get on
with what is in this month's issue and how it is helping build cloud
connections.
A must read is my interview
with
Rick Huijbregts of Cisco;
Building Automation and the Cloud
With
the new Cisco® Network Building Mediator we are taking it to the next
level to enable the Internet of Things. Now, billions of sensors,
controllers, actuators etc. can be added to the Network as the platform
for the transformation of life experiences.
Another
cloud connection is explained well in
Automated Continuous Commissioning
David Wolins, Scientific Conservation, Inc. (SCI)
SCIwatch is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution that
automatically and persistently predicts, detects, diagnoses and
prioritizes system faults and anomalies that are constantly present in
office, retail and institutional buildings.
Next connection
Track LEED v3 Credits in Project
Management Software Houston
Neal, Software
Advice
ADOC provides a fast secure easy to use web based project
management application that allows facility owners and construction
managers to exchange project documents and information electronically
with their contractors, architects, engineers, and consultants
In Jim Sinopoli's, article
Drilling for Dollars
he states;
Each of the IT networking titans now has products,
primarily software, to monitor, manage and provide information on energy
usage. The hardware and software covers homes, buildings, smart meters,
electric cars, IT networks, and building automation systems. Almost all
have been released this year and some are in limited release, beta
versions or development. Here’s an overview of some of the offerings:
This month our
interviews come alive, be sure to read, listen, and watch
the
series developed and produced by BusinessWeek sponsored by Cisco and
streamed on WebEx launch from this interview
IntelligentBuildings® and BusinessWeek
with Tom Shircliff & Rob Murchison
There is so much information and even hype out there that BusinessWeek
wanted to get some higher level clarity on smart/intelligent/green/high
performance buildings. Some of your readers may find it basic in nature
but we think this kind of message needs to get out more - just like you
and others are continuously doing by volunteering to speak or moderate
at the conferences, write for publications, do interviews etc. I think
you have called it “outreach and education”.
Other August Interviews are;
A
Clean Interface to all Information Roy
Kok Kepware,
Integrated Energy Storage System John
McGee Ice
Energy,
The
Green Building Power Forum '10
Jeff Shepard Darnell
Group,
Address Operating Inefficiencies
David Wolins.
August Reviews:
Cisco
Network Building Mediator,
Internet
of Interactions,
Future with Flexible Paper OLED,
Integrating Lighting and Building Control
August Columns:
Airflow Monitoring
Steven R. Calabrese,
High Performance Buildings - Water Side
Paul Ehrlich & Ira Goldschmidt,
Opening the OPC Mailbag,
Manny Mandrusiak,
Distributed Energy Resources and Storage
Toby Considine
This article from Wired
Magazine is a harbinger of the resulting social change beyond the cloud.
We underestimate the power of our tools to reshape our minds. Did we
really believe we could collaboratively build and inhabit virtual worlds
all day, every day, and not have it affect our perspective?
http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-06/nep_newsocialism
It is a
great time to be in the news business for our industry.
Send comments and suggestions to
news@automatedbuildings.com
