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The Rise of Smart Buildings
Roland Piquepaille writes "In a very well-documented article, Computerworld describes the current status of building automation systems (BAS) that control heat, air conditioning or lighting and how these systems are merging with traditional IT infrastructures. Computerworld writes that they're not enough standards in this industry and asks a fundamental question: who will administer these building networks, IT or facilities managers? Take for example Yale University which wants to connect 210 campus buildings, but also wishes "to integrate the BAS with the university's accounting system for billing and chargeback." Imagine the security risks involved with such an approach. This shorter summary contains selected excerpts of this must-read article."
Technology gets smarter while some big companys tell dummys that they can also use technology, that they don't need specialized personal, in order to increase sales, since it's easier to sell shit to assholes than good products to smart people.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
he even has his own Wikipedia entry
Slashdot trolling phenomena
and suprise suprise Timothy is mentioned too
no wonder people dont subscribe to this shit
... all I can think of is "There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
And who in IT is qualified to check whether the chiller is being controlled properly, or the return fan is on at the same time as the supply fan so we don't blow the windows out?
The only time anyone outside of maintenance needs to see this stuff is possibly scheduling occupancy.
And standards? Not in any of our lifetimes. Bet on it.
Derek
How about turning your hot tub up to 210 degrees F? (99C for furriners)
how about turning your refrigerator up to 100 degrees for a few hours a day... and cooling stuff off just before you get home.
I think the smart building concept is wonderful... but those who can probably should roll your own until you are certain that the security problems have been solved.
Tech Public Policy stuff
from the article
Copyright © 2005 Computerworld Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Computerworld Inc. is prohibited. Computerworld and Computerworld.com and the respective logos are trademarks of International Data Group Inc.
enjoy the lawyers
For those of us out there who aren't in this particular field, what would really help would be some controllers and other types of devices that can be plugged into a fast ethernet/GigE network, given an individual network address, and which can be used to monitor temperature/humidity, turn on/off outlets, turn on/off switches (relays), log temperatures, or similar functions. Yes, there is that home automated system (X-10, aren't they the ones with the annoying pop up ads from a few years ago?), but I'm talking about a set of devices that are network aware themselves, which require no controller at a central location, and which can be controlled via browser or text files.
The system I'm describing probably exists outside of X-10. I've seen links in the recent past on slashdot to panasonic, possibly motorola, and possibly others brands. But I haven't seen a system tied in all together that is basically ip based and cheap (an outlet or light switch that can be turned on/off via ethernet should be as cheap as the parts themselves cost if you are using FOSS to control commodity parts).
We have motion, which works with usb or ethernet cameras such as axis. Are there any sourceforge projects that use commodity parts which can be attached to an ethernet network that control lights, outlets, switches, temperature loggers/monitors? Where I can use a simple script to control room temperatures? To monitor the temperature of water coming out of a water heater? To shut off electric heat in a kitchen when the refrigerator is running? To turn on/off exterior lighting based on a light sensor and monitor the time of when the lights went on/off? To turn on exterior lights when motion detects movement in one of the exterior cameras? To turn on attic fans when the temperature sensor reached a certain temperature, but turn it off if it detected a problem with the fan. Or turn it off if an attic smoke detector were triggered. Pre-heating (or cooling) homes before arriving home, with built in safeguards to shut down and trigger alarms/monitoring/neighbor calls/emergency personnel if an emergency arose.
There are a lot of applications which home and small business users could use such commodity parts to plug into an ethernet backbone where the savings would be in energy consumption and recording for safety/liability reasons. Small multi-family property owners could also benefit from such setups as well. To the benefit of the property owner and the tenants as well.
So is there yet a mythHome to compare with mythTV?
Don't want students to hack into the building management system? Simple, then. Just have that system dump its data to a secure store, and have the accounting system read that data. You don't want a live feed off of the HVAC monitoring system anyways.
The utilities and industry use SCADA to gather data from instrumentation and equipment. Then you just need the system that aggregates that information to report to F&A (finance & accounting).
As long as it's a one-way system, then the only risk for hacking is some knob futzing the info and making fraudulent payments, not screwing up the HVAC in a lab with a critical experiment, a hospital ICU, etc.
In case you missed it when I posted it on Roland's scam last Sunday, here is a writeup someone did on how Roland is trying to use Slashdot to make a living, and is apparently being aided in his efforts, for one reason or another by Slashdot's editors.
@de_machina
The last thing we need is automated building that are tied into computers.
I was having a conversation last night with a friend about how annoyed I am with the current crop of auto mechanics. I have a minor problem with my vehicle that I can't diagnose, but the shop won't even look at it.
Why?
"Because it isn't throwing a code."
Just because the check engine light isn't on doesn't mean there isn't a problem. The last thing we need are building supers who look at their computer screen and say, "I don't see a problem", because the water leak up on 17 hasn't gotten big enough for the computer to notice it.
All news is manipulated! News is about theatrics and deception. Case in point is I tried to get an article up early March about how the slashdot effect is waning . Did it get accepted? No. I know this isn't the place for complaining about articles not being submitted but the point I think is the people who have monetary interests want to maintain the invincibility of this site because it's good for business. Telling people the ship is sinking isn't.
I must say, as a Critical Facilities Engineer, I feel that most of the posters thus far are drastically downplaying (intentionally or not) the complexity of modern facility management as well as BAS systems.
I work for a large commercial real estate firm at a campus for a very large financial institution. Our facility is just over 1,000,000 sq feet and is comprised of 6 buildings including a data center. It is my opinion that the people that "take over" management and implementation of BAS's as they move forward can only be an as yet unkown hybrid of Facility Engineers and IT savvy people.
The reality is, there are many more things controlled and monitored by a BAS than just lights or a few VAV's to cool an office. Modern HVAC systems are quite complex and need to take into account hundreds of factors such as outside air temperature, drybulb and wetbulb temperature, relative humidity, static duct pressure, variable frequency drives on condenser water pumps, etc. (basically, it's much more complicated than "turning up the heat").
Additionally, the task of making staunchly built, proprietary communication protocols (i.e. Wonderware, Liebert, PLC's) talk to one another in a language/at a speed that each can understand is assuredly going to be an uphill battle at best.
I would argue that neither the current Engineering industry nor the current IT industry is fully capable of handling the task of taking this part of Building Automation where it needs to go. I think it's going to take people putting their egos in check, and perhaps risking the self-preserving, "essential cog" reputation earned by keeping information guarded if this is going to come to fruition.
Already we're able to do amazing things with our BAS (Insight by Siemens in case anyone's wondering) and I, as a confessed geek, am excited to see what more we'll be able to do. I think it's great that I can roll my chiller banks from the lead to the lag from a laptop on my kitchen table without the client being able to notice anything at all. I also think it's pretty amazing that if a static switch sees an irragularity on a wave form coming off of a UPS system's battery string, that I can be alerted of it, as well as have a record of it for trending/troubleshooting purposes. Say what you will, but I definitely think this is going to be an area to watch, and I dare say, probably one that will start in the commercial sector and quickly move into the consumer group. Think how amazing it will be to be able to turn the lights on at your house from your PC at work before you leave to drive home or to have your home HVAC equipment adapt to outside conditions or upcoming weather reports available online. I know there are some "home automation" products available now, but aside from webcam monitoring and a few light controlling relays, there really isn't anything exciting yet. I think it's going to get really interesting, and I think BAS systems are going to drive it.
Just my 2 cents.
They are on it!
(Note that the last references OPC, apparently a sensor standard)
You quitting proves that the karma kap worked. The most annoying of the whores shut up. --CmdrTaco
One should think of a process control system (HVAC for the 3rd floor) as similar to a RAID sub-system. Multiple moving parts. Different devices computing their own sectors, timing, etc. Servo motors have their own control logic that manages spin up, spin down, head stepping. A supervisory RAID system manages striping, adding hot-spares, etc. All present a common simple model to the OS that hides the physical muck underneath.
In most cases, putting an IP address on each coil or actuator in a building makes about as much sense as putting an IP address on each stepper motor on each drive in the RAID set. What you want to do is box the functionality, lets the system defend its internal mission and imperatives, and provide an external interface.
The ComputerWorld article is talking about IT managing that interface, not the internal control porcesses. TheJeffer is right; IT guys have not been trained in this demanding discipline. I have not been trained in auto mechanics. Even though there are a dozen computers in my car, I have nothing useful to say to them.
My car has an interface. The pedal on the right makes it go faster. The round thing makes it go side to side. There is a UI called a dashboard which is a rough interface to the digitial dashboard you may have in your business system.
LONWORKS, BACnet, NIAGRA, (in the HVAC world) DALI (n lighting), other local protocols, even proprietary protocols belong inside the sandbox. Other vertical markets with other protocols include Access Control, Intrusion Detection, Life Safety, and AV/Event Management systems. All of them scale badly across buildings and between systems today because they try to preserve the control protocols/connection orientation evan as they move to IP for the transport layer.
Anyone who tries to let the new IT hire from Accounting work control systems is looney.
but
There is nothing wrong with that accounting IT guy scheduling conference room 3 to be occupied tomorrow night (and let the HVAC deal with it. and let the lighting system deal with it). It is not a bad thing to let that accounting IT guy schedule the electric meter to be read before and after the meeting automatically.
Position these protocols for orchestration not control. Position a Gridwise-aware application (www.gridwise.org)that knows that the power grid is offering incentives for load shedding and also knows that the sales force is all at a new product roll-out to turn off the 3rd floor. Or becuase you can turn off any office space for 15 minutes w/o anyone noticing, get that power rebate for an hour by rotating "low Power mode" commands between 6 offices in the same metro area. What is low power mode? Well, that was set up by the controls engineers.
Security, and by that I mean grown up Directory aware security, must,of course, be in place.