The Future Value of the Smart Connected Door
Building automation 2.0 with focus on commercial buildings
Building automation is nothing new.
Like factory automation, the sensors and actuators in buildings can be networked in a variety of ways. Bringing convenience (sensor switching on the automatic blinders) or security (alarm system with direct line to police).
But with the Internet of Things, the possibilities are again enhanced. Building automation 2.0 or smart home now factor in data sources from seemingly endless sources.
In consumer industries we see the trend being called “smart home” with big players like Amazon, Google, Xiaomi, Apple at the forefront. All of them are looking to integrate many suppliers into their ecosystems. In the landscape of solutions the connection protocols are often limited in compatibility.
As of now, the private smart home mostly holds excitement as a technical novelty = “expensive toys”.
But as we transfer the concept to the professional space we can source value from several use cases.
In this blog post we will go through a few application examples of the Internet of Things. This is applied to an automatic sliding door in a commercial building.
- We look into the potential customer value from a “connected door”
- After that we look at application examples for an IoT enhanced door
- Finally we go through a few architectural considerations
How the “Connected Door” delivers value
Reliable operation
First priority is the flawless operation of the door with no unexpected downtime. Standstill can cause interruptions to the business processes and costly emergency repairs.
To ensure the reliable operation we:
- Collect utilization statistics (opening cycles) and motor current readings.
- From this we want to schedule inspections and maintenance based on actual asset use and wear indicators (motor efficiency drops → maybe is worn out).
- To make the asset’s history transparent, we can implement a digital twin. It contains the door’s history and its expected behaviour.
Security and safety
Safety for the visitors or customers is of high priority. In case of emergency, the door can be set to an emergency program. It can also be remotely controlled, for example continuously opened to not interfere with the emergency exit.
Security for the building can also be enhanced with a connected door:
- Connected to an entry control it can run certain opening programs. For example it only opens for an authorized user
- It can send an alarm to the central building control in case of standstill or misuse
Energy Efficiency
A measurable value can come from reducing the energy consumption of the building to maintain comfort and operation. This includes optimization of heating, ventilation and lighting.
The connected door can, for example:
- Increase ventilation if more than 5 people per minute enter. And to save energy, the ventilation can be reduced with a lower customer stream to the building.
- Trigger lighting during night time as someone enters a sector.
- Adapt its opening behaviour according to outside temperatures as not to lose too much conditioned air per opening cycle.
Easy andstraight-forward use
Especially for larger buildings or those that belong to a compound, an easy operation for the facility manager saves time and effort.
The ease of operation and monitoring can be achieved with a central control terminal on a connected device in the building network. That would allow the core applications without much effort:
- Central door operation via user interface
- Immediate on-site information about status and modus
- Remotely schedule and program opening behavior
Boosting the added value
IoT integration
As we want to take the “connected door” a step further, we integrate it into an IoT model.
This means, in our understanding that the door is now an internet-connected set of sensors and actuators.
One that can measure the two-way flow of visitors and can be programmed to open and close.
By learning how many people are present in a certain building or sector we can predict times of high utilization. This is exactly what Google does with mobile GPS data.
But, that’s not all.
By learning also how the people move between locations, we’re also able to extrapolate their movements to future dates.
Again, Google serves as an example. This time in form of traffic prediction.
Let’s scale that thinking down to commercial buildings and focus on sensing people entering and leaving a building or sector.
This would give us a utilization forecast, which we can relate other data like:
- time
- weekday
- season (winter/summer/holiday)
- weather
- surrounding events in the city
Use Cases
Example 1: Marketing Intelligence
Does the traffic to a shop increase with a certain marketing campaign? Did the increased stream of customers correlate with a hightened revenue during this period? How big was the ROI of the marketing campaign? How sustainable is the increase in visitors?
Example 2: Emergency Reaction
With real time information about people per building and sector the rescue teams can organize an evacuation in case of emergency. The doors can be remotely controlled to reduce air flow to the fire and guide people. For example, a door opens only into the direction of the emergency exit for civilians. For rescue teams they open the other way as well.
Example 3: Personnel Planning
Assume your restaurant has predictions about the customer flow. Now you would be able to schedule your personnel in advance. So, there will be exactly enough service personnel at hand. This helps avoid getting costly last-minute help and avoids idle personnel.
The facility management can be organized in a similar way. Necessary cleaning and repairs can be scheduled for less busy times. This reduces nuisance to the ongoing business.
Architecture model
Commercial buildings have a high product lifecycle up to several decades. This is why an architecture needs to factor in how to work with legacy infrastructure or without pre-existing infrastructure.
Connect
A viable approach would be to use existing networks to run a compatible standardized basis which is established in building automation, such as BACnet via TCP/IP. Wireless networks can be a good alternative to cable bound solutions. Tradeoffs need to be considered first:
- Cable is cheaper (if pre-existing), of higher bandwidth, lower latency, higher security, higher stability
- Wireless is more versatile and easier to retrofit in buildings without existing automation infrastructure. Plus, if large distances need to be covered it’s at a benefit.
At the edge
After establishing a building connectivity, an edge server can be put in place. This PC serves for processing tasks which require low latency and high stability (emergency programs, security protocols). The edge server also does a pre-aggregation of data before communicating it via a cloud gateway to the cloud platform. Common protocols include OPC/UA, MQTT, REST, JSON, AMQP
Up in the cloud
With a storage of historical data in the cloud and further processing, analytics can be run. So the cloud can offer apps to monitor, predict, control the asset.
Key Takeaways
This example shows added customer benefits in:
- Reduced inspection and maintenance effort, lower downtime risk
- Higher safety and security
- Reduced running cost with automation
- Reduced time to operate and monitor with remote access
With the following measures in architecture:
- Connectivity to LAN/WAN over BACnet/IP
- IoT edge controller for pre-processing, aggregation and on-premise HMI hosting
- Cloud infrastructure for historical data aggregation, creation of predictions, remote operation via cloud applications
Daniel Sontag connects the bots: As Industry 4.0 lead and manager for connected products, he does what he loves — tying business to tech, and theory to practice.
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