telljcl Posted October 17, 2013 Posted October 17, 2013 In looking at automation possibilities for a school, is there a system like ISY that can be integrated into an existing complex, without much dedicated control wiring etc...? A system that could use a combination of wireless technology as well as powerline or hard-wired controller / responders? The campus has numerous buildings, all added at different times - some are 35 years old, others are LEED certified. I love the flexibility my ISY gives me at home, but would like any leads if anyone has them. Thanks!
Michel Kohanim Posted October 17, 2013 Posted October 17, 2013 Hi telljcl, ISY994iZ Series has been successfully used in a variety of school buildings including a high school with 5 different buildings. The addition of high powered Zigbee allows you to communicate with RCS thermostats and load controllers without any additional wiring. Furthermore, ISY is OpenADR 2.0 (a) and soon ( certified which means that it can participate in demand response programs provided by your utility. With kind regards, Michel
telljcl Posted October 18, 2013 Author Posted October 18, 2013 Thanks, but I was hoping to avoid having to use Insteon, or rely heavily on it. What can be done with Zigbee, and also is ZWave available yet? I have tons of Insteon modules in my home and they go out periodically and have occasional communication issues - the RF is terrible. I hate to wish all that on our school - but if we had to go primarily Insteon, would it be possible to use 1 ISY for each building (or maybe several buildings), and have the various ISY units communicate with each other, i.e. run programs that could control devices that were linked to other ISY units? Thanks!
Michel Kohanim Posted October 18, 2013 Posted October 18, 2013 Hello telljcl, Thanks, but I was hoping to avoid having to use Insteon, or rely heavily on it. I think the first question would be: what are you trying to control and/or sense. If thermostats and heavy duty load controllers, RCS Zigbee thermostat/load controller will be sufficient. If you want to change every switch in every class room, then your wireless of-the-shelf-inexpensive choices are pretty limited: INSTEON, Z-Wave, or UPB. What can be done with Zigbee, and also is ZWave available yet? Zigbee thermostats and load controllers. Z-Wave will be available soon. I have tons of Insteon modules in my home and they go out periodically and have occasional communication issues - the RF is terrible. Again, the question is what you are trying to achieve. I very much doubt you would want to have the same configuration as your home at school. I hate to wish all that on our school - but if we had to go primarily Insteon, would it be possible to use 1 ISY for each building (or maybe several buildings), and have the various ISY units communicate with each other, i.e. run programs that could control devices that were linked to other ISY units? Yes. With kind regards, Michel
telljcl Posted October 18, 2013 Author Posted October 18, 2013 Thanks - obviously using multiple ISY units and controlling them from a single unit in programs is above my pay grade, but its good to know it is possible. I guess there are no "commercial grade" switches / power load switching devices like the Smarthome Insteon units? They just don't last in my experience.
apostolakisl Posted October 18, 2013 Posted October 18, 2013 Thanks - obviously using multiple ISY units and controlling them from a single unit in programs is above my pay grade, but its good to know it is possible. I guess there are no "commercial grade" switches / power load switching devices like the Smarthome Insteon units? They just don't last in my experience. What are you trying to do? Control every light in every classroom or things like common areas and hallways? I would personally not expect an Insteon switch to survive the pounding that grade school kids might give it all day long but would expect a good life out of a switch that mostly is operated manually by adults and/or automatically by commands from ISY. Of course a school is probably on 3 phase and who knows what kind of "noise" exists. 3 phase certainly works fine with Insteon, but it is one more thing to consider. It isn't very hard to have one ISY talk to another using the network module. It would only be a minimal jump in "pay grade". The ISY has the REST interface and the network module can send a REST command to another ISY to run a program, turn a device on or off, set a variable, or various other tasks. If you want a full fledged marriage where device status and whatnot is shared. . . well that really is beyond what is reasonable with an ISY.
telljcl Posted October 19, 2013 Author Posted October 19, 2013 Thanks for the insight. I don't envision replacing every switch, but ultimately would consider expansion (as most people do in residential settings) above and beyond the "basic" things we'd wish to control initially. The Insteon stuff in my home doesn't receive what I'd call a pounding, but I'd guess that probably 25% of the modules / switches / etc... have failed within 5 years. Some under warranty, many not. So that must be considered when calculating payback on a system designed to save energy, time, effort etc... We may do a trial run with one main building using one ISY and see how it goes for a year - that may be one way to ease into it.
apostolakisl Posted October 20, 2013 Posted October 20, 2013 Thanks for the insight. I don't envision replacing every switch, but ultimately would consider expansion (as most people do in residential settings) above and beyond the "basic" things we'd wish to control initially. The Insteon stuff in my home doesn't receive what I'd call a pounding, but I'd guess that probably 25% of the modules / switches / etc... have failed within 5 years. Some under warranty, many not. So that must be considered when calculating payback on a system designed to save energy, time, effort etc... We may do a trial run with one main building using one ISY and see how it goes for a year - that may be one way to ease into it. The Insteon switches had a defect in the microswitches behind the paddle that caused them to fail (you push on/off and nothing happens or you have to push exceedingly hard). Insteon finally owned up to it and replaced all of those. I am not aware of any reason other than that that you would have so many failures. I have had only one switch out of my 60 or so fail since I replaced them about 4 years ago. And the one that failed failed almost right out of the box. They also had a defect in the lamp module with a bad diode and Insteon ended up replacing those as well. Having said that. I don't think I would consider Insteon to be commercial grade switches. Although, it may be the case that the switches receive very little physical use/abuse in your setting. If you manage to program the lights to be on when people want them on and off when people want them off, they may almost never get touched.
arw01 Posted October 20, 2013 Posted October 20, 2013 If you had to go insteon, I would NOT use insteon switches, but instead find a commercial/industrial switch that would work with the micro modules. Something shallow, and on each switch plate I would have engraved the insteon modules in the box. You would have to do a survey to make sure they fit and find out if they are using switch loops or not, and that could to totally inconsistent. Leviton might have an industrial control side as well, maybe check worthington distributions I think that's the name of the wholesaler, they carry a large number of manufacturers. I , however, suspect you would have to look into a company like johnson controls for industrial control systems. To me, one of the first phases would be to get power panel level monitoring going, like a GEM system or bigger. Run it for a month to get a baseline and then you know WHERE the power is going so you can take a look at how you could cut the power earlier or dimmer (perhaps with a couple of weather stations that the school included into its cirriculam) e.g. a Provantage system with light intensity, if you knew certain rooms could be dimmed 10% or so with the new dimmer insteon ballasts controllers, perhaps over a couple of years that pays for itself on sunny days vs cloudy days when you need it at full brightness. Also with the GEM type monitor, you could replace say one bank of lights with another type and compare them to the old set over a week or two, to find out if they really do save money. Just having some motion sensors on switches in the class rooms that trigger mico-modules to turn on or off the lights could potentially be a huge savings over a few years, and that does not even get into finer grained timing with heating a cooling systems using an isy or other industrial controller.
mdonato Posted November 1, 2013 Posted November 1, 2013 I would have to totally agree with arw02 on this. The micro modules would let you keep the heavy duty switches at the end user side of things. (a potential side benefit might even be that certain lights during certain hours could be programmed to be on or off regardless of what somebody does with the physical switch) As for the GEM unit, I think this would definitely be a great route to go. If you're not familiar with them, go to: http://www.greeneyemonitor.com or http://www.brultech.com their website is a little lacking on some details, but the products are a great entry point into power monitoring/control interfaces. Also, as for an HVAC control systems, make sure to look at the Honeywell Spyder technology. It's more of a distributed system where you can locate controllers in physical proximity to the equipment being controlled/monitored and then they talk to each other over a standard ethernet network (ideal for multi building campus'). The great thing is you can access all of the controllers programs/interface via connecting to 1 unit via a web browser/etc.
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