BAS Control Device Automatic Failure Recovery
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional building automation and HVAC control systems require manual intervention by field technicians for recovery from hardware or software failures, leading to inefficiencies and increased maintenance costs.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a control device with a memory that stores executable components, including a BAS component, OS component, and boot loader, which performs restart procedures based on fault conditions, incrementing counters to determine if a recovery boot or normal boot is necessary, and utilizing a recovery storage partition to automatically restore the system from backups.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If manual intervention by field technicians is used for recovery from hardware or software failures, then system reliability is maintained through expert diagnosis and repair, but service productivity decreases due to increased service calls and technician dependency
Solution Approach 1:
The control device automatically recovers from failures by executing recovery procedures without requiring field technician intervention. The system monitors its own operational status, detects faults, and autonomously restores functionality by reloading software components from backup storage partitions, thereby eliminating service calls while maintaining system reliability
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary actions by maintaining backup copies of software components in separate storage partitions before failures occur. When a failure is detected, the recovery process immediately restores from these pre-prepared backups, enabling rapid automatic recovery without waiting for technician arrival or manual diagnostics
2Productivity
If automatic recovery procedures are implemented, then service productivity increases by reducing service calls, but device complexity increases due to additional storage partitions and recovery logic
Solution Approach 1:
The storage system is segmented into distinct partitions: a main storage partition for active software components and a recovery storage partition for backup copies. This segmentation allows the system to automatically switch between partitions during recovery operations without requiring complex external intervention, achieving automatic recovery while managing complexity through structured organization
Solution Approach 2:
The system creates copies of software components and stores them in a recovery storage partition. These copies serve as ready-to-restore backups that can be automatically deployed when failures occur, enabling productivity improvement through automatic recovery while keeping the complexity manageable through simple copy-and-restore operations
3Reliability
If restart counter thresholds are used to determine recovery boot procedures, then automatic recovery accuracy improves by distinguishing between transient and persistent failures, but measurement precision requirements increase for detecting and counting restart events
Solution Approach 1:
The boot loader component is configured with predetermined restart counter thresholds before operation begins. These pre-set thresholds provide clear decision criteria for distinguishing transient from persistent failures, improving automatic recovery accuracy while avoiding the need for complex real-time analysis or high-precision measurement of failure characteristics
Data Source
AI summary
Architectures or techniques are presented that can facilitate automatic recovery from a component failure exhibited by a building automation system (BAS) control device and/or a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) control device. A failure or fault condition with a software or firmware component can be automatically repaired. A failure or fault condition with a hardware component can be identified, potentially more quickly, and hardware component replacement can be streamlined or simplified.