Gateway Alerting System for HVAC Contractor Workflow
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Solution Overview
Problem
Small to medium-sized HVAC contractors face challenges in efficiently managing and interpreting the large amounts of data generated by building management systems, leading to inefficient alerting workflows and a need for a more streamlined, user-friendly notification system that can differentiate between various alert priorities and provide timely notifications.
Innovation Solution
A lightweight alerting system that allows for customizable alert thresholds, prioritization, and push notifications, coupled with an auto-adjustment mechanism for gateway poll rates based on application needs, and a method to detect loss of space comfort control and HVAC capacity using proportional error and relative degree days, respectively.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a comprehensive building management system is implemented to monitor HVAC equipment, then system monitoring capability is improved, but data management complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a cloud-based intermediary platform that acts as a mediator between HVAC equipment and contractors. The gateway collects data from building management systems and transmits it to the cloud, where alert generation logic resides. This intermediary architecture allows comprehensive monitoring capability while offloading data management complexity to the cloud service, eliminating the need for contractors to directly manage complex local data systems.
2Loss of information
If detailed analytics and monitoring are provided to contractors, then actionable insights are improved, but workflow overhead increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by automatically generating alerts and notifications before contractors need to analyze raw data. The cloud platform pre-processes data, identifies issues, and creates actionable alerts with relevant information already organized. This eliminates the need for contractors to manually analyze complex datasets, providing actionable insights while reducing the time and effort required for workflow operations.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements a feedback mechanism where the system continuously monitors equipment status, compares it against thresholds and historical data, and automatically generates alerts when issues are detected. This closed-loop feedback system provides contractors with timely, relevant information about equipment problems, enabling them to respond to actual issues rather than manually reviewing all system data.
3Reliability
If traditional alerting workflows are used for HVAC monitoring, then comprehensive coverage is improved, but user-friendliness deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The system enables self-service by allowing contractors to configure alert thresholds and parameters through a simple web interface without requiring technical expertise in system architecture. The cloud platform automatically manages data collection, processing, and alert generation based on user-defined preferences. This maintains comprehensive monitoring coverage while significantly improving ease of operation, as contractors can independently customize their alerting experience without needing to understand underlying system complexity.
Data Source
AI summary
A program for light commercial building system (LCBS) solutions. Solutions and other systems may incorporate lightweight alerting service, auto-adjustment of gateway poll rates based on the needs of various consuming applications, detecting loss of space comfort control in a heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system, HVAC capacity loss alerting using relative degree days and accumulated stage run time with operational equivalency checks, and HVAC alerting for loss of heat or cool capacity using delta temperature and dependent system properties. Also, incorporated may be triggering a subset of analytics by automatically inferring HVAC equipment details from controller configuration details, ensuring reliability of analytics by retaining logical continuity of HVAC equipment operational data even when controllers and other parts of the system are replaced, and an LCBS gateway with workflow and mechanisms to associate to a contractor account.