Gateway-Based Equipment Data Continuity Across Controller Replacement
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
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 and informative alerting system that can deliver timely and relevant notifications.
Innovation Solution
A lightweight alerting system that allows for customizable alerts, automatic data merging across controller replacements, and dynamic gateway poll rates to optimize data transmission, ensuring reliable analytics and efficient communication of equipment health and comfort status.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of repair
If controllers are replaced in HVAC equipment, then system maintenance and upgrades can be performed, but data continuity and logical identity of equipment operational data are lost
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a gateway as an intermediary component that mediates between the HVAC equipment controller and the data logging system. The gateway maintains equipment continuity by capturing controller data and preserving it with correct logical identity even when controllers are replaced, thus preventing data loss while allowing controller replacement.
Solution Approach 2:
The system creates and maintains a copy of equipment operational data through the gateway, which stores data with persistent equipment identifiers. This copying mechanism ensures that when a controller is replaced, the historical data and its logical connection to the equipment are preserved in the gateway's storage, preventing information loss.
2Reliability
If data from multiple controllers is merged automatically, then data continuity is ensured, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The gateway serves as an intermediary that automatically merges data from multiple controllers. It handles the complexity of data consolidation, matching, and continuity maintenance internally, while presenting a simplified interface to users. The gateway's automatic equipment identification and data merging capabilities resolve the contradiction by automating the complex process.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements self-service through automatic equipment identification and data merging capabilities. When controllers are replaced or added, the gateway automatically detects them, matches them to existing equipment based on operational data patterns, and merges the data streams without requiring manual intervention, thus ensuring data continuity while minimizing user burden despite the underlying 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 s 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.