Gateway Poll Rate Auto-Adjustment for HVAC Data Overhead Reduction
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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 and informative alerting service that can deliver timely and valuable notifications.
Innovation Solution
A system with adjustable gateway poll rates and role-based subscriptions allows applications to dynamically specify the data objects and rates needed, incorporating a lightweight alerting system that provides transparent and customizable alerts, and utilizes proportional error calculations to detect loss of space comfort control and relative degree days to determine HVAC capacity loss, enabling efficient data management and timely notifications.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Speed
If the gateway polls data at high rates to ensure timely notifications for HVAC contractors, then the responsiveness and timeliness of alerts is improved, but the data overhead and network traffic increases significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The gateway dynamically adjusts poll rates based on application-specific needs and data change events. Instead of using a fixed high poll rate for all applications, the system adapts the polling frequency to match the actual requirements of each subscribed application, thereby reducing unnecessary data traffic while maintaining timely notifications where needed.
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes the parameter of poll rate from a static value to a dynamic value that varies based on application requirements and data urgency. Different applications can subscribe to different poll rates, and the gateway adjusts its polling behavior accordingly, optimizing the balance between responsiveness and data overhead.
2Loss of information
If the gateway provides customized alerts for different applications with specific data rates, then the alert relevance and usefulness is improved, but the system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The gateway segments its alerting functionality into distinct application-specific configurations. Each application can have its own subscription parameters, poll rates, and alert thresholds defined independently. This segmentation allows customized alerts for different applications without requiring complex interdependencies in the configuration system.
Solution Approach 2:
The gateway implements a universal subscription mechanism that can serve multiple applications with different requirements through a common interface. The same gateway infrastructure handles diverse alerting needs by accepting standardized subscription requests from various applications, reducing the need for application-specific customization logic.
3Measurement precision
If the system collects and processes large amounts of HVAC data for comprehensive monitoring, then the analytics quality and diagnostic capability is improved, but the processing time and computational resources increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system extracts only the essential and relevant data points needed for specific analytics tasks rather than processing all available HVAC data. Applications can subscribe to specific data objects and parameters relevant to their needs, allowing the system to focus computational resources on processing only the necessary subset of data, thereby maintaining analytics accuracy while reducing processing time.
Data Source
AI summary
A system for light commercial building solutions (LCBS). 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.