3. ADVICES CONCERNING THE IMPLEMENTATION
3.1 Building management bus
The use of a building management bus allow an easy access to all sensors and actuators,
and the sharing of the available information between all the partial control systems,
making the integration of all controllers easier (see section 2.1). Several building buses
types are available. Choosing a well-supported standard (for instance, European
Installation Bus or LonWorks bus) gives a much wider choice of sensors and actuators
from various manufacturers, which should be freely interoperable. The development
work can be focused on the controller itself, instead of re-developing sensors and
actuators which are already available on the market.
A building management bus also makes smaller the cabling work between sensors,
actuators and controller.
3.2 Reliability and serviceabiliby
The long-term reliability of the control system is important. At a research level, some
minor bugs in the control system may be acceptable, but for a commercial system the
reliability needs to be maximal. For instance, the reliability of the overall system can be
improved by:
1
the redundancy of sensors (see section 2.5);
2
the use of a stable real-time system for the controller (avoid Microsoft Windows
when using a PC controller...);
3
a battery backup of the controller;
4
the designation of a well-trained responsible person for checking the correct
operation of the system permanently.
Serviceability is influenced by the use of a good user interface between the controller and
the maintenance engineers.
3.3 User interface
With complex control systems, the user interface plays a very important role: at the same
time it must be simple to understand and not ambiguous, even for users having no
knowledge in building physics, and it must explain the behaviour of the controller when
actuator commands are not intuitive, using adequate indexes.
A well-design user interface will also allow a better adaptation to user's wishes, by
preventing wrong reactions from the user.
3.4 Structure of the control system
Summary :
3.3 User interface With complex control systems, the user interface plays a very important role: at the same time it must be simple to understand and not ambiguous, even for users having no knowledge in building physics, and it must explain the behaviour of the controller when actuator commands are not intuitive, using adequate indexes.
Tags :
system,controller,sensors,bus,building,user,control,interface,reliability,actuators,between,aailable,use