What is home automation?
Security, comfort, convenience and accessibility are just a few of the many benefits of smart home integration. A Building Automation System can make your home more secure, your work more efficient, your bills smaller, and enhance your lifestyle.
BAS – Not the tax form, it’s the one that makes your home a better place to live!
“A Building Automation System (BAS), is a computer-based control system installed in buildings that controls and monitors the building’s mechanical and electrical equipment such as ventilation, lighting, power systems, fire systems, and security systems.” (Wikipedia)
This all makes sense but in the real world a well designed Building Automation System (BAS) provides so much more. In your busy day to day, the ability for your home to save you time and money is something we don’t often consider.
A BAS can improve how you live day to day, making a difference to your household budget and your impact on the environment.
You can create beautiful, comfortable spaces for your family to improve your quality of life whilst enhancing the world around you. This may seem like a bold claim but through smart design of integrated devices as one system we can streamline tasks within homes and buildings to create seamless functionality between technology and everyday life.
“But wait… Aren’t these systems an invitation to hackers to control my house?” There is a common misconception regarding home automation that it is unsecure, unreliable and just a gimmick. In fact, DLA pride themselves in providing robust, secure systems.
Here at DLA we focus on education and advancement of this technology not just the products themselves to help every customer to see the wider benefits of these systems.
Our regular blog posts and reviews of products and systems will include advice and support that will help our customers understand and engage with what DLA and the wider industry has to offer.
So what does a system look like?
Basic systems consist of Sensors, Actuators and Controllers.
Sensors:
These are the inputs or the connection to the system from the real world. These come in the form of Switches, light sensors, motion detectors, weather stations, time/astral and many more.
Actuators:
The devices doing the work to make your life easier or to save you money. light bulbs, blinds, door locks and washing machines are all actuators providing the outcomes.
Controllers:
The brains or logic behind the system. They store and trigger your system commands, converting signals from different elements via a user friendly interface.
We need to keep in mind that most devices are a combination of some or all of these.
For example, a KNX wall switch can be all three. This switch can have a switch/button and sensor to trigger mode selections (sensor). The device will also have LED lighting as a status indicator or to highlight it in the dark (actuator). The switch microcontroller will also send and receive messages on the KNX bus (controller).
As technology becomes increasingly more cost effective to produce many devices will contain multiple functions, streamlining the backend systems and removing the need for multiple devices creating function rich systems with clean room designs.
In the past few years there has been great advancement in the Assistive Technologies. This area has grown exponentially providing a vast array of opportunities to create greater accessibility in every day household functions. It is now possible to take input or send signals from movement, sound, speech, touch or any kind of colour and light. This not only aids people with impairments but can also create fun, modern and intuitive environments for all. These amazing advances can be implemented into homes to create an environment that enables the user to create a comfortable secure and safe environment.
Security and privacy in your own home is a major focus when designing building automation systems. With stories of technology recording information or processing data in external servers this concern is very real. Not all systems require contact with the internet and Designed Lighting and Automation can build a secure automation system which is completely isolated from the outside word.
An example of the systems we prefer is KNX.
KNX bus is a highly secure system. With KNX Secure devices, KNX is now the first technology to meet the highest security requirements according to the encryption standard AES128. KNX is also the approved Building automation standard in the following organisations.
- International standard (ISO/IEC 14543-3)
- European standard (CENELECEN 50090 and CEN EN 13321-1)
- US standard (ANSI/ASHRAE135)
- China Guobiao(GB/T 20965)
In November 2017, Australian Standards announced that certain sections of the KNX Standard will be adopted as an Australian Technical Specification.
As an additional security measure, the KNX system can run certain “mission critical” systems on an uninterrupted power supply to ensure that even in the event of a total loss of power, your critical infrastructure continues to function. For example, in the event of fire, the building can be programmed to open access to all exits and illuminate access paths.
A secure system should also allow for redundancy and stability. There are non-centralised systems available, meaning that there is not one central controller. In this environment all devices in the system (lights, switches, touch panels, etc) act as a part of the overall system control. Each device stores its required program and knows the devices associated with its function. In this BAS a single or multiple unit failure only affects this local device and the remaining system can function as normal.
The main priority in a Designed Lighting and Automation designed building automation system is reliability and security. This is achieved through clever programming, tailored systems and collaboration with our customer to meet their system functionality expectations.
Most important of all:
A BAS needs to be easy to use. When was the last time you read a manual? It is a flaw in design if a device is not naturally intuitive to use – and so goes the mantra of Designed Lighting and Automation.
We manage the confusing – leaving you with a simple, reliable and secure way of controlling your habitat.
With intuitive design and tailored user interfaces, a Designed Lighting and Automation system just works. For added confidence we are always here to help with 24/7 service to all our installation customers.
We know better than most that a Building Automation System can be confusing and sometime seems impossible to compare apples with apples, which is why we recommended to talk to a specialist like Designed Lighting and Automation to tailor these pros and cons to your specific requirements, allowing you to make an informed decision.