The future of BMS is OPEN ?
For Wales Green Building Marketplace
(The short version !)
10th February 2016
© T4 Sustainability Ltd
What are we talking about ?
Any system fixed within a building which
monitors or automates the behaviour of
the building to facilitate its use, comfort
and safety, for example
• energy management,
• access and security, and
• emergency response, e.g. fire alarm.
Sometimes called BMS, BEMS, or ICS
(Infrastructure Control Systems)
Things to think about…
1. What are the common problems with
these systems ?
2. What are we doing to meet our own
needs ?
3. If this is to be part of a general
solution, what standards should we
follow or develop, and where should
we go next ?
What are the common problems
with these systems ?
• Cost - hardware, rental or purchase, and software
licenses, upgrades etc.
• Lack or non use of open standards.
• Poor interoperability between product ranges and
manufacturers.
• Finite product lifecycles and obsolescence.
• Obscure cabling / networking requirements.
• Duplication of cabling and sensors between systems.
• Lack of sharing of raw and interpreted data between
systems.
Example
The Galleries Of Justice Museum, Nottingham UK
Summary of the financial problem
•
•
•
•
Replacement cost £41,509 (59,299 EUR).
20 year service life with luck.
Depreciation > £2,000 (2,860 EUR) per year.
Annual maintenance cost > £3,300 (4,700 EUR)
per year.
These combined costs are significantly higher than
the value of fuel and staff time saved.
What are we doing to meet our
own needs ?
oBeMS
open source
Building energy Management System
What have we set out to do ?
• Long range plan is to develop ‘oBeMS’, an
Open Source Building Energy Management
System.
• Some AMR functionality is already
prototyped as a useful subset of the BMS
system.
• BMS functionality to be developed to
support users of buildings, and academic
research (e.g. the SmartPod project,
undertaken by Derby University, EKV
Design, De Montfort University, and T4
Sustainability).
• Some basic control experiments have
already started.
What do we want from the system ?
• Modular, hardware independent.
• Based on widely available open source
software and hardware platforms.
• Single location or distributed (IoT).
• Low cost but accurate, flexible & configurable.
• Data structures to support analysis and
decision making from time series data.
• Open Source ‘product’ and tool chains.
Scalable systems
• Simplest - one location, one sensor, one
cheap single board computer.
• More complex - spread over many
locations, many sensors at each location,
archival database, visualisation and
analytical tools. Can aggregate or compare
data from multiple sites with single SQL
query. Sophisticated user interface.
Simple LAN
Web server
oBeMS client
Sensor server
_____________ Various users / managers of the system _____________
Web server and RDBMS
NAT Router
for Archive
Site
Global IP network
NAT Router for Site 1 LAN
Web server
oBeMS client
Sensor server
Web server
oBeMS client
Sensor server
NAT Router for Site 2 LAN
Web server
oBeMS client
Sensor server
NAT Router for Site 3 LAN
Web server
oBeMS client
Sensor server
Web server
oBeMS client
Sensor server
Software Overview
Can be seen as a software ‘stack’ where the
components need not be located on the same
machine:
• Configuration / scheduling
• Behavioural interpretation / analysis
• Archiving goals, data, reasoning, and actions
• Interpretation of sensor data, goals and rules
to decide physical actions
• Data aggregation / forwarding
• Servers for sensors
What hardware are we using ?
• Now on our third try:
• Raspberry Pi - Cheap, a lot of memory,
open source OS and tool chains.
• See http://www.raspberrypi.org
• Could just as soon be BeagleBone etc…
Example:
Measures industrial
unit electrical
consumption plus two
PV systems.
First experiments with
pulse output electricity
meters
What sort of data can be
collected ?
Anything with a pulse output
•
•
•
•
electricity meters,
gas meters,
water meters,
GM counters etc.
Analogue signals
• anything that can be converted to a
voltage.
Simple PV system - Jun to Nov
What’s the communications
architecture?
• Client server communicating via IPv4
address and port number for now.
• Software modules can be distributed to
run anywhere, (but should be clustered
on hardware to minimise number of
possible points of failure, and minimise
network delays).
What messaging protocol are
we using ?
• The very simple ad hoc protocols used now
are easy to read and interpret.
• Other message protocols could easily be
added as modules.
Future plans
• Reliability and stability
improvements.
• Ways to express BMS rules without
coding in C++.
• Intuitive configuration tools for non
programmers.
• Control functions implemented as
well as monitoring.
Which Open Source license ?
• http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd
• Probably GNU General Public License v2
• http://www.gnu.org/
What about hardware ?
• Isn’t the Raspberry Pi just a toy ?
• How long will it be around ?
• Is it up to the job ?
• What else is needed to make it
useful and robust ?
How Do You Access The
Hardware ?
• The oBeMS Open source software allows
local and networked access to the hardware.
• It includes a template for the development of
Building Management, Energy Management,
and Infrastructure Control Systems.
What is Free ?
• “Free software” is a matter of liberty, not
price.
• Think of “free” as in “free speech”, not as
in “free beer”.
What standards should we
follow or develop ?
Open question for potential users.
• What features do you need / want ?
• Do the standards we need for ICS
interoperability exist ?
• Are they accessible at acceptable cost ?
• Where are the gaps in the standards ?
• Who might develop any necessary
standards or protocols to fill the gaps ?
Can I see this running live ?
Yes - please contact us for latest test
URLs.
Are there other projects like this ?
We’re pleased to say that there are, and
we anticipate that more will emerge over
time. Examples include:
• http://openenergymonitor.org/emon/
• http://www.gurux.fi/
• http://pleg.ma/research/
So should the future of BMS / ICS
be open ?
Yes !
But only if the will is there to make
and use Open Systems.
© T4 Sustainability Ltd
Thank you - Any questions?
Contact us:
John@T4sLtd.co.uk
+44 7785 563116
© T4 Sustainability Ltd
Wales Green
Building Marketplace
#WGBM16
@WalesGreenBuild