The house in which I will live.
Real Intellect, whose clients include commercial entities and individuals, designs, installs and services integrated control systems. During my work at Real Intellect, both I and my colleagues have accumulated sufficient experience necessary to assess both positive and negative trends in the field of system management in relation to the Russian market. I myself live in a house equipped with such a control system, and as a user I can appreciate both the difficulties that arise during its operation and the advantages of using it.
First, of course, about the problems. I’ll start with operation, i.e. from the processes of communication between humans and technology at the everyday level. Those incidents that sometimes arise here are not due to insufficient reliability of the equipment, but due to a lack of experience in dealing with intelligent technology. I remember a recent incident. Call to the client: it turns out that the electric lamp has burned out. If this were not a “smart home”, the owner would simply change the lamp. But in this case, the “light bulb” was part of an intelligent system. This case, while anecdotal, is quite typical. Even more revealing are the attempts by maintenance workers to make electronic intelligence a “scapegoat.” It happens that operators, having touched some wire related to the control system, are unable to eliminate a trivial malfunction. However, installers and the “smart home” are blamed for everything. It turns out that the intelligent system should not only manage everything, but also be responsible for everything that, naturally, they cannot do.
Often a negative attitude towards automation is a consequence of lack of awareness. People think that if it fails, then all systems will immediately fail. In fact, this is only a connecting thread between various life support systems, each of which is equipped with its own automation and is completely self-sufficient. When designing decentralized systems, we always strive to ensure the highest possible autonomy of individual engineering components.
Sometimes the installers themselves are to blame for this attitude of consumers towards intelligent systems, as they choose not the best solutions. For example, in order to perform some basic operation, say, “dim” the light in a room, you need not just press a button, but first enter the menu, then select the desired bookmark, go somewhere else, etc. In this case, the installer was either incompetent or did not warn the client about the possible consequences of his clumsy decision. I often have to dissuade clients from such excesses as, for example, an extra control panel (which, by the way, is no less tiring than a complex menu).
And even if everything seems to be done correctly, the client may remain dissatisfied if he himself is not able to answer the question of what exactly he wants from a smart home. To understand such a client, the installer must either rely on his own experience or have the same mentality as the customer.
There are different ways to avoid mistakes and gain experience in this area. Certified KNX courses are now running.
However, only half of those who complete these courses subsequently specialize in installations. There are also those who do everything correctly even without any courses. And, perhaps, from the experience of past mistakes.
However, often the source of problems is not only the initial misunderstanding between the client and the contractor. Over time, even a good system may no longer meet the needs of the owners of the house: children grow up, the family grows… But by the time the need for rework arises, it suddenly turns out that there is no detailed documentation on the structure of the system, and the company that installed the equipment refuses to restore the wiring structure or no longer exists at all. Our company is ready for such a situation: there is a special program that allows you to scan the contents of the ROM and restore the structure of the network with sensors, controllers and actuators connected to it. However, the customer will have to pay for the fact that the contractor failed to fulfill critical obligations at some time in the past.
It happens that documentation is available, but compiled with gross errors. For example, in one project, 300 devices were mounted on the bus, while the power supply capacity allowed a maximum of 64 devices! Now, by the way, the number of “defector” clients who bring such documentation is increasing.
If we talk about companies that really mislead customers, then these are “multirooms”. Many installers take advantage of customer ignorance to lobby for their specialized brands: “Why offer practically “invisible” KNX? Let’s build everything on a spectacular AMX!” Meanwhile, this system, like the more expensive Crestron, comes directly from Multiroom. Of course, AMX controls light and something else, but what KNX can fully do is not even close. And most importantly, the control system is centralized! This is exactly the case when a small defect in the “brain” paralyzes the arms and legs, i.e. all House. I’m not against AMX at all. It is undoubtedly comfortable and stylish. But we offer such solutions as an “add-on” to the Instabus bus, fortunately there is a ready-made gateway. Now there are KNX-compatible devices with good interfaces, so it has become easier to deal with the pressure of Multiroom. As, indeed, with attempts to impose on the client a system that is obviously limited in its capabilities, passing it off as a full-fledged “smart home” with several additional options. But in fact, AMX and Crestron are a good “Multiroom” and a good user interface for an intelligent system built on the basis of KNX. But this is not high end for either one. If you need high-end multiroom, then this is the Linn system. And if you want a full-fledged “smart home”, then this is already a set of KNX, LON, BACnet.
I won’t lie, KNX also has certain problems: there are undoubted advantages of a decentralized system with free exchange of information via the Instabus bus with an open protocol in KNX, but ventilation control is difficult. Sometimes in this part of the system you have to resort to LON and use the appropriate gateway. There is also no possibility to program the system by the user himself; the professionally oriented ETS software serves this purpose. But with all this, the capabilities of KNX are almost never fully used even at medium and large facilities, their range is so wide.
I would like to say separately about the German company Gira, which is one of the founders of the European KONNEX Association and is one of the five leading manufacturers of components for automated systems for “intelligent buildings”. The system based on Gira Instabus KNX/EIB offers an almost unlimited range of possible applications: from lighting control to facility management. Gira is also known for offering innovative solutions that make it possible to retrofit an existing system without any problems. In the West, the engineering of many prestigious hotels, office buildings of famous companies, public and sports facilities and private houses is controlled by Gira equipment.
The history of the “intelligent building” in Europe has been written for a long time. And in Russia it is only gaining momentum. And so that in Russia electronic intelligence ceases to be perceived only as an expensive toy, i.e. excess, integral experience of communicating with him and statistics of incidents must be accumulated. Then effective means for their prevention will appear. It is clear that both training of specialists and propaganda of these systems in the media are necessary, since tomorrow is simply impossible without them. But the main thing is that a person finally begins to understand what exactly he wants from a “smart home” and can formulate it as easily as today he formulates his request to an electrician.