Welcome to ControlTalk NOW for week ending March 30, 2014. Spring is in the air (finally!) and the baseball season begins. This week’s guests are OME Solutions’, Rick Warner, AKA the INNOVATOR, and Honeywell National Accounts Executive, David Witherspoon, who gives ControlTrends the big-picture perspective of the vast resources national accounts require.

The ControlTrends Awards is an amazing concept of cohesive goodwill. It is a time when we come together as an industry and celebrate as kindred spirits. We encouraged Vladamir Chaloupka to take complete artistic license in capturing the 2013 ControlTrends Awards and apply his professional lens and talents to our HVAC Industry, and this Vlad certainly did.

Belimo SY Actuator for Butterfly Valves: Belimo’s SY Series actuators were designed to work with their butterfly valves and other quarter turn valve applications. The patented gear drive mechanism provides for efficient, smooth operation while allowing easy manual override at any time. The SY actuators are NEMA 4, 4x rated and designed to meet the needs of HVAC and Commercial applications. Offered on the HSU and HS butterfly valve series, these actuators are available for on/off and modulating applications. Depending on the application, they are available in 24 VAC, 120 VAC and 230 VAC.

Today’s Realcomm Live Webinar: BAS, BMS, EMS, BOS – Uncovering the Smart Building Platform. Today’s LIVE Webinar: 12:30pm – 2:00pm EDT We’re starting to see widespread acceptance of the concept of a smart, connected building. While considering a comprehensive plan that involves operations, energy, sustainability and occupant systems, there arethere are myriad challenges but the opportunities of connectivity, integration and interoperability are extraordinary.

ControlTalk NOW first guest is the president of OME Solutions, RICHARD K. WARNER, PE, LEED BC&D, CEM, DCEP, CXA, EBCP. The string of titles and certifications after Rick’s name give immediate testament to the wealth of knowledge and experience Rick possess and so willingly shares with the ControlTrends community through his Innovation Corner. Rick, AKA, the INNOVATOR, will be back — providing much important content in the upcoming weeks. Don’t miss the INNOVATOR series!

IRS Virtual Currency Guidance & March 26th Update — In Case You Were Wondering. On a not too distant ControlTalk NOW, the subject of virtual currency and Bitcoin as a virtual payment, brought up some interesting dialogue, which left us speculating on the future impact it may make to our industry, if any impact at all. In either case, for the benefit of our ControlTrends Community, here is the latest information from the IRS concerning virtual currency.

Honeywell Paperless Recorders: Honeywell offers Trendview data recorders and an advanced analysis software suite to meet data recording needs. Three models are available with screen types that display various combinations of horizontal and vertical charts, digital values and bar graphs.

Niagara Summit 2014 Awards: Call for Entries! Since the last Summit, have you launched a new product that is based on or interfaces with the Niagara framework? Have you completed a Niagara-based project that exemplifies innovation, creativity and collaboration? If so, we hope that you will submit an entry for two new awards that Tridium will be presenting at the Niagara Summit to customers for exemplary industry achievement.

Our second guest on ControlTalk NOW, Honeywell National Accounts Executive, David Witherspoon. David provides great insight on how Honeywell has many channels to offer their national, even global customers with the open and consistent solutions they need and how products like Honeywell’s RedLINK wireless products now add to the modular concept of increasing the value of solutions over time.

“Just Because” — Improved Energy Efficiency Insights from Marc Petock, Vice President, Marketing at Lynxspring. Lynxspring is changing the way devices and systems communicate and collaborate across enterprises. Energy efficiency continues to be the largest contributing factor to flat-lining electricity use. The decline is due to many factors, from changing weather and economic recessions to the wider adoption of energy efficiency measures. But it is the latter that might explain the trend in recent years, according to a new study from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.

Public Privacy — An Oxymoron Worthy of Consideration. This ControlTrends post takes a small step towards addressing the enormous subject of Public Privacy as it pertains to Big Data. The boundless use and proliferation of Big Data is now everywhere at once — for every conceivable purpose from medical diagnoses and corresponding treatment plans, advertising networks, data brokers, insurance providers, smart grid operators and energy usage managers (our insertion point to this subject), public and private traffic management, border control, access to employment, criminal investigations and sentencing, justice authorities, scientists, the granting of social welfare, and combating social security fraud. The benefits are all too obvious. But what next? IBM has introduced “autonomic computing.”

ControlTalk NOW will continue to provide a weekly episode featuring the people, products, and the News of the Week shaping our world of controls, building automation, and the HVAC industry.

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This week’s ControlTalk NOW features Tech Tips, Red Carpet Interviews, Meeting Announcements, Product and Solution Infomercials, and HVAC News and Updates. As always, welcome to ControlTalk NOW.

On The ControlTrends Awards Red Carpet with Honeywell: Check out some of the stars from Honeywell: Roger Rebennack, Laura Kevitt, Patty Hall, and Tom Rosback, as they walk the Red Carpet and get interviewed at the 2013 ControlTrends Awards. The Honeywell team took trophies home in four ControlTrends Awards categories: Thermostat of the Year: Honeywell Prestige RedLINK, Marketing Tools and Support of the Year, Building Automation System of the Year: Honeywell WEBS, and Executive of the Year: Tom Rosback.

Mr. Jones’ ControlTech Tips: How to Size A Gas Pressure Regulator: Thanks to Stromquist & Company’s Bill Jones for this great Control Tech Tip. In this episode, Mr. Jones shows you the four things you need to know size a gas pressure regulator. Stromquist & Company has one of the largest gas pressure regulator inventories in the country and can meet your all of your gas pressure regulators needs.

More on Wireless Lighting Controls — Viable Options from WattStopper, by Brian Turner. After posting our recent article “Limits and Possibilities of Wireless Technologies,” our business partner over at WattStopper, Bryan Pike, got in touch with some concerns. They’ve been making wireless BULIT® (Basic Utility Light Intelligent Transceiver) controllers specifically for outside parking lot installations for a few years now, and we’ve been selling them with some success.

“Just Because.” In the Field with Marc Petock: The very versatile Marc Petock does it again — in his latest post to ControlTrends that puts us on the other side of the business table. As Lynxspring’s veteran VP of Marketing, Marc shares some of his vast knowledge of the Building Automation industry and marketing expertise. The ControlTrends community can look forward to much more of Marc’s profound industry insight in Marc’s new column, “Just Because.” Thanks Marc!

Don’t Miss! Global Visionaries Featured at Town Hall Meeting, April 1, 2014. *NEW* CLOSING TOWN HALL MEETING April 1, 4:30-5:30 p.m. The Closing Town Hall Meeting of the 2014 Building Energy Summit will feature an open mic discussion with The Energy Gang and international visionaries Jigar Shah, Stephen Lacey, Katherine Hamilton, John Picard, and Roger Frechette. What will the coming decades bring for energy efficient buildings? In this town hall discussion, we’ll take a deep look at cutting edge design, technology integration, environmental impact, and the global financial benefits of energy efficiency in buildings.

Introducing New RIB Product! PSH500A-LVC: * High/Low Voltage Separation * Five isolated 100 VA Class 2 outputs * 480/277/240/120 Vac to 24 Vac * 500 VA transformer * Perfect for VAV applications * Also available in PSH200A-LVC and PSH300A-LVC * Low Voltage wiring made easy with our power supply with low voltage wiring made easy with our plugable terminal blocks for easy access.

Microsoft’s Darrell Smith Predicts Seahawks Super Bowl Win and Saves Energy. In addition to optimizing energy savings, Darrell collects 500,000,000 data transactions every 24 hours from 125 buildings that occupy 15 million square feet and house 57,000 people. Darrell was kind enough to share how he uses data to make the Microsoft campus one of the most energy efficient complexes on the planet.

Lynxspring Training Streamed Live at Stromquist & Company Part 1: Stromquist & Company had a Lynxspring day at their Atlanta location. We streamed the event live. The following is part one of that Live Steam. In this episode Marc Petock and Clayton Plymil walk us through the Lynxspring portfoilo of building automation products including the JENEsys and Lynxspring CyberPro.

Controlco Partners with Control Network Solutions to Bring Innovation to Lighting Controls: Industry leaders add Big Data capabilities to NiagaraAX® platform. OAKLAND, March, 2014 – Lighting controls demand increasingly more attention from building managers across the globe. In California alone at the end of 2013, the state’s Department of Energy updated its Building Energy Efficiency Program with a lighting requirement that demands multi-level lighting controls (at least three to four levels), putting strain on existing systems that aren’t able to integrate at this volume.

ControlTalk NOW will continue to provide a weekly episode featuring the people, products, and the News of the Week shaping our world of controls, building automation, and the HVAC industry.

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The post ControlTalk NOW for Week Ending March 23, 2014 appeared first on ControlTrends.

Mike Welch’s interview and review of DALI and LED Lighting are featured in this week’s ControlTalk NOW, along with another batch of new products, solutions, and as always, breaking news from the HVAC Industry and need-to-know information. Welcome again, to ControlTalk NOW.

ControlTalk Now March 16 from Eric Stromquist on Vimeo.

Lots to Learn from the Target Cyber Incident: Building management cyber security should be part of an overall risk management process and a company procedure. “We Can Learn From the Target Cyber Incident,” by Marc Petock, Vice President Marketing, Lynxspring and Connexx Energy as published originally in the March, 2014 edition of automatedbuildings.com. The Target incident is another example of a cyber-incident that struck close to our industry and is another stark wake up call to businesses to be more vigilant and to take more preventative care when it comes to the cyber security of their assets.

Realcomm Advisory Update: SPRINT Real Estate & CBRE Embrace Mobility to Set High Innovation Benchmark. The Sprint real estate group together with CBRE created an innovation program focusing on mobile technologies. The goal was to create e Sprint real estate group together with CBRE created an innovation program focusing on mobile technologies. The goal was to create a formal structure where leading ideas could be explored, vetted, implemented and evaluated.

ACI Brings Home The Trophy: ACI, won again at the ControlTrends Awards! This year ACI won the Award for the 2013 ControlTrends Awards Peripheral Product of the Year from a Small Manufacture. If you need sensors ACI has a solution for you. Congratulations ACI! Few manufacturing companies are able to balance an aggressive competitive spirit with a palpable corporate heartbeat. ACI is not just an industry leader, but a committed community member able to sustain an active and viable community commitment, which is not an easy task to perform. ACI does it all so well and they make it seem easy. Take a look at ACI’s intuitive website, you’ll be very impressed.

Why LED Lighting Might Not Be Your Best Choice: Mike Welch Explains. Thanks again to our friend Mike Welch, from Control Network Solutions UK, for how outstanding thoughts and insights on lighting, lighting control and how to have a smarter building. CNS is a Niagara AX® Developer, Tridium and Honeywell Partner. CNS has a successful track record of creating both client specific and off the shelf web based solutions to the SMART buildings control environment world. They are based upon open standards network communication protocols and compatible with the “Internet of Things” (IoT) and demands for “big data” cloud based analytics.

2020 Thermostat Odyssey: Picking a Smart Thermostat for Stanley Kubrick’s House. In perhaps the most current and comprehensive smart thermostat report to date, Rachel Cericola reviews the next-gen “quasi-stats” now available. The list contains many of the usual suspects, but also includes a few “outside the box and not just a thermostat” thermostats, or “quasi-stats,” that are competing in the smart-stat market — especially aimed at the feature-hungry, up-scale, and smart DIY homeowners. Rachel also provides some good advice to consider before buying a smart thermostat.

Honeywell Wins The Trendy: Best Marketing Tools and Support. Congratulations to Amy Anderson and her marketing team at Honeywell for the winning the 2013 ControlTrends best Marketing and Support Award. Honeywell’s new approach to reach the hearts, minds, and warehouses of its distributors means that Honeywell will be busy touring the country the months of October and November, launching new high-end integration items like the competitively priced Sylk LCD wall module, Sylk IOs, and new additions to their Spyder and Stryker family, as well as their expanding field devices including new valves and actuators.

Therese Sullivan on the SensorWeb: Is ‘Finding Stuff’ the Killer App that Will Drive IoT adoption in Buildings? Therese Sullivan, Buildingcontext.me highlights the brands and people that are succeeding at marketing to buildings professionals via digital media. In this article Therese keeps the ControlTrends Community on top of the SensorWeb developments. We just took one big step toward the Sensor Web—a concept that combines sensors, Geographical Information Science (GIS) and mobile telecom’s location-based services (LBS).

DGLogik’s Latest Feature Release: Dataflow – Modern Visual Programming for Building Automation
San Francisco – March 7, 2014 — DGLogik is excited to announce the addition of a revolutionary feature called Dataflow, to our 2013 award winning product – DGBox. With Dataflow, DGBox users now have the ability to create logic sequences within a modern visual programming UI. Connect and command all devices, objects and operations as “smart blocks” with inputs and outputs…without having to write any script!

Honeywell Announces the New AX3-PPC Programmable Plant Controller: Honeywell is pleased to announce the availability of the AX3-PPC programmable plant controller, which is ideal for controlling and monitoring a building system including HVAC equipment, lighting and meters. The AX3-PPC programmable plant controller, which is ideal for controlling and monitoring a building system including HVAC equipment, lighting and meters.

JCI – York Announce Affinity S1‐TTSCC02 Wi‐Fi Communicating Control Product Introduction. In JCI’s continued effort to expand their Affinity product offering, JCI is pleased to introduce the Wi‐Fi capable version of their Affinity Residential Communicating Control. The Wi‐Fi capability provides homeowners with remote access to the control system from their Smartphone or tablet device using the IntelliComfort mobile app, allowing them to easily monitor the status of every enabled system device.

2013 ControlTrends Awards Highlights: And the Award Goes To… Thanks to our Mr.Jones (Bill Jones) for this great video of the 2013 ControlTrends Awards. Bill and his team worked very hard behind the cameras to make sure the magic of the 2013 ControlTrends Awards was captured on film. Nice job Mr.Jones!

ControlTalk NOW will continue to provide a weekly episode featuring the people, products, and the News of the Week shaping our world of controls, building automation, and the HVAC industry.

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The post ControlTalk NOW for Week Ending March 16, 2014 appeared first on ControlTrends.

The prospects of Spring and warmer weather are certainly worth the lost hour of time as we reach the March daylight savings milestone. This week’s ControlTalk NOW features more highlights and interviews from the 2013 ControlTrends Awards, presents several new products, solutions, a great training video, software upgrade announcement, and a host of other breaking HVAC Industry news and information. Welcome to ControlTalk NOW.

Connexx Energy Announces SkySpark® Analytics Platform Availability As Cloud Based Application: Lee’s Summit, Missouri, March 4, 2014 — Connexx Energy, a leading developer and implementer of ‘last mile’ energy solutions for Smart Grid and Smart Building technologies, in cooperation with parent company Lynxspring, Inc. today announced the first DaaS (Data-as-a-Service) SkySpark application available as a hosted cloud solution. This offering now makes it easy for ESCO’s, building system integrators and automation contractors that may not have the resources to deliver the benefits of analytics and building diagnostic data to their customers.

Siemens Air Velocity Sensor: The QVM62.1 Air Velocity Sensor/Transmitter from Siemens is ideal for ventilation control applications that require a high degree of accuracy and reliability in a compact package. The sensor features an innovative hot film anemometer element which provides high accuracy throughout the measuring range and is less sensitive to dust and dirt than other common anemometer designs. This increases reliability and decreases maintenance costs.

3rd Annual Demand Response Virtual Summit, March 20, 2014: Advances in automatic demand response (ADR) coupled with recent regulatory trends, developing capabilities of the smart grid, and the drive by customers to cut energy costs are leading to significant new opportunities for ADR.

The HVAC Service Tech’s Guide To Valves and Actuators: If you work with HVAC or Building Automation Controls this is a must watch video. Stromquist & Company’s Tim Chamblee gives you the 411 on HVAC control valves and actuators. In this short, information packed video, filmed at a Stromquist & Company HVAC Controls training class, Tim gives you all the information you need to effectively work with the valves and actuators you will find in the buildings you service.

ENERGY.gov Announces $10 Million for Innovative Commercial Building Technologies and Unveils New Commercial Buildings 101 Video. March 5, 2014: The Energy Department today announced a $10 million funding opportunity to help demonstrate and deploy energy efficiency technologies for commercial buildings, including projects that will bring next generation building systems and components to a broader market faster – helping to save building owners and businesses money by saving energy. The Department also released a new video in its Energy 101 series highlighting how commercial buildings can incorporate whole-building design and innovative technologies to improve energy performance.

Honeywell WEBs-AX 3.8 is Now Available for Download on the Buildings Forum. Honeywell is pleased to announce the availability of the WEBs-AX 3.8 system software which includes software tools for Spyder, Stryker and Venom. This packaged software saves substantial amount of time by not requiring customers to download and install the tools separately.
The WEBs-AX software is now updated with several new features which include significant security enhancements, improved data management, with updated vector graphics support, enhanced mobile functions, and support on Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012.

Rocking The Red Carpet With Johnson Controls: Johnson Controls showed up in a big way at the 2013 ControlTrends Awards in New York City. See what Chris Eichmann, Chris Lane, Dan Flaherty and King Thomas had to say on the Red Carpet. Johnson Controls won the Best Commercial Vendor of the Year, and Chris Lane was co-winner of the Most Valuable Support Person of the Year.

7 Minutes in Control: What To Expect With Niagara 3.8. 7 Minutes in Control is the brain child of Stromquist & Company’s Rob Allen. Rob wanted to put together a weekly show that was short, concise and offers useable information to the building automation control tech. Based on Episode 1: What to expect with Niagara 3.8, we think Rob has a winning formula. Stay tuned to controltrends.org for the latest episodes of 7 Minutes in Control.

ControlTrends Awards Highlight: James Johnson Support Person of The Year. See Tridium’s James Johnson accept the Award for the 2013 ControlTrends most Valuable Support Person. James won this Award in 2012 and the world wide ControlTrends Community recognized James again the year as co-winner of this prestigious award. Keep up the great work James!!

ControlTrends Museum: The design and development wheels continue to turn and we are excited to share with the ControlTrends Community, the progress we are making with ControlTrends Museum. We thank the support that we have received so far for the ControlTrends Museum and we look forward to working with key industry leaders in the near future for their additional ideas and support.

Openness and Connectivity are not the Same Thing: Stacey Higginbotham’s “A Tale of Two Thermostats” Thanks to Marc Petock for bringing this article from Gigaom’s Stacey Higginbotham’s to the ControlTrends Community’s attention. Not only does Stacey share some updated information and insight into the Ecobee and Nest thermostats, but she explains that openness and connectivity are not the same thing.

ControlTalk NOW will continue to provide a weekly episode featuring the people, products, and the News of the Week shaping our world of controls, building automation, and the HVAC industry.

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The post ControlTalk NOW for Week Ending March 9, 2014 appeared first on ControlTrends.