ControlTrends

HVAC Tech School: The Easy Way to Convert 0-135 ohms to 4-20 ma

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What is the easiest way to convert 0-135 ohm signals to 4-20ma signals?

One of the most common questions we receive  at Stromquist & Company  is how to convert zero to 135 ohms signal into a 4 to 20 milliamp signal.


Think about how many times you have been in the field and your control signals don’t match. Maybe you have an older damper or valve actuator that operates off of a 135-ohm signal and the new controls system ends out a 4-20 ma signal. 

One option is to replace the actuator that takes a 0-135 ohm signal with an actuator that accepts a 4-20 ma signal. Your local control vendor will love you for this, and it will work but this is the expensive way to solve the control signal conflict.

A less expensive way is to use a device that will convert a 0-135 ohm signal to a 4-20 ma signal. 

ACI offers a plug and play interface board for this exact application. Watch as  ACI’s Tech Support Manager, Matt Buchholz, demonstrates how these devices work.

These are typically used in retrofit applications like the situation we mentioned before,  where you have a zero to 135 ohm actuator and your controller is sending out a 4-20 ma control signal. You will see these on control applications controlling ducks, tanks, boilers, pipes, and other heat exchangers.

The  ACI analog rescaling module DRM can be factory calibrated for a zero to 135-ohm input and a 4 to 20 milliamp output.

Another common question we receive is how to convert a 4 to 20 milliamp signal into a zero to 135-ohm signal.

Another product  we handle at Stromquist & Company is an interface from ACI called the DRM 3.1. The DRM series accepts analog pulse or floating-point input signals converts them into a proportional resistive output. it directly replaces a variable resistance controller and simulates the action of a slide wire or rotary potentially actuator..

The DRN 3.1 must be ordered with a resistance network, the resistance network would be ordered to match your required resistance output. The most common is a zero to 135 but other common values are zero to 270 ohms, zero to 1000 ohms and zero to 10,000 ohms.

The DRN3.1 is an interface that allows microprocessor control of a variable resistance. The DRN3.1’s isolated resistor network can be controlled by several different DDC signal types. It directly replaces a variable resistance controller and simulates the action of a slide wire or rotary potentiometer. All connections of the simulated potentiometer, the wiper and both ends of the resistance range, are available on the DRN3.1terminal strip.  The DRN3.1 accepts an ANALOG, PULSE, or FLOATING POINT input signal (including triac) and converts it into a proportional resistive output. The output resistance does not wrap around if the input signal exceeds the highest or lowest selected input value.  The DRN3.1 has on-board fail-back relays that lock out the original resistive signal during operation.  However, if the supply power is lost, control of the circuit will revert back to the original controller signal.  An easy local override can be made by placing a fixed (or variable) resistor between W and R Fail-safe terminals.  The DRN3.1 is covered by ACI’s Two (2) Year Limited Warranty.

The DRN4 is a resistive output motor actuator interface that accepts several types of DDC system signals. The DRN4 output is 0 to 135 ohms. The input signal types are field selectable by an 8-position DIP switch.  The floating point input accepts two digital signals, one for increase and the other for decrease.  The floating point full scale rate of change is 55 seconds.  Some triac input signals require an accessory.  The DRN4 is supplied in an enclosure that can be directly mounted to a 1/2 inch knockout on the motor acuator.  Color coded wire leads with spade connectors are provided for electrical connections.  The DRN4 is covered by ACI’s Two (2) Year Limited Warranty.

Thanks to Matt and the team any ACI for great products and great training resources.

Global Control 5 Advanced Building Automation Solutions Based on the Global Niagara Framework® Standard

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Global Control 5 creates solutions based on the global Niagara Framework® standard. It is a completely scalable solution for projects of all sizes. It has been used in over 800,000 facilities around the world - ranging from student campuses, hospitals, schools and apartment buildings to such large investments as Changi Airport in Singapore and the new Dubai 3rd terminal.

Global Control 5 designs and manufactures Intelligent Automation Management Systems (iSMA). ISMA offerconsists of software, DDC controllers, fan-coil room controllers, I / O modules and peripherals such as sensors, relays, etc. Our products are manufactured in Poland and sold with great success in the world. As a leader in intelligent automation management solutions, Global Control 5 provides unique system technology that optimizes energy efficiency and comfort in building management by reducing operating costs. 

Global Control 5 offers a simple, flexible and open building management system. We create solutions based on the global Niagara Framework® standard, which enables the integration of the Niagara Framework® system with systems from other manufacturers, thus allowing the building manager for a flexible selection of products.

Contemporary Controls Announces New Products, Training Materials and Events

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BASrouter 3.0 With Diagnostics Proves Popular!

In evidence at this year’s BACnet International Plugfest were many vendors utilizing the Contemporary Controls BASrouter 3.0 as the interface between the BACnet products they were testing and BACnet/IP. The BASrouter provides the connection between the IP and MS/TP networks, allowing vendors to verify that they can communicate successfully with devices on MS/TP. Our EISK Skorpion Diagnostic Switches are also helpful in capturing IP traffic via Wireshark to readily debug IP communications. We have provided these diagnostic switches to participants at previous Plugfests to facilitate testing.

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Skorpion Router Provides Factory Connectivity

Many manufacturing facilities are executing asset digitization projects incorporating Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) connectivity between devices. In many instances, plant-wide and machine-to-machine communication using an Ethernet-based protocol is the norm. In place of installing bulky bundles of wire and cable, a single digital communication cable can be used to exchange information.
 

New Products Showcased at SPS 2019

Smart Production Solutions (SPS) is one of the premier exhibitions for automation technology and is being held this year from November 26th to 28th in Nuremberg Germany. Suppliers of automation technology from around the world, including Contemporary Controls, will be there to exhibit and explain their latest products. Come visit us in Hall 10.0, Stand 141.
 

IEU Course Materials Enhanced

Knowledge of networking and automation equipment has always been a key ingredient in HVACR education. Contemporary Controls designs and manufactures the system building blocks for networking, integrating, and controlling automation processes with products built upon open technologies such as BACnet, Ethernet, Modbus, and Sedona. 
 

Episode 338 ControlTalk Now: New Trends in Smart Building Cybersecurity

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New Trends in Smart Building Cybersecurity is the topic on Episode 338 Of ControlTalk Now the HVAC and Smart Building Controls podcast.
Anto Budiardjo, CEO at Padi.io and Facility IT Evangelist and Cybersecurity expert is my guest this week and gives us a unique, useful perspective on the State of Cyber Security in Smart Buildings.

ControlTalk Now Transcript


The following is a presentation of the ControlTrends podcasting network

Eric Stromquist
Welcome to control talk now you’re smart buildings video cast and podcast for the weekend a November 10 2019. This is Episode 338, where we talk about all things smart building controls and HPC controls. For those of you don’t know, this is kind of a labor of love for Ken smilers and myself. We both have day jobs so this is what we pretend to be on the weekends. And customers always come first can had a customer that needed to be taken care of attend to to do today so he won’t be on the show and I’ve got a great guest and I’ll try and attempt to go at so low. So without further ado, I’m going to introduce our guest our guest this week. His name is Anto boo Dr. Joe from Padi IO, man, I can’t tell much appreciate a chance to talk to you. We want to have you on the show for a while and today is The day Anto thanks so much for taking some time to be with us.

Anto Budiardjo
It’s really great to be here and chatting with you. I’ve been watching the show for quite a while intrigued and happy to be invited. Great.

Eric Stromquist
Well, fantastic, fantastic. Well, you know, for industry, people who might not know, man, you’ve got quite a career in smart building controls and walking us through sort of what you’ve done and what got you to Patty.

Anto Budiardjo
Yeah, I kind of started this journey in the UK in London in the year of 1989. Believe it or not, that’s 30 years ago from from from right now. And my my focus area has always been not really in the control systems, but what sits on top of that and the integration of different different systems and the first project that I was involved with as a product called the CDC engine, which was an integration platform in the UK. Back then it was integrating trend control systems with Andover and lighting and lighting systems and security system CCTV and other stuff. So that’s really where it where it all started. And I did several sort of other platforms over the course of the 90s. Several of the products that I developed the integration platforms, but used in many different projects in the UK and Europe through a number of OEM vendors as well. So that was really kind of the initial sort of entry of Anto into the building controls industry.

Eric Stromquist
Very, very, very cool. And you know, along the way, like you say, you work with the great, great, great companies on the caca labs for a while. And so now you are going to tell us about Padi now because that is an exciting, exciting sort of blend of, you know, it and OT as far as I’m concerned.

Anto Budiardjo
Yeah. So Padi sort of continues on this sort of integration theme that I spoke about that started in the UK and In the late 80s, and 90s. And it was really a sort of realization that I kind of had about two years ago that they’re obviously building control systems and IoT is becoming more complex. There’s lots of different systems that are being integrated. And in a way we saw that back in, in the 90s. But the technology really wasn’t as suitable as it is today with the internet. So when I started looking at it again, about two years ago, I kind of thought now things have changed. Now, there’s this thing called the internet, right? And we do things differently today. And the key part of that was that most if not all systems, certainly new systems and new devices are built with web servers in mind or web page consumption in mind, right? So everything’s all web based these days. That’s kind of That’s kind of how it is. And I kind of started thinking, this is going to cause a lot of problems work for users down the road, because they’re going to be bombarded, they’re going to be asked to go to different websites with different credentials with different ways of them operating. And this is going to be a problem because people are going to need to manage all of that. And on top of all of that, I think we all know that buildings is not a solo sport. Right? Right. Right, right. So you never do these things on your own. Right? When it when it comes down to it, you’re working with other people, you’re working with vendors, you’re working with experts in different areas, you’re working with maintenance teams and other sort of people. And as well as your team, you know, you brought a team. This applies whether you’re a system integrator or a facility manager, it really doesn’t matter the other people involved. So the sort of the These web pages that I was referring to earlier, is not just something that’s going to be consumed by one individual is something that is going to be consumed by multiple people. Right? Right. Right. Like this kind of like the how the internet behave these days, right? We kind of its interactive and what we’re doing exactly that. So again, this, this, I thought this is going to create a lot of problems in terms of how people are going to manage all of the different things, all the different systems, but also manage their relationships with other individuals that they need to work with. Right? So Patty was created to solve all of this problem, right? It’s created so that as users, you can aggregate all of the pages that you care about all of the web pages that you care about that then you can share those pages with under other individuals that also need to access the those pages and you can collaborate with them, whether it’s in the process of of engineering a control system as part of an exercise work or control contractor, or whether it’s a facility management, kind of a team working on that. Or, you know, if something goes wrong and alarm happens in a boiler or some unit, then along gets created, and then you all of a sudden need to work with maintenance team or some experts across the country across the world, right. So internet enables that. And Patty sort of makes that all happen.

Eric Stromquist
That’s a really cool platform in looking at it because again, you like to create teams, you can create groups of information. It’s a great way to organize action plans, data and everything else. And I can totally see that being really, really useful in in a building a smart building like you like you said,

Anto Budiardjo
just just one one little sort of anecdotal thing. Is that the name Padi, yes. You may be wondering what that’s all about.

Eric Stromquist
Well, I went to the website, so I know what But I think it’s very clever. So how about enlightening our audience?

Anto Budiardjo
Okay, so I was born in Indonesia, in Asia. So Padi is an Indonesian word for rice, rice and rice is our metaphor for the billions of devices in the Internet of Things, right? Nice, nice grains of rice that are billions of devices, eventually that’s going to happen. And in a way you don’t care about the fact that there are billions of grains of rice, you care about the bowl of rice that’s in front of you that you want to eat. Right, right. And so Padi, the system is the same. You don’t care about the billions of things in the internet of things you care about your bowl of rice and my bowl of rice is different from your bowl of rice. That may be overlaps, but that’s kind of how the whole thing works. And, and that’s really the rationale for tonight.

Eric Stromquist
That’s a great name. It makes a lot of sense. And of course, you know, this way if you see some rice you want on the other side of the world, you can bring it put it in your bowl very easily with the So that is that is really Rico, how do people sort of engage with you visa v Padi? So I’m interested in Padi, who’s it for primarily, I mean, you’ve given us some general generalities. But you know, it’s courtroom in our industry, who do you see using it? How do they sort of get engaged and work with you guys on that?

Anto Budiardjo
So there’s really sort of three audiences that we think about and Padi is still in early days, I would say. The first group that we were getting a lot of really positive feedback from our the sort of the system integrators and the contractors and people that actually working with working together to create buildings or create these sort of sophisticated buildings, right? And we talked to many of them and they look at it and say, okay, so I can manage, I can organize, okay, I can organize control systems and controllers and analytics and stuff, but before I actually get there, I can think about using package organized specification documents, drawings, right budget calculations, checklists a whole bunch of other stuff right because Padi in addition to being able to manage devices and systems, it can also host PDFs and drawings and any anything that is that can be displayed on an HTML page can can be aggregated in padding right. So people say okay, so we can use it for that. So it becomes a sort of an extension of the project management. It is not project management system itself, but just sort of aggregates everything right. And then once you start to install systems and devices, they can be brought into that same structure of of pages that make up your your Padi sort of framework that you can then share with your with your colleagues and your your vendors and other people. And then the second group is when you start to think about Patty being used in the operations of buildings. So think about a system integrator or contractor, my first sort of use case creating the pages, right. And then when it comes to the time where that those pages need to be delivered to the building owner, right, essentially, with Patty, they just get shared to the building owner, right the same way as I would share a Google Docs with you. Right, it’s kind of very similar to that. Right. So then the the facility managers and the building owner would have access to those pages, and they can add their own pages. Again, a lot of it will be the systems that they use on a daily basis. They can add CCTV cameras, they can add a whole bunch of other stuff and they can also add sort of other information that may be useful and valuable to them in the operation of the building. Right. So for example, take a silly example if there is a cafeteria restaurant in the building, you may want to put a link to the to the menu of what’s going on. On that cash cafe that bed, right, sorry, cool. It applies a lot to IoT and system, but can also apply to other to other sort of information that’s available and valuable for for them when they’re operating, operating the building. So, so system engineers and system integrators sort of one use case there. The other use cases, the operation side. The third target is really sort of where we’re focusing right now are the vendors, right? The vendors of systems and devices, of which there are many, many different components that you know, and you talk to on a daily basis. For for those, those kind of conversations, is really about using Patty to deliver that service to the customers. Okay? Because if you’re, if you’re creating some kind of system that is web delivered, it could be analytics. It could be some kind of management that could be in cyber security controls or whatever, right? At some point you that needs to be consumed by the users. Right. And again, as I was saying earlier, the users have a whole bunch of other things to consume, not just that particular service. Right, right, by using Patty as the delivery mechanism, right? It can be delivered and integrated, automatically integrated by all of the other things that the system integrators and the facility managers need to use.

Eric Stromquist
Right. So cool, so disparate types of data, you can bring them together in one platform. Yeah.

Anto Budiardjo
That’s exactly right. And but you know, we’re early days yet, with Patty. We obviously would welcome all of the interest in terms of feedback and actually getting this thing going. But it’ll it’s it’s it’s a change in how people will start to operate in a more efficient way. And I’m not naive to the fact that change takes takes a bit of time in it. in any industry, and especially this one. So really encouraged with all the feedback we’ve got and looking forward to doing this.

Eric Stromquist
Well, very cool. And with your permission, I might post the video, you had a really great video that does a great job of sort of showing the power of it in the flexibility. I’m sorry, with your permission, I’ll post that on ControlTrends as well. And we’ll, we’ll get that done. And then we’ll put a link also to Padi, so get hold of you guys. And I just gotta ask though, dude, is it cyber secure?

Anto Budiardjo
Okay, so this becomes a nice segue to talking about cyber security. The answer is yes, that’s actually a critical part of Padi that is that, as I say earlier, all of these different websites, typically they all have credential and security requirements, right? So you have to log into one and then when you go somewhere else, you have to login to another one, blah, blah, blah, and it gets really laborious, right? When site when securing the system becomes laborious, this becomes dangerous because that’s when you do that’s when you take shortcuts. That’s when you have, you know, the ABC 123 passwords. And because you can’t remember all of these different passwords, right? So it becomes, right. So the critical value proposition or Padi with respect to cyber security, is that Patty sort of hides all of the complexity of the the credentialing mechanism, you log in once the patty, right. And once we have the the integration properly executed with a different system providers, the user will then be able to maneuver and navigate between all the pages that he or she is allowed to view, right. And that’s managing Patty by whoever’s administering Padi. And throughout that process, they won’t be challenged with any additional security, right. So the system is as secure as you know, the internet as Google system we use the Google Cloud platform to do that is as secure as the system’s individual systems. But Padi sort of aggregates and manages all of the different credentials. So you end up with a single sign on to all of the different systems that you need to access. So it’s inherently designed to not only to be secure, but to solve a key part of the security, cyber security challenges for building automation people

Eric Stromquist
know it’s kind of like a PayPal of building automation controls or data, right? I mean, because is that similar to the PayPal concept, you got one point you go in and you secure and then everything is secure behind that initial login?

Anto Budiardjo
Yeah, PayPal, but you know, there are other sort of similarities and other other analogs but PayPal kind of works in it. Right. All right.

Eric Stromquist
Well, you got it. I’m a cybersecurity novice. So you got it. You got to throw me a bone here. I’m, I’m the best I can with so but you cybersecurity is such a key trend that you Know that we’ve been tracking on ControlTrends, the whole cyber security thing. So and you’ve written a lot of articles, I would argue that, you know, you’re one of the great cyber security minds in our industry, sort of walk us through what you’ve seen in terms of cyber security, Visa V, building automation controls, where it was, where it is and where you see it going.

Anto Budiardjo
So I think the, the place we need to start is really sort of acknowledging why we are here with regard with regards to cyber security. Right? why we have this problem and building specifically right cyber security is, is an issue everywhere, but in the context of buildings and building automation systems. Why do we have this problem? And the problem really stems from the fact that through the, the 80s and 90s, when electronic digital systems started to proliferate and building automation system in buildings. Those systems were standalone, right? They were Initially proprietary but eventually with with with standards, they were typically not connected to anything, right? Even not connected to other different systems, right like CCTV security, lighting, lighting was its own thing HPC was a certain thing with its own network that they don’t really cross disciplines, right. And that’s why I was doing all of the stuff back in the 80s and 90s to actually integrate them, right? So they were always separate, right? So when when you when your network is completely disconnected to everything else, you really don’t have to secure it as much as when it is connected to everything right? Because you really only you’re really only protecting your system, let’s say dhvc system, you’re only protecting that right and the sort of the the saying goes that you know, what’s the worst that can happen? somebody breaks in and changes the set point and you know, Maybe turn the light on and off. If you’re in the lighting system, that’s not really, really bad, right? And it’s going to be inconvenient for somebody, but it’s not really bad. And therefore, you know, through through the decades, the building automation system, industry is really sort of gotten used to that way of operating, it really has not needed to deal with security seriously. This is why we see the sort of the common problems of posted notes stuck on monitor with username and passwords, which from an IT perspective is kind of the worst thing you can do. You can shop for that. Right, right. You’ve seen it, I’ve seen it going to control rooms, and you know, and utility rooms and whatever. So the industry sort of got into this sort of mindset that it doesn’t need to worry about security. Right. So that’s where we start now, over the past five or 10 years, the integration or the convergence with it. has become real, right? I know, technology wise kind of started in the 90s. But things are becoming more IP today. Right. And so when you’re starting to think about putting the systems into it systems, right, then all of this sort of learned behavior that we’ve had over the past decades doesn’t work at all. Right? It’s really, really bad. Right? So that’s really why we’re in the situation, right? The many of the products are not really built for the secure the security sort of posture that’s needed for it. And many of the sort of behavior of how we build how we design, how we engineer systems and how the professionals operate on a daily basis. It’s just not it’s not it’s not a concern, right. So the biggest thing is, how do we change this? How do we change the industry for an industry that’s inherently not been that concerned about security to one where security is a critical thing, right? Because if you want to connect it, if you want to connect be a systems to it. It has to be secure. There’s no option to that right now. So the one of the ways that I’ve seen in the last couple of couple of years that sort of addresses this without really addressing it, right, is separating the network by creating sort of a shadow IT network, right? people refer to this commonly as OT, right? So this is a discussion about it, OT divide it LT convergence, right. And I believe that the winner, one of the driving force of actually keeping a separate OT system from an IT system is sort of extending this sort of behavior that’s inherently not really Right, right. We basically want to create a separate system just for ot does not connected to it, therefore we can continue the behavior of the last decades. Right? I think, you know, I can see why people think that way. And I can see that can be sort of a transition very period. But I think we need to think seriously about building automation systems in the future to be integrated, well integrated in an IT system. So we have to really think about both the technology and from the behavior perspective, professional behavior perspective, to really be as secure as IT systems and it professions and IT organizations require.

Eric Stromquist
Why haven’t they done? Why haven’t they done up to that up to now and

Anto Budiardjo
why isn’t that happen? because it hasn’t needed to. Okay, all right, really, because we’ve, you know, the functions of building automation can operate separately, and it’s kind of easier that way. And also because a lot of the products have not had the technologies needed for them to be secure. Right, right. What one of the things that that’s going on right now is obviously revolves around back met. Right. Back net, you know, has evolved since the 90s. The last 2025 years, there’s been several sort of security initiatives within the backend organization, right. It hasn’t really caught on because they’ve been very proprietary is the wrong word because back net is inherently open but proprietary in terms of not being the same as what it is doing. And so what’s happening now you would have heard of this, this new thing called back net se back, secure Connect right? That has is actually going through the all phases of the standards process it was voted out of committee last week, the back net meeting last week. So it’s going through the X ray standards process right. And we hope that it will be it will become a standard efficiently by the time we get to Orlando in HR. Right. And the key part of magnet SEC is that really for the first time with BACNet SC right, it has adopted it centric technologies is adopted to basically pls communications for communication between devices, right. So if you don’t know what pls is, when you log into Wells Fargo Bank on any anything on the internet, or when you go to any secure site on the internet, you are using pls to care so that’s pretty

Eric Stromquist
pretty dark because that’s a controller to controller type thing.

Anto Budiardjo
Okay? Right. So, so we’re back, net SC all of back net devices that have the back net se in them in the devices in the stack will communicate with other devices using pls right? So it’s secure. Okay, all right. So that that resolves a very key problem with back net because it was always bus oriented that’s that really didn’t have any technology. I didn’t have any cybersecurity sort of protection

Eric Stromquist
right? So you can see that being like a Ford integration solution if I got a new project and I go with the BACNet SC I’m good to go but all these devices already have back to his are going to go backwards to another words to us see, the building automation controls committee replacing older devices with this new BACNet SC or is it do we actually have to replace a controller? Is it a software upgrade or how would it work?

Anto Budiardjo
Well, you you caught it doesn’t fix all of the the insecure devices does not fix the BACNet IP. No, BACNet me TP devices, right? The standards does not fix them automatically. I guess in some cases, they can be firmware updates. But generally speaking, that’s probably not the case. Because by putting in TLS, you require certificates within each device. Right, right. Bit more horsepower and each of the devices. So generally speaking, it’ll be new devices that will have back net se in them, right. So the race of magnet FC doesn’t secure all the old backpack. Right? Remember, I’m sure there are products that I’m already seeing in terms of things like routers, so that you can actually take back net se and isolate the back net MSRP the insecure devices and have a router that will then be secure from that point upwards, OK. So those kind of architecture will, will will happen and will will sort of evolve right? So once BACNet SC devices are available in the market. Everybody should use them. I mean, it has to be sort of the de facto. But what’s what’s I think the the other thing that is really important to understand about back networks is that back net sec, because I mentioned secures those connections between devices and between devices and supervisory kind of routers and stuff, right. And there’s, there’s, incidentally a concept of a hub back net SE hub, right, that orchestrates all of these things within within the building. What the, the one of the concerns is that it solves those issues, but it does not solve a whole bunch of other issues. Right, when you’re talking about cyber securing, securing buildings from a cyber security perspective, there’s a whole bunch of us stuff Right there securing the connections, great big check mark on that. Then each device has a certificate, right? How do you manage those certificates? And who

Eric Stromquist
manages them? Right?

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, who manages them? How do you manage them? How do you manage the their expiry what happens when they expire? How do you know they expire? and all that kind of stuff? And also, having a secure network of devices is great, but how do you do things like configurations? How do you do back not sort of backup and restore? How do you update firmware? How do you get all of the sort of the event information, the CES log, right, and also how to do all of that in an interoperable and standard way? Yeah, yeah. So it kind of it there’s a number of sort of different approaches people are taking, and you’ll see quite a lot of that at HR in terms of not just social The BACNet SC connectivity challenge, but also how to address all of these different sort of other sort of security issues that needs to be addressed.

Eric Stromquist
Well, listen, we’re going to get to HR because I know you got a big meeting there that we’re going to talk about, but I want to back up for a minute because, you know, sort of what we’ve seen in the field because it’s kind of like you got the IT departments, you got the BAS people never the two shall talk or me, right, right, because it kind of gets down to money at a certain level. So in the past, the sort of the pushback about building automation controls was Yeah, well, it can manage it, but there’s a cost to that, right. So whoever’s buying the building automation control systems, if it is going to manage it, they have to pay for that. And I guess pretty expensive. So one of the things we’ve seen is a solution is you know, thanks to maybe this gets to the shadow IT or creating the air gap. You know, there are companies that will they’ll just be as people coming to create their own separate network, right? Like someone toss the box or something like that. And we What I hear you saying is you’re saying ultimate that is maybe a stopgap solution. But that ultimately, that’s not really the solution we need to get to it sounds like what you’re saying is we need to get to the solution where the controllers are more secure, maybe back net se, but then somebody’s got to take responsibility for that. And do you see that being the building automation control people in a building or the IT people or a group yet to be determined?

Anto Budiardjo
That is really a great question. And I think that’s, that is the sort of the crux of how this is this is going to evolve. Right? And I think the answer is a new breed of people is going to materialize to actually have get this responsibility, right? Because you’re right, because the building automation professionals and facility professionals that’s their focus is The operation staff is kind of the moving of air and moving people from a security, you know, all that kind of stuff. And it is is doesn’t work in that in that in that sort of way. Right. So, as part of the I started an initiative instigated by some metrics company that I work with about a year and a half ago called a new deal for buildings. And we’ve been sort of the organization’s been sort of exploring the issues, right in terms of how we can actually make this sort of transition and make the systems that we know can happen, be installed in buildings, with black with a blog and also the summit that you refer to is actually being organized being organized by the New Deal for buildings organization. Out of that we did a white paper with with Kaaba think it was in last year. One of the things that came up was really a sort of a concept of facility it right facility it being a department within organizations, that is the sits in between the AS and it, right facility a facility it people would understand the issues with BS but also understand the requirements for the requirements of the IT with respect to not just cybersecurity, but other sort of more operational stuff, you know, assigning IP addresses and a whole bunch of things, right. So we’ve talked to an increasing number of building owners and security cyber security people and some of them are kind of talking about the sort of concept of another group and facility it seems to be that the term that is resonating. So I think that’s what’s going to evolve because keep them separate, as we’ve talked about earlier, as kind of It’s okay, it’s kind of a stepping stone to get there. But if we really the reason why keeping it separate isn’t an ultimate long term solution is that it doesn’t help bring all of this data that we know exists in INNBAS into it. So they can be analyzed properly and be easily manage and be analyzed and be fed into the enterprise system, right, keeping it separate, just that makes that hard, right. And combining it makes that much easier. But it has to be secure and it has to be done in the right way. And so having somebody responsible for that is probably the way it’s going

Eric Stromquist
to go get the children to play right. Okay, what about a parent? You guys got to play nicely. We got we got I got you. That makes sense. Well, let’s transition to HR because man, you’ve got a great summit, cybersecurity summit. Tell our community about that.

Anto Budiardjo
So we did this first. Last year of this, this process right in, in Atlanta and the thinking again go goes back to the the New Deal for building the new deal for building is really just kind of a think tank or just sort of a group of people thinking about how the industry, our industry, the BS industry can work better with building owners and facility management and operations. That’s kind of the mission of it, how to make this sort of more fluid, right. And so in discussions last year in 2018, obviously the the subject of cyber security as being the sort of the critical point that is sort of preventing this from from happening, right. So we thought okay, so that that needs better conversation about cyber security and a better conversation about how how important cyber security is for BAS and automation systems, right. So instead of brains We kind of said, let’s see if we can put together a summit at HR. And this that thought was like in November of 18. So it was like two months before and Risa can sit there and ask them if this was a good idea and kind of slammed the phone down at me.

Eric Stromquist
That’s our man can right.

Anto Budiardjo
So but you know, so we we pursued it and we got number of people to support holding the summit and we did it. It was a seven o’clock on Monday morning at ashtray HR, which is in itself a challenge, but Oh, yeah, we brought breakfast and people were attracted and we got over 100 people in the room. Man, congratulations, seven o’clock on a chart. That’s great. Congratulations. And it was really a good conversation because it Just four hours nonstop discussion about cyber security different aspects of cyber security. You know, we talked about BACNet SC and where it was at that particular point in time, we talked about the challenges and some of the things that we’ve talked about in terms of the, the concept and the ITOT. And the concept of facility it we talked about the challenges from specific, it sort of experiences, right. And we had, you know, a good number of companies participating, Johnson control was there k MC Delta, light x and metrics, BACNet international was there. I think there were a couple of others that I, I’m sure they’ll Forgive me for forgetting. So I was really good discussion and there was a lot of participation from the floor, which was also something that we wanted to do. We wanted to have this as a as a To a dialogue, so that was really successful. And I think that initiated a lot of conversation at HR in Atlanta, especially since it was right at the beginning on Monday so that was really good. So that was the first summit. And this year or next year in Orlando, we are doing it again,

Eric Stromquist
seven seven in the morning or do another another time fat All right.

Anto Budiardjo
So we’ve managed to get a more sensible time slot eight o’clock on Tuesday morning. Okay, I still early but we will have breakfast there for as long as it lasts. So come and join us eight o’clock on Tuesday morning in in room 311 g i think it is but it will be on

Eric Stromquist
it’s on the schedule. Perfect. Worth Canton, Claire will lead us because he books all our time coming in video and all his stuff at HR. But if there’s there’s an Opening there. Well, we can come by with the cameras. We’d love to videotape that for you if possible.

Anto Budiardjo
Yeah. come in at the beginning, because I don’t think he, he stops until about nine o’clock. So coming to the beginning, maybe you can interview a couple of the be there. I’d be great.

Eric Stromquist
Well, so now Anton, let me ask you something with all these different people that have come in and these these dialogues you’ve had with the Cyber Security Summit. What are some things that surprise you that you’ve learned from from being at that?

Anto Budiardjo
At the summit?

Eric Stromquist
Yeah, your cyber summit? You’re doing Yeah, but saying anything sort of go? Oh, my gosh, I never thought of that before or this is a really great idea. Or maybe. Where’s the education level with people? Are they on top of it? Are people still learning about it? Are you surprised with the progress you’re making? But yeah, I mean, what, what what’s what’s what struck you as is is interesting.

Anto Budiardjo
I think I think a number of things Right, I think going back to what I said earlier about why the industry behaves this way, right? It’s, it’s not that, you know, we’re bad people or whatever. It’s just like, how that’s how we’ve, we’ve grown up. Right. Right. Right. And that is very surprising, because you can’t do that in a in a in a connected world. Right? It’s surprising, but it’s not surprising, right? But it’s, it’s really worth pointing out that that’s just how we’ve evolved into what we are now. Right. And we need to we as a group of people need to understand that and we need to, we need to kind of make sure that we understand that that’s not the right way to go if BS industry and if the if the vendors in the channel is to continue to deliver the value of managing the event. vironment and facilities, right? So that kind of realization is probably sort of surprising to me over and over again.

Eric Stromquist
So So you got to kind of acknowledge that you have a problem before you can begin to solve it type thing. Yeah, I got you. Well, and I’m encouraged from what we’ve seen over the last several years, we’ve been covering cybersecurity, it does seem like people are acknowledging that this is an issue that’s not going to go away. We’re going to have to address it. We’re going to have to deal with it. And the solution we have today is probably not the solution. We’re going to have a year from now or two years from now we’re gonna have to keep evolving because the hackers keep evolving, right?

Anto Budiardjo
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And you know, what, what you kind of have to remember is that this is the sort of the bad thing of thinking about bad stuff, which is cyber security and, you know, other broader world, things like terrorism and other things that we because we’re the protector of the systems, right. We have to be on guard And perfect 100% of the time, right? The attacker, the person who’s doing bad things only has to win wants. Yeah. Well, they can get infinite numbers of tries.

Eric Stromquist
Well said, what I said. Alright, so, so straight up question here. And I don’t really have children now. But imagine now you have a young child as I do. Do you encourage them to go to school to learn how to fight cyber security or become a really good hacker?

Anto Budiardjo
Well, I think the kids were inclined to be if hacking or sort of the the challenge of hacking is appealing. I would encourage them to be a white hat hacker. A white hat. That’s

Eric Stromquist
right. And for our community out there. No, we learned from Fred Gordy that you got white hat you got black hats. You got gray hats, right? Yeah. So just give your give you a little tyke a white hat when they start getting on the computer and let them know this one. They need to do but what my friend anything else before we sign off here? Because it’s been a great conversation?

Anto Budiardjo
No, I think we’ve covered a lot a lot of the things I just I do want to say one one other thing. It’s, it’s, it’s really goes back to, you know what we need to do from a cyber security perspective. We talked about the need, we’ve talked about the the broader need beyond BACNet SC and thingsis that there’s a lot of complexity there. Right. Andyou can’t you can’t hide from the fact that cyber security inherently is complex, right? So something like the certificates that needs to be in the devices. They’re not simple things to think about. They’re not simple things to manage, right. So really what I think we need to start to be able to look out for our tools to help us manage this complexity, right? That will actually help the help us, help the industry and help people to sort of get ramped up to be able to do what’s necessary for to make our system secure. Right. So it’s not just the technology takes having the technology is great having acknowledging that you need to do it and you know, the change of in sort of mindset is great. But you also need to acknowledge the fact that is complex and you need you need to be the you need the systems to be managed, you need the right tools for for people to use, because bs engineers and control engineers and the likes are great at doing what they do. Right. And the expectation that overnight they become it cybersecurity experts is just folly just doesn’t work, right. So you need the tools so that they can perform the functions that they focus on. Right and yet to be for their actions to be secure and to be well managed right so look at look at not just for the technology and for the change of behavior of the industry but look out for tools that will actually help us do this.

Eric Stromquist
Yeah. And you know, in Patty to me is a great example of that because again, it is one of my teachers once said, and God We Trust and all else get data so I think that’s one of the things you gotta have a cyber security is you got to be able to track what’s happening and have the data so agreed tools that can take the complex and make it simple. And

Anto Budiardjo
a lot of tools that a lot of people that you and I know that many of them show there’s been on your on your show here that are developingpieces of tools. Yes, right. And I work with symmetric for example, they’re doing a lot of work in terms of increasing the the tool set for the cyber security issues, but last All the companies doing it and we need to encourage that we need to make sure that people understand that those tools are critical for us to make

Eric Stromquist
building security. Very, very cool, my friend Well listen, I’m gonna need your help here real quick. Can you help me out? Derek said since Ken’s not on the show, we have an intro. So I need you to can you put your thumbs up like this and say Indeed, indeed. Okay, now when I was you’ll get to the part. I’ll do the intro, and then you just go indeed. Now go indeed, Antonio. That’ll be the end of the show you get with that? Yes, sir. All right, here we go. Hi. Well, there you go. Man. Anto, thank you so much. Great, great interview. We appreciate it and check him out at Patty. That IO. And with that, thank you so much for tuning in. And remember, be bold, stay in control and be cyber secure. Say indeed and, and there you go. That’s another week on control talk now. Very good man. UU past audition. That was awesome brother.

 

See the Padi Demo here.

Breaking News: Johnson Controls Acquires EASYIO

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It is kind of like seeing your two best friends get married.....

Johnson Controls Acquires Easy IO

We are thrilled for Mike, Gordon, Lim, Gina and the rest of the team from Easy IO as they join forces with Johnson Controls!

I will let Gina Elliot’s press release say the rest:

 
November 8, 2019

Dear Valued Customer,

I’m pleased to tell you that Johnson Controls has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the EasyIO Building Energy Management System product line. This agreement is expected to close in November 2019. Here’s what that means for you:

  • You will continue to have undisrupted access to the leading technology and offerings you have come to expect from EasyIO.
  • The EasyIO brand has strong recognition within the industry. Johnson Controls will invest in both the EasyIO brand and product line to further strengthen its position as an industry-leading provider of building automation technology.
  • Johnson Controls and EasyIO teams will work together throughout the integration process to ensure both near and long term success post-closing and will communicate regularly with you during the process.

Johnson Controls has decades of industry-leading expertise in building automation technology and has driven HVAC controls innovation for over 130 years. Together we look forward to helping you find even more ways to optimize building performance.

If you have questions or requests related to this transition, please contact me at gina@easyio.com or 619.322.5043.

Kind regards,
Gina Elliott
VP, Americas

 

KMC Commander Uses Data and Control to Grow a Nursery

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Watch how the control-pros  at KMC Controls use the KMC Commander use data and control strategies to help Matsui Nursery become more profitable and productive. This is a great example of using smart building controls technonlgy in a unique way. Congratualtions KMC!  

Located in California’s Salinas Valley, Matsui Nursery is one of the world’s largest potted orchid growers. For over 50 years Matsui has been growing flowers in their 2.8 million square feet facility. Matsui is now facing the challenge of data collection and precise control in their facilities to protect, grow, and maintain their Nursery. KMC Controls partnered with Alvarez Technology Group to mastermind an IoT solution using KMC Commander for collecting real-time data monitoring the conditions for thousands of orchids and protecting them from mechanical and climactic inconsistencies. KMC Commander provided a scalable and easy-to-use solution.

Learn more about Matsui: http://www.matsuinursery.com/ 

Alvarez Technology Group: https://www.alvareztg.com/

Visit KMC Controls  at https://www.KMCControls.com.

#337 Looking at HVAC and Smart Building Controls From a New, Younger Perspective

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 On Episode 337 of ControlTalk Now the HVAC and Smart Building Controls Podcast we look at HVAC and Smart Building Controls from a new, younger perspective.  The team from Next Generation Innovation, Aaron Gorka and Brent Burrows fill in for HVAC and Smart Building Control Pro, and co-host of ControlTalk Now the HVAC and Smart Building Controls Podcast. Aaron and Brent bring their unique perspectives to HVAC and Smart Building Controls. Both are young superstars in HVAC and Smart Building Controls. Listen as they bring you the HVAC and Smart Building Controls News of the Week.
Look for Ken to return next week.

Transcript for Episode 337 Control Talk Now The HVAC and Smart Building Controls Podcast

Looking at HVAC and Smart Building Controls from a new, young perspective.

Announcer
The following is a presentation of the ControlTrends podcasting network.You’re listening to control talk now. Smart Buildings podcast, the man, the myth, the legend, Kim Smyers and Eric Stromquist Controltalk Now the weekly podcast with building automation and smart building control News You Can you now

Eric Stromquist
This Eric Stromquist Welcome to Episode 337 of Control Talk Now you’re smart buildings video cast and podcast for the week ending November 3 2019. Folks, that’s right, it’s November already as cold in Atlanta. And as usual cold weather sometimes that means that you’re close to mind. The man the myth the legend, secret agent man Kenny Smyers shows up missing and that is the case this week ladies and gentlemen Kenny spires secret agent man is missing my guests He’s gone someplace warm, but others think he might have gone someplace cold like Canada or something because he tends to face the pain. He doesn’t like cold so Sometimes he’ll just embrace it. So, where in the world is Kenny smiles to help us through this? We have two people that are stepping in trying to fill the big big moccasins, Kenny smiles. We’ve got the team from next generation innovation. Aaron Gorkha and Brett burrows. Guys, thanks for stepping in and welcome to the show.

Brent Burrows
Absolutely. Thanks for having us.

Aaron Gorka
Yeah, well, you always happy to be on the show.

Eric Stromquist
Well, awesome, dude. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, you know, and Kenny talked about cold weather but Aaron, man I mean, you’re up in Canada someplace. Aren’t you riding on a sled or something? Which is why we don’t have your video aren’t you? I like to go on a dog race or something right now.

Aaron Gorka
We’re cruising a big old truck fighting to about four feet of snow hadn’t hadn’t down by just down the lake to my in laws today.

Eric Stromquist
So what is So you go into the inlaws and all right well there you go there you go and you’re up in Toronto right or brown that way

Aaron Gorka
yeah Brad this way there’s actually no snow the leaves are just changing falling off the combination of beautiful colors and and winter come and meet

Eric Stromquist
well did you definitely have to since we don’t have your video and you can’t put the camera out the window and just snap a couple pictures of those leaves changing and we’ll post them on the on the website when we when we drop the episode

Aaron Gorka
that I can do no problem.

Eric Stromquist
Yeah, and I tell you what now for all you’ve professional football fans, I had the pleasure of seeing Brent burrows from Intex young son, I thought his name was Eric burrows. I was really disappointed to find out your name was something other than Eric but man he’s a big kid. He’s gonna be playing for Clemson here pretty soon anything.

Brent Burrows
I don’t know about that. Well, we’ll see. See what he decides to get into on the subject of the fall weather and the football may not be able to see here. I don’t have any front lines. Alright, I just went through a move so I was actually in the last month so I’m I’m still trying to get everything going the fact I was able to sit down and do all this it’s nice it’s a little relaxing especially with the five month old but I’m wearing a hat right now doesn’t color in very well it’s the Cleveland Browns and we’ve been taking been taking it on the chin here the beginning part of the season so so but but you know what they say iron sharpens iron so yeah, brown faces should be pretty tough from getting rubbed in it Yeah, but we got the path we’re going to finish nine and seven and we will see you guys at a private five wins the Superbowl

Eric Stromquist
February 2 same night as the control trends awards, buddy.

Brent Burrows
There you go you Well, we’re gonna have to control trends awards, then watch the brand’s win the Super Bowl, February 2. Well, I tell

Eric Stromquist
you what, Aaron that sounds like I know you’re Canadian and all but I think that sounds like a pretty sure bet going opposite Brett on that. Whatever you want to take up that action.

Brent Burrows
You’re not wrong about that. Yeah. That would probably be like put down $1,000 to win 10

Eric Stromquist
Yeah, no, I got you but I good price might know Brett, Brits, dad and my Patrick bros go way, way back in text men want to Strom quest long term. Customers partners great relationship and you know your dad was originally from Cleveland, right? They moved down to Atlanta What? Late 70s, early 80s,

Brent Burrows
late 70s. Then that that was kind of the story of he got stuck in traffic has four boards froze over. The heat didn’t work in his car. I think it was like negative negative 10, negative 12. And he was just like, I gotta get out of here. He didn’t know anybody down here. He just that was the thing. He’s like, hey, got the shop in Georgia. He said doesn’t snow down there.

Eric Stromquist
I’m coming up our community might not know tell him about in tech and what you guys did the company your dad started and then sort of, you know how you got into it and what you guys are up to these days.

Brent Burrows
Gotcha. So my dad started, as it was mentioned earlier, he came down here in the late 70s. been involved in the HPC control industry. Since that time, he started in tech in 1994. Started primarily on the commercial retail side of things, mostly mechanical service work, kind of migrated that into, I guess, doing like National Building commissioning and energy management, working with a number of large retail customers. And more recently, we’ve, in the last 1015 years been working more big projects around the area, chiller replacements and anything on the mechanical side and the controls division has kind of grown out of that over the same time period last 10 years. So we’re big tritium, Honeywell desta. Anybody that’s got the greatest products that’ll serve our customers best

Eric Stromquist
products and strong points and company handles because we handle the greatest products right so looking farther than Strom quest calm know what the greatest products are.

Brent Burrows
That’s right that that newly revitalize website.

Eric Stromquist
Yep, there you go Brother. There you go. No but but I love it Your dad is, you know in your company Your dad is. First of all one of the funniest guys I’ve ever met your dad’s hilarious, but he’s also one of the brightest guys I’ve ever met. And your dad had an interest in having a show I think he still does an interesting philosophy which is when a customer says something to me says if you want to paint a blue or paint a blue you want to paint a red I’ll paint it red. And it seems like that’s sort of at the core of your guys business philosophy has given the customers not know what they need but what they want.

Brent Burrows
Well, I think that’s the if you look at it, I mean, Eric, you’re the you’re the master sales person guru, you’ve taken every every type of sales training all over the world. You talk to me about it, and I’m just like, oh my god for real. What was that the one it was like I need you have to go sell this book. It was it was a horrible like, it was basically a no win situation. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eric Stromquist
No, I think I think it’s, you know, sales is really about communication. And I’ve always said that sales is the easiest job in the world to do poorly in the most difficult to do, right. And when I first got in the business when your dad was around, I mean, it was like, you know, salespeople sort of had this, you know, you were trained, you had this attitude that I’ll tell you what to think. And it was all about manipulation and control. And that didn’t last very long. People don’t like that. And then it sort of it swung, too. Now most salespeople are so lame, they just will do whatever, they just get abused, right? Because they’re so afraid of offending somebody. So you sort of have to find that middle ground where you can help people buy something. I mean, think about it, when you bought something. Have you ever said I’m so happy? This person sold me something versus Well, this person helped me buy so I mean, that’s a sort of a subtle distinction, but and I think Eric, you could probably chime in on that because you You definitely a really good at helping people buy stuff and get it to sales game as well.

Aaron Gorka
Making a friend every time I go into basically anywhere and say hello and a big smile, honestly just figuring out what they, you know what makes them tick. To begin, I think and figure out what they what they want to what do they want to accomplish and how right. Ultimately I just try to make friends with them and show even if they don’t buy it right off the bat, you know, or they don’t use it in the future. It doesn’t doesn’t change your friendship, ultimately.

Eric Stromquist
I think you’re right. And I think persistence is another big part of it. Because I remember for example, back in the day before Landis and gear became part of Siemens, the Lannister gear guide done something really upset me is a vendor and so I just spaceship will never sell it again. That’s it. We’re taking off the line sheet. We’re never going to deal with it. And this guy came by around a little bit he a guy named Jim Fisher and Jim if you’re out there, you know kudos to you. Jim is was just just a great story about how it works. I’m live in Atlanta some years and I’m never buying it again. Jim comes in introduces himself, he goes, Well tell me what happened. I told him he goes, Well, look, I can totally see why you’re upset why you would never want to buy from us again. Would you have any objections if I came by, you know, periodically and you know, brought your counter people some donuts and stuff like that? Would that be okay? So yeah, I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna tell my my counter people I turned down donuts for him. So this guy, he would literally come in every Friday he would spend time with the counter people the inside sales people it was to the point that within it took about three and a half months. For my inside people said, Hey, we want this product line back now because the products have always been pretty good. But we like this guy. We want to give him some of our business. So I think at the end of the day, people do business with people. I think that maybe it’s I’ll ask you guys is that kind of skill to get that connection now, sort of in the age of social media and the age of not being able to just walk in on a Friday afternoon and see everybody

Unknown Speaker
Well, I think one of the things is we

Brent Burrows
you see it you mentioned social media. I think we live in a society have such like an instant gratification, you know, in terms of like i’ve you know, if I post this I need to get this many views or this many likes this much engagement, almost like that. fulfillment, the immediate that kind of just, I wouldn’t even call it playing the long game, but just building a relationship like it, it takes it takes time. I mean, you mentioned it earlier. Everybody wants to buy something, nobody wants to be sold. Because you get sold something you feel like a schmuck. Yeah, at that just is it so kind of like what you described there that, that art of just building building a relationship where you’re happy You wind up your he flipped the script on everyone and there’s like, I want to do this for this guy he’s not trying to get, he really doesn’t have to try to get him to do it.

Eric Stromquist
So Right, right. No, I think there’s a lot to that I think we all know to intuitively when somebody is kind of slick and they’re trying to do something to us, right versus help us. And I think the other thing too, is that knowing that there are enough customers out there, I mean, it’s a little bit like Aaron, you can relate to this. I’m going to take a jab at Aaron right now. It’s a little bit like if you’re the you know, you’re the guy at the bar and you’re desperate. You have no luck with the women they sense that desperation and it’s like they’re just not interested you no matter how handsome you are, right. And and I think it’s just the way in sales and businesses that we want to do business with people that don’t need to do business with us but want to want to do business with us and and so I think that really comes from you know, use a great term grant, which is sort of playing the long game. And I think you play the long game. to a certain point, in other words, my biggest expenses to distributor Aaron, you can probably relate to this and Brennan know you guys can to one of our biggest expenses is salespeople, right. And you know, back when I first got involved, it was pretty easy. I could walk in any hospital, any school board or whatever, I could get access to people, I could get it, I could be effective. But now if you’re paying sales people just to walk around and try to get into spaces they can’t get into. It’s a very, very expensive thing. So you know, as a salesperson, you have to be respectful of the people that are paying you your salary, you can’t waste time so you have to be effective. And you know, how do you become effective is like a key piece. I know for example, in the industrial plants with my guys, sales people is like, you know, you you can’t get an industrial plan. They won’t even tell you who you need to see. You know, if you’re lucky, there’s a guard gate, but the guard won’t tell you who the maintenance supervisor is certainly will give you this phone number. If you dial up you get you know, any The person’s coat, you know, extension, but if you don’t know who it is you’re not getting in. Right? So what do you do with that because of vendors you got to get in. So I mean literally did we’ve adopted tactics like waiting outside the plant and the show is people drive out for lunch, we find out where they go to lunch, right? I mean, just one technique and you go to the restaurant, you start asking questions, and then maybe you meet somebody, that’s one technique. Another technique is, you know, if you’ve got other other people that are in the same area, you find out they know anybody on the planet. Another technique is, Hey, you know, reach out to other people that sell other products and say, Hey, do you have a connection here, you know, you help each other get in, I can get you into this planet, if you can get me into this point. So you know, desperate times calls for, you know, different approaches, and

Brent Burrows
I would not, I would say innovative methods. Yes, yes.

Eric Stromquist
Yes, for sure. So, no, no break. You work. One of the best salespeople. I know. Danna Haggerty is your sales man. jitter an errand you’re one of the most innovative, you know, salespeople I know, let’s talk about some innovative approaches that you guys have either had happened to you or somebody who’s got reached you that wasn’t able to reach you or somebody you use to reach a client that are committed, you might be able to use

Brent Burrows
that. Aaron, I think you’re gonna have to take that data keeps that under lock and key over sales secrets. I, to be honest with you, Dan has been been at it for such a long time. And she’s, she’s done. what she’s done really great that I’ve been able to see is that long game, which is you know, that’s that’s part of the deal. It’s, you know, anybody can sell something someone one time, if you don’t provide the value if you don’t follow through that and you know, even that even if you do that, and the person that bought from you doesn’t like you. It’s it’s not going to last over the long term. So what her and her team have done a great job of Building relationships, and then maintaining them. I mean, you’ve been in Eric, how long you been in the industry?

Eric Stromquist
Dude, I’m embarrassed to tell you, but I’m going on 40 years here.

Brent Burrows
Yes. And so how many people have Did you meet, you know, like my dad and the, you know, in the early 80s, and you maintain those relationships, you know, over a 30 year, you know, 2030 year period, and people move around, but they stay in the industry and, and if they like you, they’re going to take you with them. That’s, that’s, that’s so true. And I gotta

Eric Stromquist
tell you, the one thing you trade off of the currency trade off is more important. Your technical knowledge more important than anything else is your integrity, right? Because news travels fast. So I tell my folks, hey, anybody can be a great vendor where they’re no problems, okay? Where you establish that connection, that link is when a customer has a problem and you step up to the plate even if it’s not your problem. The last words out of your mouth need to be this is the losers philosophy. Well, you know, read the manual or really, sir, that’s your problem not ours, or I can’t help you with that. If you ever get a call from any customer, whether it’s your product or another product that you’re trying to break into, and you can say, let me see if I can help. That’s what those relationships come in. Because that’s what they’re going to remember. They remember you if if at four o’clock in the morning on a Saturday, you know, morning when errands still, you know, out partying, and they’ve got a problem and you pick the phone up and you’re able to go down and help them out. That’s where you build those long lasting relationships. Right? So agree or disagree, guys.

Brent Burrows
It’s funny, I just, I picture Aaron in an Uber at four in the morning aftershowing up and somebody might not be very effective, buthey, but he’ll get it done right?No, no, you don’t want to do that. It’s just not in control.Would you stop yourself stopEvery once in a whilekeeping your integrity and being honest about it.But it is

Eric Stromquist
true telling now Okay, let’s let’s tell the audience now. So it’s 932 eastern standard time on Saturday morning and we let you sort of slide with him. I’m driving to my in laws house. Tell the truth. Now. Are you sure you’re just not out at the tail end of a Friday night party and you sounds like you’re in an Uber domain.

Well, you know, not only is your wife beautiful, she’s smart. The fact that she’s driving but it was nice to meet you ControlTrends committee, because Aaron’s Aaron is fairly newly married. Well, you guys got a year anniversary coming up. Congrats. Congratulations, guys. There you go. That’s awesome. Toronto’s committee is dying to know what’s it like to be married to Aaron?

Aaron Gorka
It’s always interesting.

Eric Stromquist
So I’m getting the text lines right now, so I wasn’t as a snore. Yeah. Okay, what is

Aaron Gorka
whiskey? I’m gonna start for sure. what’s what’s

Eric Stromquist
his worst habit that nobody did? He would not want the ControlTrends

Well, you know, by year two for sure. And by year three, you probably in therapy, so, trust.

Brent Burrows
I gotta ask because, because Aaron’s told me that, that he kind of did the thing. Have you guys ever seen the movie Dazed and Confused?

Eric Stromquist
I think I’ve looked at in the theaters, but I haven’t seen the movie.

Brent Burrows
Oh, gosh, man. They’re just part in there, Matt and Matthew McConaughey are basically he’s the guy that graduated school probably five or six years ago, but then He keeps hanging around it. And you know, he’s the older guy and he’s like, you know, they just stay the same age and it was kind of funny it makes me think that’s how you guys want it up. He just kept coming back to school

Aaron Gorka
That’s it. That’s it.

Eric Stromquist
Was it was it love at first sight?

I know it was for you. Not for you. But was it for Aaron? Oh, yeah.

Aaron Gorka
Yeah, absolutely.

Eric Stromquist
Nice. Nice.

Aaron Gorka
first conversation once I realized that the great conversation

Eric Stromquist
Well, you have to stay on the podcasts and we’ll go monitor that as we go along. But you know, and I had to kind of haven’t given you a chance if our community might not know, Aaron, among other things, runs and technologies into our community, you might not know what does

Aaron Gorka
an operational software to run your control a track service business, as a service tracker is a project tracker. They do work pretty good together, we make it work even better and better all the time. We build features. every single week, we launched new function. Sometimes it breaks it, but usually we fix it fast as anybody else. Ever, that’ll fix your software that I can guarantee. We work hard with contractors. We built it in our own contracting company, Iran, a traffic control at a Toronto, our second biggest cable API in Canada. DMA applied partners in Regina, Saskatchewan, they always win.Yeah, good software for each package.

Eric Stromquist
Okay, so so obviously you guys eat your own dog food so to speak because you use the software that you develop and you guys are contractors So, yes. Okay, so I just got to ask the question why does it matter? Why did why do I need what do I need your software of I’m a contractor

Aaron Gorka
everybody do everybody out there’s got a way of managing a project of service and the services might not be the best way they know that but they weren’t good enough for where really makes a difference is when you’re in shit. Right when you need to when a customer calls in there, you know, there’s a big problem save your guys were just there or were there three weeks ago or a month ago and if you can’t find that information for that customer Fat Joe, you’re you start to sweat the bucket. Now you get into some big trouble, you know, say a project goes into a lien or or it’s legal and You’re not organized, you got to stop your whole business and your whole value towards your business to get organized to keep yourself out of trouble. And if you don’t have a clear, easy way of doing that all the time, either for the trouble or for the daily I mean your daily you have a flow anyway. You’re, you’re a huge risk to your business.

Eric Stromquist
Got you got you. So as a teacher, my one said in God, we trust and all else get documentation. So it seems like you guys make the documentation process pretty pretty effortless.

Aaron Gorka
Oh, yeah. The whole purpose of it is, every time anybody does something is saved into a database structure which you know, may not make sense to everybody. So it’s searchable and the magic of it is, is you know how, how easy it is for the guy in the field to do it. Right. And you know, when we all most people listening to this or in the office, from the office, you’re still an air conditioner, you’re in a comfy chair. You got your monitors, know you can do anything, it doesn’t really matter to see you how you organize because you have your way. But feel all you got is a phone, maybe a tablet and laptops are kind of heavy and bulky. And you know you’re really bad. But you still got one screen, maybe two if you’re if you use your phone, your tablet in conjunction. So that’s where the magic is getting back into into searchable.

Eric Stromquist
So what’s the what’s the secret sauce for you guys? Because I mean, when you talk about documentation, I think about sales force and having to you know, do a lot of extra work and so on and so forth. I mean, even though that would save time, down the line, But to your point, if I’m in the field is yours. What did you take that into effect or to account when you develop this? Is it easy to input the data or?

Aaron Gorka
Oh, yeah, yeah, that was how we started with our a track service division. Building. It’s make sure I’ll leave work for that. And that’s the big difference in how RL and Salesforce and these these companies like that they don’t really apply to what what I don’t think how it works for each chakra or a are building automation Tachyon electrician go to build you know we’re talking about point terminating them and programming them and building a graphic based on them and and showing manipulating them you know you need something that that actually applies right so when you could take in doing what what you’re already doing your your document to get liveso you know what you did yesterday yourdaily takes five minutes update when you’re capturing it.

Eric Stromquist
Yeah, yeah, so so just kidding. And I think if you think about from a business perspective, what I’m hearing is first of all, it saves money because if you’ve if you’ve got a processes You’re doing your team buys into, everybody’s doing it the same way. You’re capturing all the data points so that you’re not forgetting something. So you’re getting everything built properly. And you’re you’re reducing the amount of time it takes to find things. So you’re not scrambling at the end of the month to try to get the bubbles done or whatever. But there’s another sort of, you know, hidden thing here, I think that I think comes in, which is, you know, Britain, I’m gonna ask you to speak to this too, because I think you actually use this technology is that, you know, at the end of the day, it’s still competitive out there. Right. So you know, if you can respond quicker and offer better technical support, which I think one of the factors that would be speed, we’ve talked about that before, because time is money, right? We’re all are looking for the quicker answers. And if you can provide your customers with a quicker answers, because you’ve got a more efficient process, then you’re going to get the added benefit of people thinking these. These guys provide great tech support. Brett, does that resonate and how are you guys using it?

Brent Burrows
So yeah, as Eric alluded to, Not only errands friend, co host I’m also a client.

Eric Stromquist
truth comes out right? Exactly. We’re going to ask it we’re gonna ask Aaron’s wife how organized he is in a minute. So get ready for that one.

Brent Burrows
Yeah, I’d like to point out first off I bought from Aaron he did not sell me.

Aaron Gorka
Yes, true. He did buy it. Yes.Everybody that bought itcan’t Jim software down somebody’s throat anyway?Work? You got to be a friend anyway because you’re working together. So I know it works.

Brent Burrows
Yeah, that’s the gosh, that was that was funny. You know, when you do when you do like technical presentations or demos for people, you’re like, Okay, I got this really slick solution, and we’re going to drive them through a controlled environment. And Aaron shows up to the office sitting in sitting in my dad’s office with me, my dad and I’m like, hey, Glad I know this guy, man, Aaron, he’s got this project management software, you know, check it out. I think it’ll help us out. So he’s like, okay, Aaron comes in. And then one of those things he mentioned earlier, they were doing some type of software update to it and completely had the site just like down crashed it like they’re updating it. So Aaron’s just sitting there looking at him and I’m looking at my dad and I don’t really know Aaron very well at all. I’m just like, Oh, man.

Aaron Gorka
Watch this 45 second video that I made on anice night. Give me a Give me a minute here. Let me make a phone call andwe sorted that out.

Eric Stromquist
So but but it sort of gets back to if you can troubleshoot it in front of somebody made it the demo goes perfect. You never know. You know, how they’re going to how resourceful they’re going to be that there’s a problem. So you got to see Aaron live, troubleshoot the problem and fix it right.

Aaron Gorka
Yeah, well, I am. I absolutely always go live I have I have no belief. I don’t like PowerPoint. If I can avoid them with a software, it’s just it’s got to be live because they got to see where the problems are. Otherwise you’re, you’re hiding right and you can’t I software, they’re gonna find you they’re gonna, they’re gonna be bad.

Brent Burrows
Yeah, so, so one of the things we kind of talked about earlier Aaron mentioned and how fast that you know, if something does happen, there is a crash, how they’re going to get it up fast they constantly make changes. That’s one of the attractive things that I like about it and we primarily we use it for for our project side we use project tracker, and the thing that I like about using the software working with Aaron and and his team is that speed and the agility the the fact that if you need request to change, it can be done fairly quickly. Like when you when you have one of these big, you know, a giant software package like a sales force or show managers It’s kind of like trying to redirect the Titanic when you’re looking at the iceberg. It’s going to take a long freakin time before you ever see it if you ever see it. And I don’t know if you saw the movie didn’t go well. So Aaron’s got a speedboat over there. And the second he turns the wheel, you should see some pretty immediate action. But

Eric Stromquist
unlike Kate Winslet when when she says I’ll never let go, Aaron won’t let go. Right. I mean, that’s the thing about that movie. Remember, he’s on he’s on the log or whatever. And he she’s in the water and she’s on the log, and she goes, I’ll never let go and about a half a second later. She lets go and he drowns. Right. Right, right. Yeah. Don’t

Aaron Gorka
know. If you look closely at that, at that photo, there’s there’s room for two on that on that door. I’m getting on that door.

Brent Burrows
Parallel there wasn’t Kate Winslet a redhead in that movie.I was getting up on that door. I’ll tell you what, I’ll bepushing her off.

Eric Stromquist
Listen, Aaron I’m gonna quick at a point here So Eric, do me a favor when you’re not talking. Can you mute yourself? Because we’re hearing your hear your car car stuff? Yeah, no big deal. Just Oh,your phone on your phone right now

I’ll mute you here then But baby. No, because we can still hear you. We don’t answer you know you’re muted.

Brent Burrows
Tell us an extremely, you know, a secret you’ve never told anyone and we’ll see if you’re on mute.

Eric Stromquist
I can meet you here from here and so, you know, it’s not a big deal. Okay, that was that was that was kind of a cool segue. So now Mrs. Gorkha the question everybody wants to know is how organized is Aaron and Hmm.

Aaron Gorka
Oh, well, yes, very organized.

Eric Stromquist
The same clothes every day and forgets to wash him or he justclean laundry to save our spare bed and be dirty and thenI don’t see what the problem is it that I’m not complaining about

who’s doing what he’s doing the laundry done. Wow. Well listen, we’re going to get an annual report on how things are going in the Gorkha marriage and you know, that’s pretty impressive that he’s doing laundry. So Aaron, congratulations on that brother. But there you go. But but but I think it gets back to and I want to I want to sort of segue a little bit to you guys because you guys do a great podcast called next generation innovation. And Aaron on your last one you did just an incredible talk on change management and could talk a little bit about that sexy posts on ControlTrends. And tell us about the change management talk.

Aaron Gorka
Yeah, yeah. So every backtrack story. I brought University where I graduated, they do programs called service learning, where instead of going to business school studying Google or Lulu, Batman or big companies, they work with local independent contractors or companies, right. So when I was going through school, I thought it was great idea. And then when I became when I finished I got right in on it as a client. Actually how Charlotte and I met was in this professor. We just got to go with Dr. Dave I kept moving up i think is how you say his last name, but Dr. Dave, and change management was a course that I really I really focused in and I really enjoyed. So he brought me back after a few years of leading change initiatives and how The plans for our company Iran to grow and how to evolve into basically from a $5 million company, ultimately to a $20 million company. We were only about 2020 employees at the time. And we’re at 65. Now and we’re not quite on track on the financial goal, but overall is organization and the people change. perspective, we’ve done very well. So the professor basically brought me back in to talk to a bunch of I think it was MBA students might have been PJ, I don’t know, but a masters or batch level business. The change managers group is I focused on kind of four areas, because I hadn’t had much time to prepare for it. And it was around industry change that we’ve seen in any track controls, the big picture stuff, kind of contractor specific portions like that Iran saw very specific to what we do. And also when what happens when it goes into a contract here and how that comes. tractor that evolved from change management perspective and struggles and key points that you need to be aware of 1.2 correction in it is right, the very beginning I say, fence sitters are the people you need to remove in your organization and the change initiative. It’s not true. It’s resistors. Ultimately, if you set the direction of an organization, and people are individuals, no matter how long they’ve been with, you are resisting that change. Sometimes you need to make a change and that person has to leave the organization. And this resistorscan be your your power players. Interesting.

Brent Burrows
Yeah, I remember hearing that and like the beginning of the thing is like the fence sitters get rid of him. I was like, Man, that’s harsh.

Aaron Gorka
Yeah, it was the resistors get rid of it is hard to make But it is it’s a very important thing.

Brent Burrows
Gosh, do you remember it? Completely like a different segue? I’m not sure what made me. What made me think of it. Do you guys seen the movie? Happy Gilmore, right? Oh, yeah,yeah,

yeah. Gosh. I’m picturing Aaron Gorkha as the orderly Ben Stiller. And then you gotta lady saying my fingers hurt.

Aaron Gorka
Oh, really?

Unknown Speaker
Nice.

Eric Stromquist
Nice, nice. Well, I know it is very interesting when you think about the fence sitters. So how much that Aaron is in? I mean, how do you know when somebody is offensive or not? I mean, how much time do you give them? So you come in and you’re doing change management? How long do you give them before you decide? I mean, I might just add on the imparting your vision and getting people on board leadership’s responsibility, how much of that you know, how do you know when somebody Event Center in a resistor versus somebody that you just hadn’t sold the vision to

Aaron Gorka
in my, in my experience with it, it’s actually it can happen fairly obviously, the fence sitter, like there’s going to be people who champion it right away that jump right on to it, they believe in it, they know it’s going to help and they’re, they’re your championresistors are typicallygoing to be a little bit older on the older side, probably in accounting, honestly, because, you know, when you’re in accounting is very particular. And they like it their way, right. And again, they’re doing it their way for a long time, typically, so they’re very concerned about what you’re bringing into their office. That’s usually the first grasp of a resistor. The fence sitters going to be probably the decision maker side of things that you know, he’s just picturing fearing that that changed that little bit and going, Wow, this is a lot of money. You know, what do I do with it? Should I do it. And at that point, that’s when you gotta really work on division, or give them time, build trust, keep the sales hat off and turn it backwards and become a friend. Right?

Eric Stromquist
And I think you gotta kind of be careful to, at least in my experience, over the years is sometimes your, your resistors are giving you really good feedback. So it’s almost like you I think you have to, you have to create a culture where it’s safe to speak out and disagree, right? Otherwise, people just go well, I don’t want to be labeled a resistor because he’s gonna get rid of me or she’s gonna get rid of me. Right. So. So, at what point does somebody go from being, you know, offering an alternative, brave opinion that maybe you don’t want to hear, but it’s useful feedback to being labeled a resistor.

Aaron Gorka
Ultimately, the leader, the leader needs to be, you know, poised and calm and in control of that kind of scenario and understand, you know, if you’re a great leader, you’re going to be receiving Poland and open minded to to everybody’s ideas. So you can, you know, that’s just framing this box here, you know, it’s really important to always be open minded to work with everybody’s ideas, at very least what you need to deal with, which he says there might not be time for this right now you need to address you need to talk one on one with that person. And make sure that, you know, there’s good reasons and they understand why you’re not hearing them. Because you will lose, you don’t want to lose resistors necessarily, right? It’s when it gets to the point where you get your sense in the leader, you’ve done everything you can with it. You You You talk to them, you move past it, it’s time has gone by, and they’re hung up on it, and they’re just not buying in. Yeah, and it becomes an evident cancer side of things. And at that point is not good for either person, right? Ultimately, because they’re not they’re not going to be satisfied, no matter what now. So, if you’ve made mistakes along the way as leader you’ve caused your founders In that scenario, that’s one given. The other one you you’ve done an

Eric Stromquist
excellent job with your leader and you need to make so and I’m what I’m hearing you say is it if you if you sort of addressed an issue and you keep having to dress the same issue over and over and over again, even though that person has been heard and you’ve, you’ve listened to them and you’ve taken it down and they know you’ve been hurt, because you’ve maybe repeated it back a couple of times, but after the second or third time, you’re kind of going, Okay, we don’t need to cover this ground. Again, you’re a resistor.

Aaron Gorka
You’re when you start to impede the vision of the organization, ultimately, it would negatively again, framed with its with a strong leader, you know, that’s doing the right things. Right. And you have a clear vision and and other teammates you’re buying in. Now and there’s you know, I mean that that’s the moment and again, it’s it’s evident if it may hurt your heart and your gut, because there’s a lot of typically with heavy resistor, it’s not going to be a they’re going to They’re passionate about it because they spent a lot of time with you. Right? So that’s where you get hard. But, you know, sometimes you need to get over that as your organization. Organizations are not just should never be if you’re set up well, you should try to never be too reliant on one person no matter what, right? Because a boss can combine him right now. But, you know, if you’re, if you’re dreaming of a business, right, yeah, you gotta be prepared. You’re in a war. I were generals in a war of their right and from a business perspective, right. So

Brent Burrows
Aaron, I gotta ask. You said something there about the generals and having people step in. If, if a bus comes by and hits you, who’s stepping up for you? Who do I need to get in contact withMy friend, Steve from the awesomeSteve from the office,our core business line andhe’s your guy to start.Okay, cool. I really liked what you’re saying there and talking about the resistors. And then ultimately the the change, because at any business that has ultimately grown or had to change with the marketplace, first off, if you haven’t changed with marketplace, your app, you have to be out of business. It’s just, it’s inevitable. But everybody kind of faces that not necessarily that they’re in, you know, they don’t even have to be in that technological software field for this type of innovation. But you grow when you take in these growing pains and a humans are just we’re naturally resistant to change. There’s something in our brains, it’s already it’s that self preservation thing like this. There’s danger out there. We know this. We need to stick it This. So if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Exactly. But to get to the next level, ultimately I think it, it comes down to good communication between the top of the overall vision. That’s why the vision and the goal needs to be clear to everyone because then it helps the struggle makes sense as we’re currently right here. If we’re going to get to this point, here’s what has to happen. Not that there aren’t going to be not that you’re not going to have to take a step or two back in order to make that leap make that jump but uh, I think that’s, that’s one of the big things and leadership is having people you mentioned accounting, Aaron, like it people that are very set into their structure in their ways and having, having having your champions as like the leaders of those department, and kind of something you alluded to with your generals like, ultimately, I think those have to be those are got to be your generals. You know, if you’ve got The head of accounting, you got the head of administration service and software and say, Look, here’s the direction we’re going, here’s why we’re doing it. And you’ve got to champion this to your people, right? Because if your generals or your leaders in those areas are talking down on it, there is nobody in that department that has any type of, you know, they’re not going to do it. And then I think that’s at the point, I would say you would, it would be easier to deal with the resistors down the line. That’s something that think that can be, you know, dealt with more and chances are lower down, but when you have one of your leaders that you can’t drive it into, and that they just continue to resist. I think that’s that that’s where you hit that problem and you can really see that cancer.

Eric Stromquist
No, you’re right, if leadership’s not buying and then you got to go back and resell the vision. I know in our company, one of the one of the things they didn’t get we I really, really welcome diverse opinion. So it’s a safe space for to speak out against something But, you know, one of the criteria for us is, yeah, if you’re going to criticize something, then have another solution or an alternative way to do it just to say this doesn’t work and it sucks doesn’t fly in our company. So hey, this doesn’t work because of this. And here’s something we could do differently. Okay, and then that that that sparks to me that sparks convert positive conversation and also sparks innovation that’s where innovation comes from. Because if you can’t go after something that’s not working if it’s not safe to do that, but then if it’s okay just to criticize and not have something else to the table, because criticize is easiest thing in the world, right? I mean, you could just sit there and I can find fault in anything and so can you and token everybody else. finding faults, not enough, you know, so you can find fault, but didn’t have a better solution. I’m interested. You’re just finding fault. I don’t need you for that. Your resistor. Your you don’t need to be on the team. You’re getting off the bus at the next stop right there. They care about his mute button.

Aaron Gorka
Yes, he did.

Eric Stromquist
So innovative. Aaron Gorkha he is

Aaron Gorka
I had to do is hit backI know you’ve resisted that at first, but I’m glad you came.

Eric Stromquist
So Aaron is gone from new guys. Listen you guys, next generation innovations the podcast you guys do is fantastic. You guys got an episode that’s going to drop next week talking about change and innovation and innovative companies you guys have interviewed Kim brown from Cochran supply. Again, we’ll be posting that next week on ControlTrends talk about that episode of next generation innovation guys.

Brent Burrows
Gosh, Aaron, you want to start?

Aaron Gorka
Yep. It was so fun. Kim is Kim is like one of the most fun people in the whole industry to hang out with so insightful. She’s seen it all from a very good perspective and especially for distribution. She’s now had enough Cochran supplies whole tech team manager there and I’ll tell you what that gene we we Work heavily with them. Same way you guys would like your rent. And they’re just so awesome in there. And Kim brings a great perspective to change and a little bit of fun along the way. I think we do craft into like, what it’s like to be a woman in the industry.

Brent Burrows
Yeah, I have to say that was probably one of if not the funnest day interviews that are, you know, it wasn’t even an interview. It was just, it was an awesome conversation. And it was her story. It’s so cool talking about how she got started in the industry, how she progressed, got out, came back and then kind of her journey and then how it keeps going. Like I was really just fascinated to kind of sit there and just listen to her and listen to the processes they take on how how they embrace, really taking care of the employee. That was a huge that was a huge thing that I got out of it. That focus that they put on developing people in their, inside their organization to best serve their customers. I know sometimes it’ll be, you know, the customer’s always First, the customer’s always first and absolutely like you, it’s got to be kind of like one a and one be. But if you’re completely focused on, you know, the end result, you know, was it something about the carrot and the horse of the horse and the wagon? There’s something in there with that. But they do a great job of for, from what she was telling us of developing their people communicating that vision, and then getting the feedback. So it really was it. It was a lot of fun talking to her.

Eric Stromquist
How did they deal with resistors that she talked about that the Scott Cochran takes them out back and shoot them or what was the deal with resistors with them?

Brent Burrows
I think they had some type of Jedi programs that they might just take lightsabers they develop and just

Eric Stromquist
nice nice.

Aaron Gorka
I can ultimately Great great example of a strong culture and and the resistors all Julie there, they leave they find their out there.

Eric Stromquist
Very cool. So they opt out, self opt out sort of thing. Yeah. But it is a great organization. We’ve talked a lot to Kenny and I have a lot about, you know, Cochran supply and couple other distributors and how they’ve sort of reinvented themselves to deal with all the changes that are coming about and you know, changes definitely a foot in our industry. And I’m going to ask you, Aaron, I’m going to ask you Brent to what do you see in in terms of changes that’s surprising your this accelerator that you guys are paying attention to because you go Okay, this is here that we have to change long with this.

Aaron Gorka
We’re watching our economy real post actually, and we’re looking at a lot of things to do with in building a lot of upgrades, your cleaning kind of tactics, tequila, Internal, new technologiesinternal in our client base, looking at ways to findways to make money but also to provide value to our customers. I took a certified Energy Manager course I’m hoping to become a certified image manager, but it’s all about looking inside the buildings right now.

Brent Burrows
I gotcha. Yeah, thatthat ultimately, the thing that I always tried to pay attention to is, you know, kind of working our portion the business the primary want to work in the controls, and say, Okay, what are the what are the decisions? What are the factors that are the factors that are driving the decisions that they’re going to have to make? Why are they doing the things that they’re going to do so that I can, or we can best position ourselves to be that solutions provider or if we need to change course, you know, with offerings kind of like Aaron’s talking about With the duck ceiling or things like that, because just you know, showing up every day and doing what you’ve done for 510 years, that’s great, but you’re going to, you’re going to miss the boat or you know, when the next wave comes, you’re not going to be ready.

Eric Stromquist
You know, Brent, I think it’s really interesting, too, because you sort of are at the ground level, right? I mean, you’re actually doing an installation, the programming and actually the reality of the system and the building right? data and the rest of the team. They’re dealing with the people in the C suite, the consulting engineers, and you know, and I think you guys would both agree there’s the theory about how something should work and the reality about how something should work. And I want to sort of ask you this question. Are you seeing there being a delta between the theory about what customers are asking for in the C suite and the engineers are asking for, and the reality of what the people are actually needing in the day to day that are actually using the system day to day?

Aaron Gorka
Yeah, Ithink sometimes you run into that.

Brent Burrows
If when you go from, from the C suite and then engineering, and sometimes that can run into things of, you know, buzz words and things really, you know, like we talked about earlier getting sold. And then when it comes down to the practical application of what the building needs, or the engineering team needs to fulfill the, like the company’s overall objectives, you can kind of have that delta that you’re talking about, or do you know is you, you come down, you get the Delta in between what I want, and what the budget is. That sometimes a very large one there, but but I would say, you know that there are some times where I swear, people will, they’ll look at a job, and they’ll just be like, Oh, yeah, you just need to do this, this and this. And then, in theory, everything is a win. Everything’s done, right. It’s not that hard. It’s relatively simple. But if you don’t have the biggest thing that I, that I’ve seen in buildings that we’ve either gone to take over, or where we’ve had, you know, stop projects and stop slow down, is the quality assurance, like in your quality assurance, and I will tell you at the base level of your installation, if you don’t have great quality assurance, then nothing is it’s never going to work. You can’t You can’t build on a poor foundation.

Eric Stromquist
Quality Assurance also gets bad imitation right? Which Aaron’s jack.

Aaron Gorka
Well, we actually were talking about that we’ve kind of warm the internal QA team,you know, with a couple of short brokenthe timing of when to get him in is kind of what we’re what we’re getting better at tagged him in and get them into your building to scope through And besides, you know how to do that that effectively. But yeah, we’re using our document to document

Brent Burrows
works well. And that’s what I do with the like. So I’ve got a project right now where I’m kind of paying the installation for men, doing the programming, doing the project management, and all that. And that’s what I do every every day. I go in there, I get the reports from everybody and but what we’ve been doing in the field, all the commission stuff, any notes, and I go to project tracker, and I hit it all, and so I get everything in there and I have to do it every one to two days. Because otherwise the things, they stack up, they get lost. And then you wind up. If you lose, if you lose, you know, whatever, 40 to 80 hours, just in terms of that QA or really staying on top of it. You wind up chasing it a long time down the road, and that’s just not a good book

Eric Stromquist
to an errand. That’s where you come in right buddy. That’s about it. I don’t need to come in anymore. He’s got it handled. He calls me up when you when you need some help, or something weird with it? Well, what I meant was that’s what your software is kind of hit this very nicely, because again, it seems like you guys are definitely customized for the guys that are doing the work like your bread does, which is, you know, a lot of our audience. So

Brent Burrows
I’ll tell you that when when Aaron first brought the software to us, the the project tracker software, it was basically it was very it was task driven, check off the task, it gets done, and then it tallies up a completion percentage. And one of our big things was with the length of these control projects and maybe how many hours get put into them. It was like I need to see how many tasks were getting done. But I need to see how long it’s taking us. So that if I’m 20% into the project completion wise and I’m 50% into the hours, there’s there’s a major problem flag there and they were able I think probably within a within a month of us meet with Aaron and then get signed up for the software. They had the hours function on there and They’ve continued to work out any bugs or anything. And it really helps us with more of our, our workload, our progress tracking, and then our workload forecasting. So,

Eric Stromquist
well, that’s really cool. You know, and I gotta tell you if Kenny smilers was here right now, we would probably play a little game Aaron we like to call let’s make a controls to you. So for our audience out there who might be interested in playing let’s make a deal with Aaron Gorkha and at technologies. If they were to reach out and respond with the code, Browns go to the Super Bowl, what kind of discount Would you be willing to give them on their first purchase?

Aaron Gorka
I didn’t know about this game.

Eric Stromquist
Most people don’t till they get on the show. That’s why

Aaron Gorka
I would do a training some kind of training discount.Some kind of training discount. Yeah, that gets me excited. Come on air. Yeah,come on now.Somebody called me up. And work out a good deal. I don’t think anybody’s gonna call me over yet. I’d like somebody prove me wrong. Get a real good deal well how about how about how about how

Eric Stromquist
about how about the next three people that reach out and actually purchase your product and say Browns go to the Superbowl? Get to be your guest at the ControlTrends Awards. Okay. The resistant guy came up with an idea All right, I get to get say on the team hopefully so speaking it up, I was so he got you guys to do the young gun towards this year and talk about that talk about the Young Guns so you guys have any any candidates yet? How’s it going to work you guys are going to be in and the Super Bowl ControlTrends Awards extravaganza in Orlando. February 2, you guys pumped up about it. You guys got some plans? What’s going to happen?

Brent Burrows
Absolutely. I already alluded to what we’re going to be doing after the controls, trends, awards and who we’re going to be watching

Eric Stromquist
Aaron’s paying for the Uber so if you if you buy earned software between now and the control trends awards, he will be personally responsible for your Uber and if you do get thrown in jail, Aaron will bail you out. How’s that for an offer? There you go.

Aaron Gorka
wild night I

Eric Stromquist
don’t know what you don’t know about a wild night, give me a break. And so we’re taking for brown to go to the Super Bowl to air and get me out of jail. That will be the code and if you buy the software and use that then Aaron will be responsible for you have the control trends awards.

Aaron Gorka
He’s gone.At least at least the industry is getting older at least JV you know.

Brent Burrows
So that I mean, that’s an interesting thing. So Eric, Eric, hit me up earlier in the week know that. Talking about young gun to young people in in the industry. Eric hit me up with a guy earlier in the week and he sent me an email yesterday I get in touch with them. And it was basically about getting into the control industry, you know, kind of what it’s about what it’s like the barriers and and the process. And then he was like, Hey, I’m going to have you reach out to Brent. He’s a young guy in the industry and I’m like, man, I used to be I just turned 30 last week.

Eric Stromquist
I didn’t tell a man Don’t tell him that.

Unknown Speaker
I’m 30 years old.

Eric Stromquist
Man. You don’t get birthday brother.

Aaron Gorka
Happy belated birthday. Yeah.

Brent Burrows
Yeah, I’ll tell you what, Aaron that’s you know sales people got to know their customers birthdays. That’s that’s bad on you, man.

Eric Stromquist
Well, I’m just gonna you know, and yeah, that’s right. Yeah, it should be in the software someplace. Right so automatically send Aaron said Brett, birthday bottle of scotch or something. Right. But what is your birthday Brett? Was it yesterday or was it

Brent Burrows
was it last Sunday? October 27. I had that was another one. I had all planned out for a Browns victory and unfortunately, they didn’t come through but you know,

Eric Stromquist
back to the brown to the Falcons are the two most talented you know on paper change it can’t win a game but the Browns winning more than the Falcons.

Brent Burrows
You know what’s funny is when we had that interview or the interview with Kim brown Yes, I was given her craft that the lions because they’ve been so bad and now if you put the browns and the Falcons wins together it might not equal of lions. Thank you right about

Eric Stromquist
I’m sorry. That’s what I’m getting back to Brent’s point about you know, we’ve all been out you know at different places and you meet somebody and they just got a certain spark about him right so I go to this infrared spot. Spot place like hundred 55 degrees for 40 minutes, right. So there’s this cat their name Jalen and Dylan is just these great customer service really cool. We get to talk and he’s talking about well as gold as you know, to build smart homes. That’s what he wants this we talked about that he goes Will you do something with home? So you said no. I do you know building automation controls and we get to talking about his eyes get this biggest saucers. He goes, your industry does this and does that It does this and he’s just fascinated by the whole thing. He goes, Yeah, how do I get in? And I said, Okay, well, you know, I got I got a guy you should talk to he can he can hear what you’re about and talk to you about it, butand thenanother person there, they get to talk and you got all these young people that are learning computer stuff and all kinds of stuff and don’t know what to do. And they hear about our industry and they going Holy smokes, this is incredible. I could affect the environment, I could do this. I don’t have to be in a cubicle farm. I don’t have to do this kind of stuff. So I don’t think it’s that they’re not really qualified people out there that could they could be qualified to be great additions to our industry. I think it’s just they don’t know about our industry, which is, you know, part of why we have the young guns, right. And the young guns are basically younger people in our industry that we recognize that the control trends awards, and that Aaron and Brent are going to specifically recognize what the 2019 class of Young Guns

Aaron Gorka
Yeah, I think we should throw out here now some some nominations. If anybody Has young young people in their organization said that they want to nominate no thrown out there because we have here we can’t catch everybody and if you leave it to us we’re gonna we’re just going to pick the people we don’t want to be so throw maybe some reach out and maybe when you guys do your nominations for the actual words we can have a young gun

Eric Stromquist
Well, you know what, that’s you know what the nomination ballot is out and we don’t have something on that because that’s usually being selected but that’s not a bad idea. We might update the ballot for that but again, it’s it’s we kind of know those young people in the organizations that do it but you guys were young gun says how you guys got started. And, yeah, part of being a young gun is that you’ll be a guest on next generation innovation, which is what you guys are also trying to do because again, part of it is we’re trying to shine the superstar spotlight on these young people, so they don’t so look at our industry wide get recognized. You know, if I do some good things early on in my career, I’d like to wait till you know, I’m retired to get recognized. I can get recognized. You know, Leon and I mean what was it like for you guys to be young gun to me? What was that experience like for you?

Brent Burrows
It was a date to be honest it was unexpected I didn’t know that I was going to have to go up on stage until I got there. Yeah, and now Mike Oh man, I’m glad glad I didn’t wear my my jeans and my jersey or something.

Eric Stromquist
Yeah, what you can because there’s a Super Bowl party so you can this year but

Brent Burrows
exactly. I went I went in one year too early. Yeah. Yeah.

Eric Stromquist
But what about you Eric? like for you?

Aaron Gorka
I loved it. I thought it was such a cool my dad came with me to Chicago and it was just such a nice proud moment to get to share with him do and it was cool to be up in front of everybody that I’ve been, you know, kind of working to be and make friends with with the hand side and a lot of team members are there. So that was that was that was it was awesome review. It’s like a you know, I said it out the year before as a goal. I saw that

Brent Burrows
Vegas

Eric Stromquist
now you should be here and you guys you guys are both great additions to our industry you guys are doing really really good stuff out there and sort of as we wind down How do people get hold of you bread and tech

Aaron Gorka
and tech buzz visit us online

Brent Burrows
in tech dash Inc. com You can call our office you’ll be directed one of our fantastic sales people or reach out to Eric at whatever whatever method he he is he’s currently at and he’ll make sure that you get in touch with the right people

Eric Stromquist
right because if you guys are looking for an integrator to do great work for you and the George area or you guys do national accounts all across the country severe national account. I mean, that’s been one of your guys strong suits back since I first met your dad we were doing national accounts together. So you guys is The guy Liam Neeson says and what taken or whatever, I’ve got a unique skill set and then Tech has a unique skill set they can do your national accounts or they can work with you locally. Great stuff there. And Aaron, how about you, buddy? What’s the best best way for people to track you down?

Aaron Gorka
LinkedIn to be honest with youfairly regularly.

Eric Stromquist
Right and then if somebody wants to get a look at your software now you got a pretty good website is it and technologies com if they just want to browse around and see what your software is all about?

Aaron Gorka
Technology

Unknown Speaker
technologiesfollowing wasn’t the highest priority, I’ll tell you what. That was the little red under Nowadays

Eric Stromquist
we’ll make sure to put the link in the show notes as well and then again Stay tuned next week man the next generation of the next episode of next generation innovation with Kim Brown is going to drop and that is something you guys really want to hear that as well done boys really really well done and listen if you want if you want to be a guest on their show man reach out I mean they would love to have you on and you guys primarily focused on the younger guys you occasionally let me and Kenny Come on but you kind of you guys kind of discriminate against older folks right?

Brent Burrows
Only one at a time. We have to keep that we got to keep the mean age down. The mean age has to come like under like 42 or something.

Eric Stromquist
Oh, there you go. There you go. What about you? What’s your cut off point for talking to all guys keep in mind your dad the show?

Aaron Gorka
I like right Yeah, I like I like the perspective of it. Bring them in and then just flashing back to when they were young folks. If I was good me anybody you know that wants to do a flashback trip. Yeah, I think that’s cool. Back to the old days when they were kids

Eric Stromquist
okay and then listen I just got a text in with a picture of somebody that’s doing like an Alaskan dog sled thing with the big old you know, head thing on and driving it looks an awful like Kenny smile so I’m wondering if Kenny is like in Alaska doing like a Alaskan dog sled type ride What do you guys think you think it could possibly be Kenny?

Brent Burrows
He’s pretty he’s probably taking medicine penicillin and everything to a to a remote village tried to save lives just you know, doing God’s work.

Eric Stromquist
Well, there is another picture somebody looks like Kenny and a priest outfit with Bible so maybe he is doing missionary work. I don’t know. Aaron DD Have you seen any pictures? That might be Kenny out there doing where in the world is Kenny spires?

Aaron Gorka
I certainly not in the car driving beside me. There you go. I don’t know

Brent Burrows
I’ll have to turn on. Turn on College GameDay here in a minute. You know, you may see that they always got people standing on each other’s shoulders. their shirts off and everything so

Eric Stromquist
I will scan the crowd. We might be a bit the Pittsburgh game and with the PP across it. Yeah, that’s right. It’s cold he’s got we got the shirt off.

Brent Burrows
I’ll tell you what that would be mighty mean if he was because Pittsburgh is playing here in Atlanta today. That’s right. He could be here and not even tell you.

Eric Stromquist
Well, he would he would definitely show up and not tell me because you know he is definitely the secret agent man But hey, listen guys, thank you so much. That’s it another episode of control talk now you’re smart buildings video cast and podcasts with the two young guns. Brett Burroughs medtech and Aaron Gorkha from hat technologies. So remember, be bold, stay in control. Be nice to a young person this week because they’re probably going to be your boss real soon. So have a great week. And you guys gotta go indeed.

Brent Burrows
I thought you I thought it was always and stay in control.

Eric Stromquist
change. Change it to be be nice to be nice to an old person might be your boss

Brent Burrows
In Deed

Eric Stromquist
Thanks so much. You guys. Have a great week and man, be sure to check this. Check the podcasts. Drop them this week on controltrends.com

 

Ken Sinclair’s Automated Buildings November Editorial “Sharing Data, Work-Space, Interaction, & Integration”

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In his November edition of Automated Buildings, Ken Sinclair asks the million dollar questions: "How do we monetize our Building Data to attract and interact? How do we create greater value from our data? (our new money)" Read more!

More Great November Articles:

Fall 2019 Issue Haystack Connections
John Petze, Marc Petock, Project Haystack

Cyber Attack! Cyber Attack! BAS CYBER ATTACK!!!!
Scott Cochrane, Cochrane Supply & Engineering  Editor

Are You Prepared for the Threat of Cyber Security?
Jessica Seward, Albireo Energy

One Incorrect Sensor Could Cost You Big
Hector Hernandez, Cube-USA

Edge Computing Explained
Zach Netsov, Contemporary Controls  Editor

Is Smart as Smart Could Be?
Dave Lapsley, Econowise

Shared Spaces
Sudha Jamthe, IoTDisruptions

The Importance of Grid-interactive Buildings
Mike Barker

Virtual Intelligent Smart Building Management Platform
Bob Sharon, Blue IoT

IoT for the Greater Good
Apurba Pradhan, Adesto Technologies

Smart BMS Upgrade
Paul Tomas, baudrate.io

What’s a Building Operating System?
Olivier Poumeyrol, VayanData

The Role of the Chief Information Security Officer
David R. Bird. MSc Cyber Security, CISSP. Virtual CISO

Demonstrating Smart Building Business Value
James McHale, Memoori

Utilizing Existing Hardware Investments to Automate
Basant Singhatwadia, Accruent

How to develop your talent pipeline for 2020
Skip Freeman, BASI Solutions & Phil Zito, Building Automation Monthly

Building User Connection
Anna Koleja, Global Control 5

The New Office Environments CABA
Lisa Thibodeau

OVER 50 CHAPTERS of OUR NEVER ENDING BOOK
“The Building Book of Digital Transformation.”
evolving ONLINE with Connected Contractor

Timeline SMART BUILDING AUTOMATION EVOLUTION

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Project Haystack Connections Magazine Fall 2019 — COLLABORATION Solving the Data Challenge as a Community

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RICHMOND, VA. (PRWEB) OCTOBER 30, 2019

The Project Haystack Organization (https://www.project-haystack.org), a collaborative community addressing the challenge of utilizing semantic modeling and tagging to streamline the interchange of data among different systems, devices, equipment and software applications, today announced the publication of their sixth issue of Haystack Connections Magazine.

The Connections Magazine Fall 2019 issue reports on the latest news from the Project Haystack community from around the world and documents how rapidly the data revolution is overtaking the built environment. Both IT and OT contingents are recognizing that sematic data modeling and metadata tagging is key to clearing the hurdles related to ease-of-use, unified data flow, edge-to-cloud, and data security. Not to be missed is the fact that the storytellers in this issue include the end users of the data generated by equipment systems including commissioning experts, smart building consultants, large-portfolio property managers and developers – all of whom are demanding smarter, interoperable solutions, and companies that are responding by providing Haystack-compatible products and solutions.

“Project-Haystack has brought two important things to the industry – one is the technology – the semantic modeling methodology and standard tagging libraries. The other is a community-driven, open-source process that has engaged companies that, even as they compete in day to day business, realize that making data easier to work with will bring benefits for all,” said John Petze, Executive Director of the Project Haystack Organization.

The 66-page Connections Magazine Fall 2019 issue includes 11 contributed articles, the most published in any issue to date. The Property Manager’s View, “Data Tagging at Ford” was provided by Tim Scott of Ford Land, a division of Ford Motor Company that manages 5 million square feet of commercial real estate. Jim O’Brien of the ARC Advisory Group contributed his article “Project Haystack Turns Data into Useful Information for Smart Cities”. Other contributing companies include Lynxspring, Conserve It, Open Source Strategies, J2 Innovations, Tridium, Intelligent Buildings, BASSG and Bueno Systems. Brian Frank provides a full update on the recently released Haystack 4, as well.

With the announcement of Haystack 4, it was decided that it was time to update the organizations “Tag Logo”. Along with this, Project Haystack launched a new Marketing website to compliment the Developer website. Now, the Developer website is focused solely on the continued development of the Haystack methodology and assignment of tags, the activities of the Working Groups and the developer Forum conversations. The Marketing site is designed to inform the community on all the who is where and when, the new Project Haystack Logo files and new Marketing Kit, press releases, our members list and how to become a member, and is the home to Connections Magazine.

This issue of Connections Magazine promotes Project Haystack involvement in upcoming events and recaps past events including Project Haystack exhibiting at ISH in Frankfurt, Germany and in May, the organizations biggest collaborative event, the 2019 Haystack Connect Conference, which brought this community together for three days in San Diego. The Haystack Connect 2019 Speaker Presentations are available at https://www.haystackconnect.org/schedule. In September, a one day, first-ever Project Haystack event was held in London and sponsored by J2 Innovations.

Project Haystack Working Groups provide updates to their work. The Working Group Cybersecurity, championed by Fred Gordy of Intelligent Buildings and ATES Systems, championed by Jaap Balvers of BAM Energy Systems, part of Royal BAM Group nv, are just getting started and looking for “Collaborators” to join their group. As always, there is a section dedicated to Tools for Developers and Integrators and How to Get Involved, a curation of social media about Projects, Practices and Products, and a Project Haystack Members Directory.

“Today’s built environment comprises rich streams of data. Capturing and properly harnessing it allows owners and operators to better manage and operate their facilities. Data does not come from a single, unified source. Data’s value originates from just about anywhere. It must be organized, facilitated and orchestrated to capitalize on its value,” added Marc Petock, Executive Secretary of the Project Haystack Organization. “This is the essence of Project Haystack and the collaborative efforts of its community.”

While building systems have been the place where Project Haystack gained traction and adoption, the Haystack methodology is not just about HVAC, temperature sensors, fans, meters, and building systems. The IoT, BIoT and the IIoT are bringing diverse smart devices into homes, high-rise commercial buildings, industrial facilities, factories and agriculture. As smart devices proliferate into solutions no one could have ever imagined even a few years ago, coming from different suppliers around the world, the opportunity for implementing a data management strategy that includes tagging has become even more critical.

Adoption of Project Haystack is at an all-time high. It is being utilized in a wide variety of applications and use cases, and being deployed in thousands of buildings incorporating millions of square feet globally.

The Project Haystack Connections Magazine Fall 2019 issue is available for download at https://marketing.project-haystack.org/project-haystack-media/connections-magazine.

The Project Haystack Organization consists of Founding Member and Board Member companies Conserve It, Intel®, J2 Innovations, Legrand, Lynxspring, Siemens and SkyFoundry, and Associate Member companies Accu-Temp Systems, Altura Associates, BASSG, Bueno Systems, BuildingFit, CABA, Energy Management Association, Intellastar, Intelligent Buildings, IoT Warez, KMC Controls, KNX Association, Kodaro, sensorFact, SmartGreen, Tridium, WideSky and Yorkland Controls, as well as numerous Haystack supporters involved in Working Groups.

About Project Haystack
Since its formation in March of 2011, the Project Haystack Organization (a 501(c) non-profit trade association) has been providing the industry with an open-source, collaborative environment to address the challenge of making data self-describing using semantic modeling, also known as data tagging. The work developed by the Project Haystack member companies and community streamlines the process of managing, presenting and analyzing the vast amount of data produced by smart devices and equipment systems. The Haystack methodology can be used with virtually any type of system and device data and is not tied to any vendor or communication protocol.

More information about the Project Haystack Organization and membership is available at: https://marketing.project-haystack.org. For Developers, the Discussion Forums and Working Groups can be found at: https://www.project-haystack.org/forum/topic.

Intel is a registered trademark of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Contacts:

Robin Bestel
Project Haystack, Marketing Manager
Editor, Connections Magazine
robin@haystackconnect.org

John Petze
Project Haystack, Executive Director
Principal, SkyFoundry
johnp@haystackconnect.org

Marc Petock
Project Haystack, Executive Secretary
Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Lynxspring, Inc.
marc.petock@lynxspring.com

Check out these documents and audio resources to quickly come up to speed on Project Haystack tagging benefits and the methodology.

Click HERE to read the Project Haystack Connection Magazine Fall 2019 and access these downloads!

Contemporary Controls’ New BASpi-IO with Analog Outputs. BACnet PlugFest 2019 Update!

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New BASpi-IO with Analog Outputs

The wait is over! Our new BASpi-IO AO2 daughterboard is here. The BASpi-IO daughterboard (HAT) is a 12-point expansion board for Raspberry Pi 3 or 4. Two models exist and differ only in the makeup of their outputs. The new AO2 model offers more flexibility in applications where analog outputs are required.
 

Contemporary Controls Attends BACnet PlugFest 2019

Contemporary Controls participated in BACnet PlugFest 2019 from September 10-12, in Durham NH. The event was held at the University of New Hampshire’s InterOperability Lab and was sponsored by BACnet International.
 

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