Wireless and digital for existing buildings BlueRange and myGekko

Smart Offices 2.0

Autonomy is the buzzword for a new technical world we are decoupling from static and centralised structures. Where static once promised stability and reliability, the path has opened for changes towards flexible structures. Whether in finance, blockchains depicting the flow of currency, in mobility autonomous driving, decentralised energy concepts or autonomous living and working. Decentralisation is possible or already underway in many areas of society.

It is interesting to note that the combination of the terms “autonomous” and “housing” took a 180-degree turn. Where once “autonomous living” was seen with anarchy, punks, squatters and system criticism, a positive reinterpretation has taken place. Today, autonomous stands for the vision of a better and sustainable world, technology-based and the freeing of central structures.

Autonomous living means smart and intelligent buildings in which we will live and work in the near future. A concept that our homes and offices are technically equipped to be “intelligent” in certain ways.

These “smart buildings” or rather “smart offices” have become realistic and feasible thanks to technical progress. Studies have turned into pilot projects. Ambitious pioneering buildings have evolved into technological solutions that could be further developed for use thanks to the internet of things. The internet has made the use and control of network operable devices such as sensors, actuators and other components possible.

“Intelligent” means that many building blocks in a building can be regulated by networking and controlled by smartphones and apps. Individually or through defined parameters. For example, blinds and lamps can be regulated according to the amount of sunlight, the temperature of heating systems can be controlled remotely and security systems such as cameras can be operated. In addition, intelligent electricity consumption meters can measure energy consumption and purchase decentralized green electricity at the lowest price due to the basis of the blockchain.

Intelligence 2.0

According to the definition, building automation is the control, regulation and optimisation of devices in buildings and the technical basis of “smart living and working buildings”.

However, there is a problem when it comes to the digitisation of buildings being cables. In every building, the backbone of communication is built on copper. Copper cables run for kilometres in every office building. If you consider the analogy to a living body, the copper cables could be the vegetative nervous system, the transport medium of information in every classic building.

What happens with smart building control? You control the lighting or perhaps your coffee machine via copper cable using your smartphone and APP. In itself normal and nothing special. It works, but it is not thought through to the end and is a little out of date or no longer technologically appropriate. A building intelligence 2.0 solution is needed here.

In new buildings, cables can be intelligently installed, but here the costs are much more expensive than alternative solutions due to the material and the additional work.

The situation is far more complex for existing buildings. Heavy equipment and machinery must be used to open the walls and install cables. But there is another possibility.

The other solution

To reinterpret building digitisation, you have to rethink the main transport medium of information. And this requires a “post-copper solution” - or a supplement to the cable. You need a completely new infrastructural nervous system. A digital and intelligent building is complex and needs an efficient communication infrastructure - a bit like a living organism.

The solution is a digital system of sensors and actuators that communicate wirelessly with each other and form a so-called mesh between rooms, floors or even buildings. A mesh is a wireless local network consisting of several Wi-Fi components that transmit information in an energy-saving way.

Here we have the solution of BlueRange, a software protocol developed in-house, which uses Bluetooth as a carrier for information in the building. Again, the analogy to the organism: if Bluetooth as a carrier were the frequency or voice, then BlueRange would be the specified language containing the information.

In addition to the software, BlueRange also offers the corresponding hardware, i.e. the “receptors” and “synapses” of the “nervous system”. These beacons are installed on the ceiling and are instaltly ready for use. Each individual sensor can be controlled via the BlueRange portal.

The information is processed via a special control unit - the gateway, which functions like a brain. It collects all the information and coordinates the building blocks via a cloud or server.

The building is controlled via customised and individually created apps.

In addition to digital building control, BlueRange is primarily used in areas that require modern warehousing, inventory or structuring. I.e., the so-called asset tracking. Mobile inventory can be located immediately by means of location tracking. In hospitals, for example, mobile equipment can be sorted and located by means of a mesh.

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