Written by Deepan Patel, Industry Manager- Interface

In my previous blogs I talked a lot about some of our great solutions for Building IOT. If you haven’t checked them out, you can here.

When it comes to designing requirements for a Smart Buildings solution, it is important to consider whether the design is robust or smart. Our solutions help engineers feel confident in their designs being robust and smart. This is achieved using our ILC2050 flexibility and software configuration tools, such as Project+, for designing and putting together hardware requirements for a project.

How does the ILC 2050 Niagara based Controller achieve Smart Design?

The controller has many options to integrate and streamline customer requirements. For example, imagine you are designing a solution that has multiple protocols- protocols such as DALI, M-Bus, MP-Bus. The controller supports this natively via its direct connection to the many protocols that otherwise would have had to have some gateway or third-party device to integrate into the Niagara Platform. This not only helps when working with a single manufacturer but also improves system stability and point of failure. An additional point of failure can occur if, to be cost effective, an engineer is using third party IO solutions via Modbus.

Furthermore, the design offers a compact footprint in the panel, improved retrofit applications as well as panel size requirements offering potential savings.

The below diagram illustrates a typical BMS controller solution.

This is what the solution would look like using Phoenix Contact

Shell Environment on the ILC2050

The shell environment on the controller is designed to help with the commissioning. You are able to set up IP addresses on both of the network interface cards using this shell environment. In my previous blog I talked about IP static route, it is this shell environment that allows this to be executed. Below shows a screenshot of how you access the shell environment. This is also written in the ILC2050 manual.

You can also access some Youtube videos I’ve created about the Niagara ILC2050 solution using this link.

If you would like a live demonstration of any of our solutions, please do not hesitate to contact Deepan on 07908 485011 or email dpatel@phoenixcontact.com