Integration of your facility devices with IQnext

Integration of your facility devices with IQnext

Overview


Monitoring and regulatory systems are critical components of every facility, whether in a commercial or industrial setting. It promotes the concept of centralized management of critical infrastructure equipment while also ensuring the safe and efficient flow of activities.

It can be said that all facilities require proper climate control, fire suppression, backup power, and even security at multiple parts of the building. This is where the role of an innovation-driven cloud-based system comes into play. Each of these unique elements in a facility can be centrally managed through IQnext.

A variety of devices & assets (such as energy meters, UPS, AHUs, VFDs, Chillers, HVAC sub-systems, DG Backup Systems etc) in the buildings can be integrated with the IQnext platform as shown below. 

IQnext integrates with a vast range of software applications and hardware systems to deliver a seamless convergence of IT and OT, laying the foundation for organization-ready solutions that work right out of the box and maximize your value.

                                           


Benefits of the facility devices-IQnext integration


An automated approach to managing/monitoring your all facility devices

When the day starts for the facility team, there are many procedures that they need to perform on daily basis with the manual approach like,


  • Temperature management of the facility

  • Monitoring energy usage 

  • UPS battery level and relevant checkups

  • Diesel level monitoring 

  • Indoor Air quality monitoring


During these activities, the chances of mistakes in the data collection, and skipped activities are high if devices are not integrated with IQnext.


Once the integration is done, above mentioned and many more manual activities will not be required as IQnext will collect the data in real time, and users can get alerts wherever attention & action is required.

View of Historical data

It is a very crucial and hepatic activity for facility teams to capture and store the data of their facility devices and whenever they need to do analysis it will add more complexity to the activity.


Once the facility devices are integrated with IQnext, the facility team can get historical data since the integration and the user-friendly IQnext reports will make the data analysis faster & smarter.


Centralized solution for the facility Team


If the facility devices are not integrated with IQnext then the facility team needs to manage all the devices separately.


for i.g. UPS, Energy meters, IAQ sensors, Diesel Generators, PAC, etc… can be installed across the facility, and to manage this, the team needs to roam around the facility.


If the facility devices are integrated into the IQnext then at the same platform facility team can manage/monitor all the devices without managing those devices separately. 


How does the facility devices-IQnext integration work?

To get your devices & assets to communicate with the IQnext platform, the most basic pre-requisite is that the device should be able to communicate over the BACnet/IP. Here you can see the reference image for a better understanding of architecture:
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If the facility devices which are communicating on any other network (such as Modbus - Modbus RTU, Modbus ASCII, and Modbus Plus RS-485, RS232, or Ethernet - RJ45, etc) can be integrated with IQnext by converting to BACnet/IP using any convertor. Here you can see the reference image for a better understanding of architecture:
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To know more about building automation protocols, click here!

I’m not sure if my devices have communication capability. 
Most modern devices come with inbuilt communication capabilities. However, some devices (such as UPS back system, Precision Air Conditioning - PAC systems, etc) have capabilities such that they can be enabled for communication by adding a communication card. 

Refer to the user manual and/or the specification documents of the given device to know if it has communication capability. 
Alternatively, you can contact the device manufacturer/supplier, or control vendor to verify this. 

Once the above devices are connected to the network, follow the step-by-step instructions on for the software integration to IQnext, head over to this solution article.