IoT based Building Monitoring Solution

Introduction

Considered one of the country’s premier cultural institutions, the client is a non-government institution. As a part of green building initiative, various instrumentations have already been in place for energy, water and effluent monitoring, along with a SCADA central monitoring system.

Despite the presence of the SCADA system, the required KPIs were not available in a user-friendly manner to the maintenance team due to following reasons:

• The information was available only on a PC in the control room.

• The dashboards were arcane in nature and did not have historic trends.

• Weekly/monthly reports on email were not available. This information is very much required for LEED green building and ESG reporting.

Also, there was a requirement of client to display this information at the entrance lobby of the building so as to exhibit to visitors and foreign delegates.

YuDash IoT Solution for Green Building

YuDash was approached by System Integrator of the client to overcome the limitations in existing system. IoT solution was implemented over existing PLC/SCADA system.

Smart Building dashboard with real-time information is available on laptop and mobile app. The dynamic dashboard has also been displayed on a large TV at the building entrance lobby. Customized email reports in printable PDF format are being sent on weekly basis to the concerned officials.

Beside basic dashboard, specific alerts have been incorporated to identify any deviations from the norm in the consumption, due to leakage or wastage. This provides a preventive alert in case of water leakage or energy loss due to poor air conditioning.

Technical Architecture

The complete IoT solution was implemented with minimal intervention in the existing PLC/SCADA system.

In the block Existing SCADA System (left most block in the above diagram), various energy meters, flow meters are already connected to an Allen Bradley PLC in the control room. The instruments are communicating with PLC over Modbus protocols (RS485 or TCP/IP). The PLC is connected to SCADA PC over Modbus TCP/IP protocol. The PC is running SCADA software with dashboards etc. Due to standalone nature of computer, this information is not available readily to top management.

YuDash LYNX IoT Gateway was connected on TCP/IP bus with PLC, where LYNX act as Modbus TCP/IP Client. YuDash LYNX is connected to YuDash IoT platform using 4G/LTE IoT SIM card. LYNX IoT gateway reads PLC at a pre-defined interval (every 10 minutes) and pushes data to YuDash IoT platform. All dashboards and alerts are designed on cloud. Following are the key considerations in this IoT solution being used:

1. There is no disturbance in the existing SCADA system.

2. There is no re-wiring in the existing system. Only a LAN cable has been connected to LYNX.

3. With use of 4G/LTE IoT SIM, a reliable and trouble free internet is available. There is no dependency on customer WiFi/broadband network. It also eliminates potential cybersecurity concerns to main network.

4. Due to retrofitting nature of project, LYNX had to be adjusted in the existing control panel (extreme right block). For new projects, we recommend users to provide 5 inch DIN rail space and 24V DC supply for LYNX.

YuDash offers innovative IoT gateways and end-to-end IoT solutions. Please contact us at [e-mail] or WhatsApp/Mobile on [phone] or [phone].