A Quality Gap in Mid-Sized Projects

At the low-end the systems are simplistic enough that the workings of various systems are straightforward, understandable and supportable. I also think that the purchasers of low-end systems for homes - whether Pulte or Home Depot - provide some influence that helps also.

On large commercial projects, there is, sometimes, enough engineering effort spread over enough square footage or replicated units to make true testing and engineering viable.

In the middle, I see a lot of pain.

This is caused by several things:

- General Contractors are incentivized to get it done before getting it right. Done is measurable, right is a function of time + money.

- Architects do not have the standing to drive projects forward past permitting.

- Clients are overly optimistic that things will work as designed/advertised.  

- Typically there is little to no architecture work on the systems side.

Weak Systems in Mid-Sized Projects

- Access control + locking - large residences are too small for really nice access control systems and don't have staff to manage access usually but are too big for simple keying schemes without logging. 

- HVAC - Too much variation in sun exposure, room size, air flow, need for quiet, varying heat loads - it's just a ridiculously hard problem.

- Lighting - Generally straightforward but the desire for good dimming + low power is not quite worked out.

- Distributed Audio - Getting pretty easy compared to 10 years ago. Same with Distributed Video.

- Energy costs too high.  Homes start adding convenience features but without scale or just planning to keep energy costs contained.

This pain is caused by a lack of systems expertise with a whole generation of subcontractors along with the immaturity of various systems.

I haven't ever been in a 10K-30K multi-purpose building with really effective HVAC.  They are always too hot or too cool, too tight or too loose.  

The Constraints of Integrated Systems

Sometimes without deep integration, there is nothing.  Your car breaks are part of an integrated system and are less than useful by themselves.  But other things in our life are very loosely coupled and it works fine.  One can purchase meat or chicken and cook it on a Viking or GE stove without one iota of extra work to modify it to your stove.

I spoke with someone yesterday unfamiliar with our field who talked about the future of "Smart Homes" - a picture out of the Jetsons and Popular Mechanics (turn off your lights from your phone!).  I would assert that the biggest challenge to electronic system contractors is not to integrate multiple systems but to help make subsystems work at all.

Integrated systems often move system designers and certainly users towards a use paradigm that is born from tradition - not from the innovation of a the sub-system vendor.  We've seen this widely in the thermostat systems for residences - turning systems on and off without real regard to the upcoming weather changes, compressor cycling or energy costs.  In many instances, the existing use paradigms for integration constrain the market and strangle innovation.

Next week...a new beginning - a framework for the next generation of systems

Each year, the top custom install firms submit their financial results to CE Pro magazine.  Companies can submit audited results or their own internal estimates.  The Top 100 are published.  Ambleside joined the list for the first time this year, joining 4 other bay area firms.  Just 2 other bay area firms besides Ambleside submitted audited financials and made the list (Ambleside and these other two firms are also the only CEDIA Lifestyle award winners in the bay area over the last 10 years..) Ambleside Logic is the leading firm on the Peninsula/SF Area (the others have their offices spread from Hawaii to Tahoe.)

It's really, really hard to understand a heating system under construction.  Everyone keeps leaving doors open - access, fumes, often a lack of the doors themselves....Then painters come in and crank up the heat to make the paint dry quicker.  Often it's the owners who really shake down the hvac system.  And even then, it's not until the first hot or cold snap that one has any idea what the home is like. 

We are looking at over 1 million data points a day - light levels outside, inside, solar energy, network, etc.  The insight is gained by correlating data from disimilar systems - security shows doors open - maybe an open window is causing a draft, not a malfunction.

Here is a view into a home running Ambleside's systems.  What might normally take 3-4 months to understand got compressed into the first two weeks.

• Your electric bill is 30% higher this month.  Is something wrong?
• All of your bulbs are suddenly burning out much quicker. Why?
• Two guests in a row have complained that the guest bedroom is cold.
• The pool is taking longer to warm up than you remember.
• It's spring - what needs to be done to get the pool house ready.
• It's going to be 95 degrees out for 3 days straight - what was that special thing you needed to do 3 years ago?

I have a simple premise.  Without logs of both system performance and maintenance activities, it's very hard for owners to make sense of what is actually going on in a large home. And forget about tracking what happened - it's too hard.

The solution - a flight recorder for your home...operating quietly in the background keeping track of things so you don't have too.  



Everyone and their brother and sister seems to be trying to capture the hearts and minds of the power companies to manage in-home electrical usage.  Do the power companies have either?

One - Take a Crestron Prodigy System with a wireless thermostat. Any Crestron control system can be used - what's interesting about this one is you can put it in for a lot less than any climate logging system I know about.

 +   

Two - Ambleside's Sensor Logging service moves data from Crestron to Google.  We can move lots of interesting information - temperature + humidity, power usage, exercise machine usage with heart rate-anything really.  In this case we're recording the temperature of our office.

 [I used to have some live data but the hits just went through the roof...static data for now]