Lighting Control Integration with BMS Systems
January 14, 2021
| in In the news
It is a common practice on larger scale projects to have an overriding BMS (Building Management System) that sits above and ties together all the different building services (Lighting, HVAC, Fire, Security etc.)
In regards to integrating a lighting control system to the BMS, generally speaking there are two ways:
- Low Level – generally thought of as one way, e.g. a contact closure from a BMS acting as an input into the Lighting system to activate a task (turn a certain area on etc.)
- High Level – Two way comms where data can be supplied back and forth between the two systems allowing a plethora of monitoring and control options.
High Level is generally the best way to go if you want to have flexibility and options to control and monitor multiple things and this would generally be done using the industry standard BACnet protocol.
However using BACnet as the integration platform between the Lighting Control System and the BMS can come at quite a high cost, with many lighting control systems requiring specialty gateways to achieve this functionality. However we are now starting to see some Lighting Control systems offering Native BACnet support directly from their controllers which opens up a world of possibilities and reduces the cost barrier significantly.
The Zencontrol DALI-2 Application Controller offers native support for BACnet and connecting to a BMS is as simple as plugging into a common ethernet network.
In this above example connecting the lighting control system to the BMS is as simple as plugging the two systems into a common Ethernet network. All data from the lighting control system can then be shared, and the BMS will have the ability to monitor & control any component of the lighting system.
For more information or to talk to us about the best way to integrate systems, please contact us.