The armed status of a building is a simple way of determining that a building is unoccupied, and can be used to turn off lighting and non-essential items such as photocopiers, coffee machines, and monitors. When the building is disarmed, we know who is in the building and what areas they have access to, so only need to turn on lighting for the areas they require, and progressively turn on others as more people arrive. Motion sensors such as PIRs measure activity, and are ideal for controlling lighting in low occupancy areas so that lighting is turned on when the sensors detect motion, and turned off again after a defined period of inactivity. Area counting provides a record of how many people are in a particular area. When combined with anti-passback, this provides an accurate track of exactly who is onsite, and where they are. This information can be used to control items around the building at a granular level. Intelligent decisions can also be made based on time. This is great news for a retail outlet with 200 stores where the cost of sending out a technician to regularly adjust the time clock for their electronic signage quickly clocks up the bill. Advanced schedules, time zones, daylight savings and programmable holiday groups, allow energy usage to be controlled right down to the second.

Public perception and tighter budgets have seen energy efficiency become increasingly important in today’s Hospitality environment. Automated building solutions that reduce energy consumption are one of the simplest ways of reducing costs. SPLIT provides a simple, single-point solution that balances energy efficiency with the needs of your organization. Now that’s smart. Access control systems hold a wealth of data about a building and the occupants – who is onsite, where they are, and even where they are likely to be going. Knowing when an area is occupied and how many people are in a room, allows for tight integration with air conditioning, lighting and other building systems. Extend efficiency by using this data to make some intelligent decisions around how the building is run.

Split Deploys a ModBus system for effective Hotel building management. When using Modbus, the controller acts as the Modbus slave and communicates with the BMS server (Modbus master) via the Ethernet. The BMS server is notified when someone locks or unlocks a door, an area is armed or disarmed, a schedules goes valid or invalid, or when motion is detected. Once this information has been passed to the BMS, it is able to make intelligent decisions about what to turn on or off. Integration also enables the BMS to communicate the status of the building, allowing us to effectively control access during an emergency or in the event of a fire.