Mechanism and approach for monitoring building automation systems through user defined content notifications

• US 10,162,344 B2
• Filed: 03/12/2013
• Issued: 12/25/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 03/12/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Honeywell International Inc.
• Original Assignee: Honeywell International Inc.
• Inventors: Huynh, Cuong, Donaldson, Stuart
• Primary Examiner(s): Terrell, Emily C
• Application Number:
  US13/796,308
• Publication Number:
  US 20140266671A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,114 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 15/02 electric
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 2219/2642 Domotique, domestic, home control, automation, smart house
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 23/0216 Human interface functionality, e.g. monitoring system providing help to the user in the selection of tests or in its configuration

Abstract

A system or mechanism for monitoring a building automation system through configurable conditions that indicate non-optimal performance or failure of building equipment. The mechanism may deliver notifications when the conditions are triggered. The mechanism may enable complex conditions and arbitrary user defined contents providing a context of the system to be delivered as notifications of data to configured recipients. The mechanism may enable a configuring event including not only user defined system context data as part of the event notification but also complex user defined conditions as needed.

Claims

1. A mechanism for monitoring a building automation system, comprising:

an alarm/event triggering conditions configuration component;

a system configuration database;

an alarm/event system context data notification configuration component on a server is integrated with the alarm/event triggering conditions configuration component and system configuration database supporting configurations for data notification;

the system configuration database facilitates generating a default or a user-defined context data notification based on each alarm/event triggering condition configuration, wherein the context data notification includes content indicating a cause of the triggered alarm/event comprising a trend log for a piece of equipment triggering the alarm/event and a trend log for equipment other than the piece of equipment triggering the alarm/event;

an alarm/event monitoring component integrated with the alarm/event triggering conditions configuration component, the alarm/event monitoring component having a first portion implemented in the piece of equipment and the first portion implemented at the piece of equipment monitors and evaluates an alarm/event condition based on current point data for the piece of equipment and a second portion implemented on the server and configured to process data over a time range relative to an event/alarm occurrence identified by the first portion of the alarm/event monitoring component; and

a real-time data component and a history data component, providing data for monitoring alarm/event conditions; and

wherein;

using event monitoring from the alarm/event monitoring component, the alarm/event system context data notification configuration component generates the default context data notifications in response to being triggered by the alarm event triggering conditions component, the generated default context data notifications include the trend log for the piece of equipment triggering the alarm/event and the trend log for equipment other than the piece of equipment triggering the alarm/event.

2. The mechanism of claim 1, wherein:

the alarm/event triggering conditions configuration component obtains the generated default notification views from the alarm/event system context data notification configuration component;

the alarm/event monitoring component obtains a triggering condition configuration from the alarm/event triggering conditions configuration component; and

the alarm/event triggering conditions configuration component obtains event monitoring from the alarm/event monitoring component.

3. The mechanism of claim 1, further comprising:

the real-time data component is connected to the alarm/event monitoring component;

an alarm/event processor connected to the alarm/event monitoring component;

an alarm/event notification options component; and

an alarm/event notification component connected to the alarm/event notification options component and the alarm/event processor.

4. The mechanism of claim 3, wherein:

the alarm/event monitoring component obtains data from the real-time data component and event processing from the alarm/event processor;

the alarm/event processor obtains a notification from the alarm/event notification component; and

the alarm/event notification component obtains a notification options configuration from the alarm/event notification options component.

5. The mechanism of claim 3, further comprising a system context data notification contents component connected to the alarm/event notification options component, the alarm/event system context data notification configuration component, the alarm/event processor and the alarm/event notification component.

6. The mechanism of claim 5, wherein:

the alarm/event processor obtains a generating of notification content from the system context data notification contents component;

the alarm/event notification component obtains notification content from the system context data notification contents component; and

the system context data notification contents component obtains a notification options configuration from the alarm/event notification options component and a notification content configuration from the alarm/event system context data notification configuration component.

7. The mechanism of claim 5, further comprising:

a trend data collection component connected to the alarm/event triggering conditions configuration component and to the real-time data component; and

a trend/history data component connected to the alarm/event monitoring component, the system context data notification contents component, and the trend data collection component.

8. The mechanism of claim 7, wherein:

the alarm/event triggering conditions configuration component configures point data logging in the trend data collection component, whenever configured triggered conditions need history data;

the trend data collection component obtains data from the real-time data component and log data via the trend/history data component;

the alarm/event monitoring component obtains history data from the trend/history data component; and

the system context data notification contents component obtains history data from the trend/history data component.

9. The mechanism of claim 7, further comprising a content delivery server connected to the alarm/event notification component.

10. A method for alarm/event monitoring and notification in a building automation system including a piece of building equipment, comprising:

at a piece of building equipment, monitoring a triggering condition based on an alarm/event condition configuration;

at the piece of building equipment, evaluating the triggering condition from an alarm/event triggering condition configuration periodically or upon a change notification of a value in the triggered condition;

in response to identifying an event/alarm occurrence at the piece of building equipment, polling data, monitoring for change of data values, and/or fetching/analyzing history data as required for evaluating the triggering condition at a server; and

notifying with a notification in response to determining at the server that the trigger condition exceeds the alarm/event triggering condition, wherein the notification includes content directly related to the triggering condition exceeding the alarm/event triggering condition comprising trend log data for the piece of building equipment with the trigger condition exceeding the alarm/event triggering condition and data content related to the operation of the building automation system that is indirectly related to the trigger condition exceeding the alarm/event triggering condition comprising trend log data for equipment other than the piece of building equipment with the trigger condition exceeding the alarm/event triggering condition.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein if the triggering condition is an advanced triggering condition configuration, then periodically evaluating the triggering condition requires one or more supporting components to evaluate an arbitrary expression with a term associated with a user defined function and data from the fetched/analyzed history data and/or real-time data.

12. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

collecting trend data; and

logging trend data; and

wherein;

collecting trend data comprises polling data or monitoring change of value from a data source and buffering collected data; and

logging trend data comprising logging the data into a system persistence store to support history data references.

13. The method of claim 12, further comprising:

polling or monitoring real-time point data; and

wherein real-time data supports a service to provide data for history data logging and/or for evaluating an alarm/event triggering condition.

14. The method of claim 13, further comprising:

routing an event; and

processing the event; and

wherein;

routing the event routes a triggered condition to the processing the event to perform a configurable action on a triggered event; and

the processing the event checks for action to be performed on a triggered event based on a configuration of the triggered event.

15. The method of claim 14, further comprising:

generating notification content based on a past triggered event; and

wherein generating notification content locates a notification options configuration associated with the triggered event, if a notification options configuration exists.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein:

if a notification options configuration exists, then generating notification content would schedule to generate notification content based on a data and reporting configuration template from a retrieved notification option configuration; and

to schedule to generate notification content would be either immediately or at a specified later time depending on a logged data reference in the notification option configuration.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein to schedule to generate the notification content either immediately or at a specified later time would allow notification content for troubleshooting to include system context data up to an event/alarm occurrence time and also data in a small period following an event occurrence as referenced in the notification option configuration.

18. The method of claim 17, further comprising:

notifying the event; and

wherein;

the notifying the event delivers generated notification content, based on the notification option configuration, to one or more recipients; and

the one or more recipients can receive virtually complete notification contents to enable analyzing the event in absence of connecting to the building automation system to obtain additional data for analyzing the event.

19. A method for configuring alarm/event triggering for notification in a building automation system including a piece of building equipment, comprising:

configuring alarm/event triggering conditions and distributing the alarm/event triggering conditions to a piece of building equipment;

configuring alarm/event notification contents, wherein the alarm/event notification is generated and issued in response to identifying at the piece of building equipment a triggering condition exceeding an alarm/event triggering condition; and

configuring alarm/event notification options; and

wherein;

the configuring alarm/event triggering conditions references history data and the history data is configured automatically as a result of configuring alarm/event triggering conditions; and

the configuring alarm/event notification contents incorporates history data configured automatically at a server as a result of detecting the triggering condition exceeds the alarm/event triggering condition and include trend log data for the piece of building equipment with the triggering condition exceeding the alarm/event triggering condition.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein the configuring notification contents have a format and data configurations.

21. The method of claim 20, wherein configuring the notification contents results in a building automation context data notification contents configuration.