Lighting Control & Building Automation
Brad Woolley, the Lead Electrician at Lima Memorial Health System, was often called into work after hours to reset light panels. The panels they had installed for outside lights didn’t always function as intended. He needed to find a reliable IoT solution that gave him full confidence, and he wanted something versatile that he could use for a variety of other monitoring purposes. He began to search for a commercial lighting control system, and his background in networking led him to ControlByWeb.
His requirements seemed simple, at first:
“When I was researching for devices, I was looking for something that would be easy to program and deploy in a large scale environment along with a price that could easily be approved by upper management. I found at the time when I was researching, the major brands like ABB, Siemens & Schneider Electric didn’t seem to have a good IoT system that could be easily deployed. The devices also weren’t as versatile as ControlByWeb, along with the pricing being extremely high.”
Brad Wooley, Lima Memorial Hospital Lead Electrician
Despite the difficulty of finding the right solution, Brad landed on ControlByWeb and our highly reliable, versatile and affordable IoT devices.
Quick Stats
Over 360 I/O points, including but not limited to:
- 150 for generator monitoring & control
- 100 for light monitoring & control
- 25 for voltage monitoring
- 20 for medical gas monitoring
- 10 for generator load shedding
- 7 for temp/humidity monitoring
- 3 different X-600M SCADA dashboards
Dependable Scheduled Event Lighting
Lima Memorial has lighting on the exterior of the building that changes depending on current holidays and events. For example, during Breast Cancer Awareness month the RGB lights on the outside of the building will turn pink. During the 4th of July and Memorial Day, the lights will cycle between red, white and blue. Brad installed ControlByWeb controllers to provide the reliability he needed.
Brad programmed our controllers with the holiday/event schedule. He installed the X-600M to act as his simple PLC and SCADA system and added our other I/O modules to meet his needs. Now he can monitor and troubleshoot the light system from anywhere. Once he realized how versatile our product lineup is, he continued to install more units throughout the rest of the hospital.
Flexibility on Display
Brad has 3 separate building automation systems in place, all based on the X-600M platform. This module gives him greater programming power and a dashboard that acts as his SCADA software. His system consists of the following:
Applications
- Light Monitoring and Control
- Medical Gas Tank Monitoring
- Voltage Monitoring
- Generator Load Shedding
- Server Room Temperature and Humidity Monitoring
- Data Logging
Products
- X-600M with various I/O cards
- X-410
- X-417
- X-408
- WebRelay and WebRelay Quad
- X-332
- Temperature and Humidity Sensors
Brad monitors and controls a variety of endpoints for remote visibility, improved troubleshooting, and greater reliability. He logs all data, giving him a clear view of changes to the system, helping him to track down issues much faster. His 3 SCADA dashboards give him complete situational awareness customized to the hospital’s needs.
Powerful Task Management
Both the 400 and 600 series products from ControlByWeb feature an easy to use Task Builder for fast and effective conditional and scheduled logic programming. They also both have the ability to using scripting instead to code up customized logic. The X-600M uses LUA, a programming language that offers extreme flexibility and control. Brad is a power-user and prefers programming in LUA. This gives him ultimate flexibility to customize the control system to solve any application problem he comes across.
Cost Management
Lima Memorial Hospital is a not-for-profit organization with a primary objective to help people heal. Cost control is important to help their limited funding stretch a long way. ControlByWeb specializes in offering industrial-grade monitoring and control hardware with customizable and easy-to-use software at an affordable price. Brad is able to practice continual improvement on his system largely because we make it cost-effective for him to do so. Many similar products cost 2 or 3 times as much.
Scalability is also a hallmark of our I/O hardware. Brad can add new endpoints as needed whenever budget allocations become available. His current system has evolved over time, allowing him to perfect his system before he moves on to a new one.
Testimonial
“I love that fact that your business is American-based and if I have issues your customer support is an email or phone call away, and are always very responsive. The dependability, ease of deployment & web based programming for all of your product lines was one of my main reasons for choosing ControlByWeb. The possibilities are literally endless when it comes to the amount of applications this product line is capable of serving. Since it is an IOT network-based system it makes it extremely easy to deploy new modules in our facility and have them controlled by one of my servers that are centrally located.
“The control features of this system are extremely versatile, which makes it easy for me to decide whether I want one of my servers to control an I/O or another module on my network which could be better suited to control it. We use the Dashboard features from the X-600M as a SCADA to monitor multiple I/Os which has been very helpful to our departmental staff in isolating issues within the facility. One of the scenarios our staff use the dashboards for is monitoring the use of medical gas by way of graphs and knowing when cylinders are needing changed.
“Overall, I am extremely satisfied with quality and versatility of all of the ControlByWeb products!”
Brad Woolley
Lima Memorial Hospital
Lead Electrician
