Lighting Control and Building Automation

Commercial Lighting Control Systems 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 controllers.

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 no-code 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 no-code logic controller 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:

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.