Had a very interesting chat with one of our suppliers of industrial it & coms equipment that popped in for a visit.
At the moment RS485 and Modbus is currently the way to go. The worry is how long is RS485/BMS systems going to be around for? At the moment BMS companies are ridged in their thought that RS485 and Modbus is king. However we are seeing electrical equipment, alarm systems building monitoring systems going down the Webpage route. How long before BMS companies have to change or fall by the wayside because they cannot change?
With last year’s recant introduction and rapid expansion and take off of Schneider’s Com’x. System and monitoring platforms that are online and after seeing what it can do and what is in the pipeline the concern is that Schneider must be thinking along the same lines and they must be working on something. If they are you can be rest assured that they will bring something to the market and move the market (as they can with their size), is this going to leave the rest of the market in its wake?
I know that Schneider, ABB and i imagine that Siemens are looking into this. The talk is of the ‘Smart Grid’ without the need for large BMS systems. Once the big boys get into the market what are the smaller manufacturers going to do? They will be playing catch up.
The problem is that a lot of manufacturers have become over concentrated on price, price, price. This is great, but when you have manufacturing in Asia, the Far East and China where do you go to get lower costs? You have to manufacture in added functions and with the direction we are going I can see that connectivity will increase but costs will also reduce (I’ve been told that the next step is to remove the wiring between the components with a smart link that finds connected devices and sets them accordingly.)
Steve