REMOTE LAB FOR KNX BUILDING AUTOMATION SYSTEMS

In the last decades, society has been overwhelmed by the progress of technologies that are already part of the daily life. Firms and research centres are trying to make great steps in order to innovate and remain at their peak.

Universities have played and still play an important role in these technologies’ development. Professors and students have worked hard in their laboratories. But labs have limited places and some students cannot physically attend them. But nowadays, it is possible to improve these labs and make them remotely accessible, so students can use them 24 hours a day and from home.

This paper presents the design and construction of a remote laboratory for KNX-based building automation systems. KNX is one of the most used building automation technologies around the world (www.knx.org). This remote laboratory becomes part of a more ambitious project: a virtual lab, integrating other remote and virtual labs. This is a clear tendency in education.

The objective is to make a versatile remote laboratory that provides a deep learning of building automation systems and KNX technology. It allows students to improve their learning about KNX, thanks to the fact that any design they are able to create becomes tangible and gets physical results.

The remote lab allows students to remotely work with a real physical KNX demonstrator composed by lights, heating, shutters, open/close detection, movements detection, temperature sensors, water leaks and smoke detection, consumption monitoring. Students will be able to program the installation to offer several services (climate control, presence detection applied to light control, energy efficiency, etc.)

The novelty of this system is that we have developed an external system to operate the KNX installation as a person would do in situ. This external system allows students to validate their applications from home. The external system is based on an Arduino board that controls the installation though servomotors and relays.

The paper presents the physical assembly of the demonstrator, the ETS (Engineering Tool Software) design, and the software development of a control and display application in Java and Arduino language. Anyone who wishes would be able to reproduce the system.

The application will allow to remotely control a KNX installation thanks to a graphical interface, but also to be able to display the state of different elements forming the installation.

Besides, an example of a lab tutorial is given to show how the installation should be used.