[While this editorial focuses on building-control systems, the thoughts apply to our increasingly sophisticated audio and home theater systems. Reprinted with permission from the Continental Automated Buildings Association (CABA).DJW]

For nearly two decades the industry wish list included a desire for software and hardware integration to facilitate automation, control and security functionalities within one packaged offering. The thinking was that if this could be accomplished, the cost savings would be dramatic both in initial cost and longterm operational costs.

This idea was also touted in noncommercial markets with the same basic proposed implications.

Centralizing all needed functionality within one product would seem to be useful. After all, being able to manage HVAC, security and other building systems based on multiple datastreams and real-world information on occupancy, sunlight loads, equipment needs, and so forth should provide significant advantages to both owners and users.

But a funny thing happened on the way to this control nirvana — people Intervened.

It's astonishing how unpredictable, untrainable, and uncomfortable people can be. Just one degree of temperature difference can make the environment perceivably hot or cold, even if actually it's not. Access cards can and are left home, covered in various residues of food, ink, toner, or the universal solvent Coca-Cola. In short, human beings are nowhere near as logical or organized as the Mr. Spockian-oriented highly logical programs and software need them to be.

Unfortunately, system software and hardware designs do not often give enough weight to the enormous unpredictability that human beings bring to their daily lives.

The residential side of the world is replete with stories of homeowners who signed agreements stating they would not have pets, or need to do this or that, paid for the system and the custom programming and then promptly got a dog, cat, or had a baby, drastically altering the environment and their daily routines, and commensurately the system's hardware and programming requirements. Yet they don't want to pay the significant costs associated with the changes required, because they were assured that it's all simple to use and thus perceptibly not expensive to change.

Manufacturers have introduced simplified programming systems that supposedly lower the installation/programming time requirements and costs, and hardware prices continue to erode, but customer demands remain so fluid that profit margins are often difficult to maintain, even with contractual agreements and commitments.

The cyclical commercial market is also replete with projects in which the really slick integrated building control, management and security system supplied is faced with drastic changes to adapt to the needs of the owners, tenants and employees — leasing agreements fall through, tenants change their minds, they introduce the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle into the flow without warning, and yet expect the supplier, owner, etc to react and accommodate these issues without any obvious strain.

But this is a place we have been before. For example, when DSP-based audio processors began to appear in the market, they were presented as one-box total solutions to every potential need. Instead of six or eight separate units, this magical two-rack-unit [3.5"-high, 19"-wide rackmount] black box would do everything.

Maybe it could or maybe it couldn't, but it created a new system failure point, one that was no longer intuitive to technicians or operators. No longer could a faulty unit be simply bypassed or a few knobs be adjusted to restore functionality.

A PC interface was required, and in a large number of cases the GUI was so complex that very few could figure out what to do or find the right submenu to access what was needed. Programmers and code developers without any real-world experience in actual use of the products did not understand the daily use needs or what should have priority. Having to drill down through four menu layers to find a simple control that used to be on the box's front panel proved not only unworkable, it was also driving customers away.

One would think that given all of that history, the industry would have learned from experience and made serious strides in improving on what went before. Well... sort of. The disconnect among various product segments seems to have prevented a lot of knowledge and hard-won experience from crossing over, and many of the mistakes made before are being repeated in an endless Mobius-strip-like loop.

All technology is largely moot if it creates as many problems as it supposedly solves. Perhaps we should learn from BMW's disastrous experience with the I-Drive system, and remember that sometimes simpler is more useful.

People who have simple control over what they perceive as vital issues such as temperature, airflow, light and access are far less likely to create problems than those who are frustrated dealing with these same issues when they are not in “control" of their own space. This applies whether it's commercial or noncommercial.

We need to refocus on the fact that very few, if any, of our customers are as fascinated with or literate in the technologies we are selling them.

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