ALEX Designer Suite - a revolution in system integration!

With the ALEX Designer Suite, spega has started a revolution in room automation! The suite consists of ALEX , e.control Designer and e.control Manager. While e.control Designer allows the system integrator to implement the entire configuration of an e.control room automation system graphically, e.control Manager helps the user to subsequently adapt the system in case of changes in utilisation or maintenance work. Beeing an Active X component, e.control Manager can easily be integrated into building management systems or accessed via local network with the Internet Explorer.

The configuration for the system integrator is completely new thanks to e.control Designer. All work stages are carried out graphically, so special LON know-how is not required. The software focuses on LNS and also works ideally together with spega’s advanced system integration tool ALEX.

In the first stage, e.control Designer assists the system integrator in building up the LON network with the relevant routers and repeaters using a graphic tool. Then a basic layout plan is created for every part of the building and every storey in which all e.control devices are positioned according to their place of installation. The devices are shown by means of photo-realistic pictures. Following this, the input and output channels used from the devices can be placed at their position on the layout where they operate. Insertable coloured strips which can be faded in show the allocation to the relevant device (see large illustration). With this step, the hardware setup of the entire room automation system is completed. The graphic representation makes it easy for the system integrator to recognise the installation locations of the devices and the wiring structure. These can be checked with the aid of e.control plug-ins which are started by double-clicking the relevant object.

In the second stage, the system integrator concentrates on implementing the requisite room automation functions. For this it is only necessary to put together the required combination for every room type from e.control Designer’s functional library and to mark those channels on the layout which are to be involved in the functions (see illustration in the centre). E.control Designer automatically carries out all the necessary connections (“bindings”) and parameterisations on the basis of the rules stored in the functional library. This library contains all the functions from the areas of lighting control, sunblind and room climate control according to VDI 3813 and supports all the existing spega e.control devices.

As already mentioned earlier, subsequent conversions with a new distribution of areas are also supported by e.control Designer. For example, when two office rooms are to be put together into one group office, it is enough to delete the existing hatched function areas and to create a new area with the dimension of the new group office (see illustration below). The strips show the automatically generated bindings between the sensors (green), controllers (yellow) and actuators (red).

With the help of e.control Manager which can be obtained separately, users can independently rearrange rooms with the existing hardware, as shown in the above example, and carry out certain management functions. Thus for the first time in bus technology, users are in a position to make use of the flexibility and efficiency of a modern room automation system like e.control even without the specialist know-how.

With e.control Designer, system integration becomes child‘s play.