Sierra Monitor Bridges Eaton’s Fifth Light Control System To Smart Building Networks

Eaton’s Lighting Division has selected Sierra Monitor protocol gateways for Building Management System (BMS) connectivity for the Fifth Light system.

Milpitas, CA, Dec. 13, 2017 -- Lighting represents a major component of the total energy consumed by a building. Therefore, managing lighting with advanced technology can be an effective way to control costs, increase efficiency and raise productivity. Eaton offers an advanced lighting control solution in their Fifth Light system, which uses the DALI protocol to provide programmable controls to individual fixtures. 

Eaton’s product lines are very specialized and have precise requirements to elegantly connect to BMS systems using protocols such as BACnet. Naturally, Eaton turned to BACnet and industrial protocols expert Sierra Monitor Corporation (OTCQB:SRMC) for a solution. 

The solution is BMS Pro 2, a protocol translator hosted on SMC’s latest ProtoAir wireless gateway, a feature-rich, high performance BACnet gateway that is BACnet Testing Laboratories (BTL) certified, which minimizes project risks associated with systems integration.

The gateway achieves protocol translation between the Fifth Light system with protocols including BACnet MS/TP, BACnet/IP, Modbus TCP/IP, and Modbus RTU. As the new Sierra Monitor platform provided higher performance, Eaton also decided to host the protocol translators for its Greengate and iLumin systems, developed in a previous collaboration with Sierra Monitor, on the same hardware. As such the BMSPro 2 is a single BMS gateway that can be used for all three lighting control systems.

Eaton also took advantage of two new features offered by the ProtoAir gateway: an integrated BACnet Explorer function and a BACnet Broadcast Management Device (BBMD). The integrated BACnet Explorer eliminates the reliance on third party BACnet software packages and connectors to automatically discover BACnet/IP devices. As BACnet networks have grown and become more complex, the BBMD function allows data exchange between different BACnet subnets, simplifying installation and management.

Soroush Amidi, the Director of Software Product Management at Eaton’s Lighting Division said, “Eaton has partnered with Sierra Monitor again to expand its BTL Certified BACnet offering for its lighting control system. The new release offers a BTL Certified BACnet interface for Eaton’s DALI lighting control system, Fifth Light as well as Greengate and iLumin. The new added features, BACnet Explorer and embedded BBMD, will allow our customers to easily manage the complex building automation networks that they encounter in the commercial buildings.”

About Eaton

Eaton is a power management company with 2016 sales of $19.7 billion. They provide energy-efficient solutions that help their customers effectively manage electrical, hydraulic and mechanical power more efficiently, safely and sustainably. Eaton is dedicated to improving the quality of life and the environment through the use of power management technologies and services. Eaton has approximately 96,000 employees and sells products to customers in more than 175 countries.

About Sierra Monitor Corporation

Headquartered in the heart of Silicon Valley in Milpitas, California, Sierra Monitor was founded in 1978 and has been a public company since 1989. By combining its distinguished track record in industrial sensing and automation with IoT technologies such as wireless, cloud connectivity, and data services, Sierra Monitor is at the forefront of the emerging IIoT trend. The Company's vision is to capitalize on the expanding worldwide demand for knowledge-based products and services that improve operational performance, productivity, efficiency and safety in building automation, industrial, and military applications, while reducing demands on resources and energy consumption.

Contact:

Steve Shaw
Vice President, Marketing
Sierra Monitor Corporation
[email protected]