Beauty and Intelligence Coexist in Beverly Hills Manor

A Ready-For-Prime-Time Home

One of the nation's most spectacular residences was built for a leading television producer on the Bing Crosby homesite in the hills overlooking the Los Angeles Country Club. Constructed in 1988, this 123 room, 58,000 square foot manor is an impressive design from almost any perspective. Until recently, though, the manor suffered from a poorly conceived system for its heating, air conditioning, humidity control, smoke detection, and domestic hot water services.

Several attempts had been made to rectify the problems using add-on control equipment. These met with little success, however. The underlying mechanical system was limited, unable even to provide simultaneous heating and cooling. The manor's many specialized areas require unique —often sophisticated—management strategies: the bowling alley does not use the same settings as the bedrooms; the wine cellar has needs different from the flower cutting room; the theater cannot be treated the same as the doll museum. An extensive art collection places stringent demands on humidity control. These and other requirements suggested the need for a technology capable of performance in keeping with the manor's prestigious architecture.

So, in 1995, the owners decided on a complete mechanical retrofit, an expensive proposition for any building, let alone one of this magnitude. One quotation, however, stood out among the rest.

LonWorks Technology To the Manor Born
The winning bid was from Barrington Systems (San Carlos, CA), a designer and manufacturer of sophisticated control systems. Their state-of-the-art GalXC™ system, based on LonWorks technology, enabled not only compliance with the existing user interface panels, but at a cost 30 percent lower than the competition. Teaming with Metra Corporation (supplier of the GalXC's graphical user interface), Barrington brought the project in on cost, and on schedule.

The manor contains more control hardware than an average 20-story office building," mused Bill Curran, Barrington's president. This includes three chillers, two boilers, special outside air units, and 42 fan coil systems. The distributed control network controls over 750 I/O points. Network communication is accomplished with standard Echelon 78 kbits/s transformer-isolated twisted-pair wire transceivers; a Serial LonTalk; Adapter connected to a modem allows remote access, enabling monitoring, system tuning, software upgrading, etc. Our ability to offer such an aggressive system price is directly related to our use of LonWorks [technology]," notes Curran. "The hardware is about 25% less expensive than conventional solutions, and we realized additional savings through reduced installation costs."

Modular Software a Highlight

The modular hardware design made possible by distributed control is echoed in the system's software components. The control software is constructed of Application Specific Modules (ASMs), written in Echelon's Neuron C programming language, and drawn from an extensive ASM library developed by Barrington. The user interface makes liberal use of Metra's integrated graphics technology; over 100 monitoring and control screens were created for the manor retrofit. On-screen graphic objects (such as variable frequency drives and chiller plants) are linked to network variables using a simple point and click methodology. Aside from reducing installation costs and increasing convenience, this modular approach allows Curran to "express the Barrington corporate personality, rather than those of individual installers," a significant business benefit.

From Mansion to Manhattan, and Beyond

The success of the LonWorks manor project has established a worldwide reputation for the GalXC system. The next installation was the 20-story Manhattan office building of Sunkyong. And then a 21-story building system for Daewoo Motor Corp. in Korea, with over 500 nodes and 5000 control points. But no wine cellar.

The MultiSTAR™ Controller

Heart of the GalXC system is the MultiSTAR controller. Its metal rough-in section, with integral wire trough, is esigned for pre-installation at the application site. Final configuration is accomplished by plugging in one of several configuration cards, each of which incorporates a Neuron 3150 Chip. One example of a configuration card supports 4 analog inputs, 4 analog outputs, 2 digital inputs, and 2 digital outputs. Another implements a network communication router.

Yet another offers support services such as a real-time clock/calendar, and accommodates special purpose option modules. This type of module was configured for the manor project as an interface to the existing user interface panels. The interface panels now display room, room setpoint, outside air, and supply air temperatures, plus relative humidity and fan speed.

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