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Amiga runs Michigan schools' heating and air conditioning systems (2015)

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21–30 of 93 posts

Re: Amiga runs Michigan schools' heating and air conditioning systems (2015)

#21
post #15

> Hopkins said the system runs on a radio frequency that sends a signal to school buildings, which reply within a matter of seconds with the status of each building. I suspect this is what would be difficult to replace. A bespoke wireless sensor monitoring and communications system, integrated into an old heating/cooling system. Modern system just would not integrate into this, without a lot of work. You would have t…

Maybe replace it with LoRa... but what device is in each building? I doubt you have to update the heating/cooling systems, they are likely just relay closures.

Also each school is probably on the net these days, so replace with some Wifi IOT device.

Or Samsung "Smart Things".. but unlikely to last 30 years..

Re: Amiga runs Michigan schools' heating and air conditioning systems (2015)

#22
post #10

https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/15ni8gu/til_... this is happening more and more that I see something in my reddit RSS feed first, then hours later it pops up on HN Another example from today https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37078047 https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/15ncz6j/til_...

Your point being? "reddit got it faster"? No pun intended, I would like to understand your reasoning.

Re: Amiga runs Michigan schools' heating and air conditioning systems (2015)

#23
post #8

Archive link for people outside of the US: https://archive.li/1gGb7 I wonder if they received the funding for replacing it?

Why replace what's not broken? Amortization of costs is one possibility. The replacement parts must be hard to obtain, but are they spending over 50k/y on old amiga parts? If not, why do you think maintenance of the old system would cost more than the new system? (+ ongoing yearly fees/maintenance)

Just receiving a funding doesn't imply the need to burn the money.

Any replacement using wifi +- cellular and some javascript pile of dependencies is likely to work less reliably: for any budget of b=1 million it'll cost a multiple x>1 of that.

Re: Amiga runs Michigan schools' heating and air conditioning systems (2015)

#24
post #15

> Hopkins said the system runs on a radio frequency that sends a signal to school buildings, which reply within a matter of seconds with the status of each building. I suspect this is what would be difficult to replace. A bespoke wireless sensor monitoring and communications system, integrated into an old heating/cooling system. Modern system just would not integrate into this, without a lot of work. You would have t…

> I suspect this is what would be difficult to replace. A bespoke wireless sensor monitoring and communications system, integrated into an old heating/cooling system. Modern system just would not integrate into this, without a lot of work. You would have to replace everything, probably including the actual heating/cooling systems themselves.

I wonder if it just integrated into a pre-existing control network:

> The Commodore Amiga was new to GRPS in the early 1980s and it has been working tirelessly ever since. GRPS Maintenance Supervisor Tim Hopkins said that the computer was purchased with money from an energy bond in the 1980s. It replaced a computer that was “about the size of a refrigerator.”

> ...

> A Kentwood High School student programmed it when it was installed in the 1980s. Whenever the district has a problem with it, they go back to the original programmer who still lives in the area.

> ...

> Hopkins said the system runs on a radio frequency that sends a signal to school buildings, which reply within a matter of seconds with the status of each building. The only problem is that the computer operates on the same frequency as some of the walkie-talkies used by the maintenance department.

If programming it was a school project for an 80s kid, might as well try to make its replacement a school project for a 20s kid. If a kid did it back then, the integration can't be that hard.

Re: Amiga runs Michigan schools' heating and air conditioning systems (2015)

#25
post #15

> Hopkins said the system runs on a radio frequency that sends a signal to school buildings, which reply within a matter of seconds with the status of each building. I suspect this is what would be difficult to replace. A bespoke wireless sensor monitoring and communications system, integrated into an old heating/cooling system. Modern system just would not integrate into this, without a lot of work. You would have t…

Maybe replace it with LoRa... but what device is in each building? I doubt you have to update the heating/cooling systems, they are likely just relay closures. Also each school is probably on the net these days, so replace with some Wifi IOT device. Or Samsung "Smart Things".. but unlikely to last 30 years..

> Or Samsung "Smart Things".. but unlikely to last 30 years..

Is there anything that actually works with it directly? I have a growing number of connected devices around me, and none of them can talk to SmartThings, except floor heating controllers that do so by half-broken integration with Tuya...

Trying to figure out (without success) how to hook A/C units to SmartThings, I learned that apparently Samsung/ST is abandoning their existing "we'll figure it out for you in the cloud somehow" architecture, moving towards "please buy our hub/edge device, and run some Lua scripts on it" architecture, which actually doesn't feel like an upgrade.

Re: Amiga runs Michigan schools' heating and air conditioning systems (2015)

#26
post #11

> A Kentwood High School student programmed it when it was installed in the 1980s. Impressive!

> Whenever the district has a problem with it, they go back to the original programmer who still lives in the area. It is indeed impressive, but I hope there's a contract for this. Everything else about this story sounds insanely incompetent, so I... I worry. In principle there's nothing wrong with a Motorola 68K running a system like this, but the rest of this is damned.

You'd probably be horrified to know what kind of systems still run most of the world's manufacturing, very much including modern chip fabs.

Re: Amiga runs Michigan schools' heating and air conditioning systems (2015)

#27
post #15

> Hopkins said the system runs on a radio frequency that sends a signal to school buildings, which reply within a matter of seconds with the status of each building. I suspect this is what would be difficult to replace. A bespoke wireless sensor monitoring and communications system, integrated into an old heating/cooling system. Modern system just would not integrate into this, without a lot of work. You would have t…

What makes you say that? A software defined radio could do this pretty easily.

Re: Amiga runs Michigan schools' heating and air conditioning systems (2015)

#28

You could retrofit a more modern computer in there. Probably even reverse engineer the radio system and replace it. This would have been done by an enthusiastic high school student with both programming, electronics, maybe some RF knowledge too. Radio amateur? I find these stories kind of sad. Clever system built by someone talented, at a low cost -- replacement with a modern system costed in the millions. Those tale…

Ask a GNURadio hacker and it can debug the issue in minutes.

Re: Amiga runs Michigan schools' heating and air conditioning systems (2015)

#29
post #24
post #15

> Hopkins said the system runs on a radio frequency that sends a signal to school buildings, which reply within a matter of seconds with the status of each building. I suspect this is what would be difficult to replace. A bespoke wireless sensor monitoring and communications system, integrated into an old heating/cooling system. Modern system just would not integrate into this, without a lot of work. You would have t…

> I suspect this is what would be difficult to replace. A bespoke wireless sensor monitoring and communications system, integrated into an old heating/cooling system. Modern system just would not integrate into this, without a lot of work. You would have to replace everything, probably including the actual heating/cooling systems themselves. I wonder if it just integrated into a pre-existing control network: > The Co…

The number of layers added to modern programming and computer systems has gone up significantly since the 80s. It's sensible to claim that a kid from the 80s had far less to learn to be effective in the world of the 80s, than a 20s kid would need today.

Re: Amiga runs Michigan schools' heating and air conditioning systems (2015)

#30
post #15

> Hopkins said the system runs on a radio frequency that sends a signal to school buildings, which reply within a matter of seconds with the status of each building. I suspect this is what would be difficult to replace. A bespoke wireless sensor monitoring and communications system, integrated into an old heating/cooling system. Modern system just would not integrate into this, without a lot of work. You would have t…

I thought it was replaced. The developer posted on discus, but I found the comment on slashdot quoted.

https://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=7543887&cid=499003...

>> When the Amiga system originally went in it was controlling well over 100 buildings throughout the district, including the entire GRCC campus at the time. The Amiga replaced the head-end of the system, which was experiencing expensive hardware failures every year ... and you couldn't get parts for that mini-computer on e-bay. It is essentially acting as a huge database (schedules, configurations, control programs, history, etc.), system manager, and monitoring system ("head-end") for the remaining 19 buildings HVAC systems. If the Amiga goes down, the buildings will continue to operate using the configurations last received, with most of the individual device controls being able to be manually overridden inside each building, albeit with less energy efficiency. What you will loose is the ability to change schedules/custom control code/configurations and the ability to centrally monitor the performance of the buildings.

>> Each building has one or more local control systems, and those systems communicate back to the central head-end over radio-modem (there was no district-wide network back then). Schedule and other control changes are sent to the buildings and alerts/reports are sent back. That old equipment in the buildings, even older than the Amiga, is what dictates the radio communications link. They incorporate specific protocols for keying up the radio that are not directly compatible with a newer serial to Ethernet type device that would seem like a logical replacement.

>> The control systems themselves gather temperatures, both inside and outside the building, look at trends and do predictive control of the equipment to accomodate scheduled use of various areas of each building. For the day, this was very advanced building control and offered significant energy savings, as well as comfort in the buildings.

>> Over time, as buildings have been updated, sold or replaced, the local controls withing those buildings have been replaced with newer/more modern controls that communicate with newer central control systems. Replacing these controls that are local to the buildings is what is responsible for the majority of the cost I would say.

>> As far as the Amiga system itself, I believe most of the components are still the original. The hard drive may have failed twice over the years, requiring a rebuild from backups. They did pick up or have donated a few Amiga systems to use as parts as needed, but the system has proven to be very resilient. Obviously, Monitors, Keyboards and Mice can only take so much use without needing to be replaced. Without this, the system likely would have become inoperable and unservicable many years ago, or been incredibly expensive to keep running.

>> From a technical stand point, the Amiga was selected because at the time it was the only "Personal Computer" (PC) that had a true pre-emptive multi-taskng operating system. It needed to be able to handle multiple processes simultaneously, including interfacing with the systems, maintaining settings in the database, monitoring the system as well as support for both local and remote access to the system simultaneously. Basically, its capabilities fit the need. While for nostalgia reasons I would hate to see it go, it has been 30 years and I think the system has done its job. Replacing a building's control system doesn't happen overnight, and when you are talking 19 buildings with ancient (yes I am calling myself ancient I guess) control systems, it is going to take money and time. The payback in energy savings, comfort and safe control of the buildings though I think justifies the cost.

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