Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

woodtv.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 93 posts

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

#31

Post by Sunspark »

tivert wrote: post #24
tus666 wrote: 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…

> 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.

You need to find a decision-maker to agree to the liability of letting some kid implement a system today. What if something goes wrong and all the children roast alive or something? Then the parents would sue. It'll never happen today, people are terrified of being wrong so no is always the easiest answer.

Also, yes integration would be hard today. This same pinhead decision maker would require it to run on Windows for "support" and "security".

That 80s Amiga is probably incredibly reliable and robust with its real multi-tasking OS and doesn't require "security patches".

What a shame Commodore dropped the ball on it, it was ahead of its time.

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

#32

Post by jhallenworld »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #25
jhallenworld wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 aba…

Well that's what I figure: you buy their thermostat. We don't use ours for hvac control, just water leak monitoring.

Can you imagine what Samsung (or any large corporation) would want for a centralized controller for an entire school district?

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

#33

Post by doobiedowner »

jhallenworld wrote: post #21
tus666 wrote: 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..

>they are likely just relay closures.

You get it, yup.

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

What I use are Ethernet to Bacnet gateways. Each building gets a gateway device with Bacnet nodes connected over a serial daisy chain. If the HVAC device isn't networkable, serial devices do the relay flipping. IT folks get the data into different applications.

Integration and maintenance are expensive.

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

#34

Post by ignite »

csdvrx wrote: post #23
cpach wrote: 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 javas…

Why replace? So you don't have downtime. If it breaks now, everything may be off until they replace the system. That could be months of no classes, which would be much worse than spending money to replace.

If you start now, and finish before it breaks, you don't have to have downtime.

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

#35

Post by doobiedowner »

jprd wrote: post #26
sublinear wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Ladder logic, written by peasants. (signed: control peasant that prefers ST)

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

#36

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

hoten wrote: post #29
tivert wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Ok, but as far as the users are concerned, do the layers add much value to this use-case?

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

#37

Post by paulryanrogers »

hoten wrote: post #29
tivert wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

My guess is kids today can be effective with less knowledge, depending on what one is trying to do. Some prompt engineering, JS, Python, etc can accomplish a lot.

JS is appearing everywhere, and Python isn't far behind. Both seem approachable for modest projects. Basic had its charms, yet also becomes difficult to maintain as it grows -- not unlike many modern stacks. I suppose the primary difference is the stack is deeper, with many more layers.

I recall a friend going deep with Basic in the 90s while I was more pragmatic. I only knew Batch scripting, Kilk n Play, and various other scripting and gaming tools. Yet I had already made several prototype games, more functionality, 3D models and character animations, and even learned some BBcode and HTML to help mod a gaming forum. He had ... some very unimpressive screen drawing demos.

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

#38

Post by KerrAvon »

guessbest wrote: post #30
tus666 wrote: 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 failur…

> 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.

Ha, bullshit. Someone decided they liked the Amiga and wanted to play with it. I am sympathetic!

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

#39

Post by TrackerFF »

Back when I studied EE, one of our class projects (industrial automation) involved working with companies out in the industry. We found a local heating companies that provided district heating, and they had this ancient PLC running some pretty central parts of the operation. By ancient, I mean early 70s or so. But the thing had just been running for forever, doing its thing.

No documentation, of course, so a metric ton of black-box testing to find out what did what.

In the end we managed to design a pretty nice interface/HMI, and a API so that it could be monitored online.

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

#40

Post by bcrl »

whalesalad wrote: post #27
tus666 wrote: 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.

It's pretty much guaranteed that any software defined radio you build today will be almost impossible to get parts for in 10 years, so your maintenance budget ends up requiring a software developer to upgrade things when parts become obsolete. At least with computers from the 1980s, the hardware is fully understood and can be much more easily repaired. There are already projects that have produced modern replacements for custom chips in machines like the Commodore 64, and there is at least 1 underway for the Amiga's chipset.
Post reply on HN