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

woodtv.com

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

#51

Post by doubleg72 »

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…

That's exactly it.. i work at hospital system and just had to deal with this myself. The HVAC guys were in to upgrade the controllers for the air handling systems. They are basically PLCs that connect to a server like anything else. The issue is interfacing with the system. These pre 2000s air handler units generally communicate with the controller over serial, and there are specific configurations to make it work. We almost had a very costly issue of needing to upgrade the controls in the one system but they ended up getting it going.

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

#52

Post by sillywalk »

NASA also used Amigas - [0]

Gary Jones replied; "And Commodore was easy to work with back then. When we asked for documentation, they sent us a stack of documentation about four feet high. They were willing to tell us everything about their machine. Since we had to design some custom hardware to go inside, it really helped to know exactly how everything worked."

"It just turned out that it was a good machine. The things that make a machine good for playing games also tend to make it good for processing and displaying data, because you've got some of the same problems. You need a very efficient, very fast operating system, and the Amiga has that and very little overhead too. That's what makes it nice; we don't load down the system running the overhead; we can just process the data."

"Most of our customizing is hardware customizing. The Amiga operating system is flexible enough that we have to drop into assembly only once in a while to initialize some of the special boards we use, but otherwise the operating system is fine; we don't do anything unusual with it. We use it just like it is and build hardware for our interfacing requirements because we have to pull the data out of the data bus in this building, process it, and put the data back in."

[0] http://obligement.free.fr/articles_traduction/amiganasa_en.p...

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

#53

Post by doubleg72 »

c_o_n_v_e_x wrote: post #48
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. Nah, anything driven by relays and or pneumatic controls can be replaced with modern, low cost PLC hardware. It is common for old chemical plants to have their control systems replaced while still operating. Control is handed over from the old system to the new system (hot cutover) one control loop at a time. All you need is adequate planning.

You have no clue what you're talking about. You are correct in that low cost PLC hardware can replace relay and pneumatic controls, but HVAC systems aren't just basic relays and pneumatics. They are microcomputers that communicate with actual protocols. They is no hot cutover or simple handover like you say.

Source: I literally just lead a project to upgrade the PLC controls on a few air handler units and build entire server and network infrastructure. We had to run Ethernet to each of these from the network closets because they previously had went to a Windows XP box in the maintenance guys office. There were many challenges, one being getting the configuration off a couple of the old PLCs to make the new ones even talk to them.

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

#55

Post by TheRealSteel »

anonu wrote: post #54

> A new, more current system would cost between $1.5 and 2 million. Man, I'll build it for $750k - will buy a few Raspberry Pis and we're good to go...

Hell, I'll do it for half a million and upgrade them to a 486.

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

#56

Post by quickthrowman »

doubleg72 wrote: post #53
c_o_n_v_e_x wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I suspect this is what would be difficult to replace. Nah, anything driven by relays and or pneumatic controls can be replaced with modern, low cost PLC hardware. It is common for old chemical plants to have their control systems replaced while still operating. Control is handed over from the old system to the new system (hot cutover) one control loop at a time. All you need is adequate planning.

You have no clue what you're talking about. You are correct in that low cost PLC hardware can replace relay and pneumatic controls, but HVAC systems aren't just basic relays and pneumatics. They are microcomputers that communicate with actual protocols. They is no hot cutover or simple handover like you say. Source: I literally just lead a project to upgrade the PLC controls on a few air handler units and build entir…

> You have no clue what you're talking about. You are correct in that low cost PLC hardware can replace relay and pneumatic controls, but HVAC systems aren't just basic relays and pneumatics.

The person you’re replying to was saying that the old method of HVAC/process control, prior to digital controls, was pneumatics and relays. Old HVAC control systems were indeed pneumatic systems, I’ve seen some in the wild in the last few years in the US.

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

#57

Post by anonu »

* article referenced on the $175m bond: https://web.archive.org/web/20150312145702/http://woodtv.com...

The 2015 bonds were approved: https://grps.org/reimagine/

Here are the GRPS munis, issued in early 2016 totaling about 134m: https://emma.msrb.org/IssueView/Details/ES360882

Unfortunately, no luck finding any interesting tidbits on this Commodore or whether it was replaced. Maybe theres an RFP out there?

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

#58

Post by anyfoo »

Sunspark wrote: post #31
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…

> 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 happ…

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

I generally agree with some of your comment, but this sentence confuses me a bit.

I'd argue that the only reason that it does not require security patches is because it's not attached to any network. Though, probably the only actual reason would be that nobody is looking too closely at the whole system, because that wireless communication system is a network. And we really were not good at keeping computers sufficiently secure from any network in the 80s...

(Besides, what does "real" multi-tasking OS mean here? And why is multi-tasking relevant for this job? It seems like in this case a simpler OS would be more reliable and robust, while still being able to perform the job.)

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

#59

Post by myth2018 »

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…

> A bespoke wireless sensor monitoring and communications system, integrated into an old heating/cooling system

Ofc I'm just speculating here, but based on the article's description I suspect this whole wireless integration could be stripped. Maybe in the 80s they saw the need for a central computer running all the logic, but I suspect that nowadays this computer could be replaced with programmable controllers, one at each building. Industrial controllers are very reliable and there are available professionals for support.

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

#60

Post by dylan604 »

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…

>the computer operates on the same frequency as some of the walkie-talkies used by the maintenance department.

>project for a 20s kid.

I'm honestly surprised that the system hasn't been commandeered by some other enterprising student with some cheap boafang from amazon just trying to trigger with key presses.

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