🎧 #020: Andrew Rodgers on what "open" really means for smart buildings

“You hear so many arguments defending the status quo.”

—Andrew Rodgers

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Episode 20 is a conversation with Andrew Rodgers, co-founder of ACE IoT.

Summary

• This is a masterclass on what the word open means for buildings. Open is a very controversial and murky topic. I think Andrew clears some of that up in this conversation… it’s about choice. It’s about self-actualization.
• Don’t let the deep nerdiness of this conversation scare you away. If we could unlock the data in our buildings and open up communication, we could do things like help mitigate climate change, create healthier indoor environments, and finally automate our buildings.
• Andrew and I talked about myths, definitions, and walked through each layer of the smart building stack to unpack it in depth, including how we can learn from slime molds, which have it all figured out.
• And much, much more.

Mentions and Links

1. ACE IoT (2:24)
2. VOLTTRON (2:34)
3. Pacific Northwest National Lab (4:42)
4. Electric Power Research Institute (5:47)
5. Mike Brooman, Vanti (8:49)
6. JCI OpenBlue (9:40)
7. Oracle (20:49)
8. Arm (24:23)
9. Deepinder Singh, 75F (24:41)
10. I²C (25:24)
11. Calvin Slater, AHR Expo (26:07)
12. Joe Aamidor (32:40)
13. Local Law 97 (35:25)
14. Deb Noller, Switch Automation (37:40)
15. ASHRAE 223, Google’s Digital Buildings (42:50)
16. Kubernetes (51:52)
17. MongoDB (56:26)
18. Niagara (58:47)
19. Advanced Supervisory Control 1.0, ASC 2.0 (1:04:16)

You can find Andrew Rodgers on LinkedIn

Enjoy!

Music credit: The Garden State by Audiobinger

THE ABOVE AUDIO, VIDEO, SUMMARY, AND LINKS WILL ALWAYS BE FREE. PODCAST DEEP DIVES WITH MY REACTIONS, MY TOP HIGHLIGHTS, AND THE FULL TRANSCRIPT ARE EXCLUSIVELY AVAILABLE TO MEMBERS OF NEXUS PRO.

Here’s this week’s deep dive outline:

• My reaction, including highlights:

  • Andrew’s answer to my favorite question is the pain-consumer distance and how the market isn’t self-regulating 

  • The difference between open ecosystems and open source 

  • How it all comes down to capabilities that are unlocked and personal preference 

  • Open vs. interoperable 

  • Where open source fits 

  • Walking up the stack from the edge and what open means at each level (hardware, BACnet, APIs, platforms) 

  • Why closed ecosystems won’t help us realize our future vision as an industry and how slime molds have it all figured out 

  • The VOLTTRON open ecosystem and how it innovation happens with that model 

  • How open-source can solve our workforce shortage 

  • Examples of other tech from other industries going from closed to open and how open source is free like puppies. 

  • How open is Niagara?

  • The vision for VOLTTRON and how AceIOT deploys it for their clients 

• Full transcript

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