LoRaWAN building management, validated across multiple sites
Retrofitting sensors into occupied buildings usually means cabling. Voytech proved a wireless path into a conventional BACnet building management system instead.
The problem
Building management systems depend on data gathered from plant rooms and occupied spaces. Adding conventional sensors to an existing building can require substantial new cabling, which makes retrofits disruptive and caps how many measurement points are economic to install. Voytech needed to cut the dependence on field wiring, reach devices distributed through the building, support control as well as monitoring, convert LoRaWAN device data for BACnet-based systems, and keep the gateway infrastructure inside plant rooms. Wireless alone wasn't enough — the architecture also needed local network services, device management and a reliable way to present data to the existing BMS.
What was done
LoRaWAN sensors, meters and control devices communicated with gateways installed inside the building. Voytech's Sitelink platform hosted the LoRaWAN network and application servers locally, converting wireless device data into BACnet objects the conventional BMS could consume. The path ran sensors and control devices to the LoRaWAN gateway, into Sitelink, and out to the BACnet system — so wireless devices could be added without replacing the existing control platform.
How it turned out
The deployments showed LoRaWAN had enough reach to support devices distributed through existing buildings, and that Sitelink could make their data available to an established BACnet BMS. Preconfiguring devices before installation reduced the specialist configuration needed on site. The published material supports multi-storey wireless communication, a deployment of more than 200 sensors, local LoRaWAN-to-BACnet conversion and reduced dependence on new field wiring.
“LoRaWAN finally solves the challenge of integrating wireless monitoring and control into conventional BMS applications.”
Deployed at the time
As named in the original case study. Some of it is superseded, or was never in our range.
- Robustel R3000-LG LoRaWAN gateway — we do not currently stock a LoRaWAN gateway
- Voytech Sitelink LoRaWAN network and application server
- 60 MClimate Vicki smart radiator valves
What we'd specify today
Current equivalents from our catalogue for this kind of site — not a statement about the hardware installed.
Where this came from
Based on Robustel and Voytech Systems material published in 2021, describing the configuration of the day. The source provides no quantified energy savings, installation-cost reduction or labour-hour saving, and the 100% figure relates only to the reported pre-deployment period — it is not a long-term uptime guarantee. The gateway used was the R3000-LG, a LoRaWAN variant we do not stock; the R3000 listed here is the cellular router, not a like-for-like replacement.