Publisher’s note: This is the sixth part of a series looking back through the archives of Prairie Business as part of our 25th anniversary celebration.
The February 2018 edition of Prairie Business presented a history on automation in buildings – everything, intelligent thermostats and smart bulbs at offices and smart homes. The editor at the time was Tom Dennis, who wrote the article highlighting the automation technologies of the house and the office.
With the advent of the smartphone, companies have seen unlimited opportunities to offer ways to automate things that people have been doing by hand for decades. Smart Building Technologies offered lights, televisions, alarms and remote controlled thermostats. The idea “dates back at least 1978”, indicates the article “When the automation products of the X10 building began to appear in Sears and Radio Shack stores”.
X10 products have “spoken” through the wiring of a house. In the original configuration, a customer would brandish a multi-commutation remote control in a kitchen socket, for example. The customer would disperse x10 smaller modules in grips scattered around the house and plug in shreds, televisions or other devices. By overthrowing a switch on the central controller, the customer could tell the X10 module in another room to turn on or deactivate the power supply and voila.
Today, it is generally an application on a smartphone or tablet that serves as control for a house or an intelligent office. Intelligent thermostats can be programmed to light the lights and the heat an hour before a person returns home, for example.
Intelligent rooms in hospitals mean that a patient’s bed is linked to the building, and it can feel many of the patients a patient needs, such as lighting changes, room temperature changes and even changes of the patient’s position. The sensors follow the heart rate, breathing rates and when the patient leaves the bed.
Today’s new apartments are often equipped with a certain type of intelligent system. The management of the energy consumption of a building has become faster and more reliable thanks to these technologies, which can be like having an energy engineer on each 24 -hour equipment. These technologies have been designed to improve and facilitate Our way of life.
With all this connectivity comes from vulnerabilities, including data confidentiality problems, the integration of inherited systems and threats of cybersecurity, among others. Sometimes it makes a long person for the analogous days.
Other stories in the same edition include a chronicle of Dennis Walk, director of credit at First International Bank & Trust, to keep track of the Fed interest rate changes and the way they affect the business; The importance of marketing your business by the occasional meadow business columnist Matthew Mohr, CEO of Dacotah Paper Co.; And protect your employees and your company from sexual harassment. An interview with the president and chief executive officer of the North Dakota Bankers Association, Rick Clayburgh, who is a former state tax commissioner, has covered the importance of community banks and the role they play in the region, as well as emerging trends in the banking sector.
These subjects are still relevant today and are covered in the affairs of meadows throughout the year.
Carrie McDermott joined Prairie Business Magazine in March 2023. It covers trends in the commercial industry in northern Dakota, the southern Dakota and the center-west of Minnesota. E-mail address: cmcdermott@prairiebusinessmagazine.com.