Highlights from the AHR Expo Floor

Samsung HVAC

After Christoph spoke with Steve Parker from Samsung HVAC America about their wind-free cooling product. Here’s a recap from Christoph about their conversation:

Hello, everyone. Christoph Trappe here with BUILDINGS.com, just checking in from my own Twitter account.

[podcast]

Just got done talking with Steve Parker over at Samsung HVAC America. And just a quick update what we talked about: wind-free cooling.

So, this is like the air condition units, you know, they used to blow cold, cold air on you. You’re sitting in a conference room, the air goes on, the air goes off. Oh, my goodness. You put on your sweater because it’s too cold. You take it off because it’s too warm. It’s a never-ending thing.

So, anyway, I talked to Steve and he showed me this really cool wind-free experience.

Basically, what it does, because yes, there is a little bit of wind early on when it really has to cool it down from some high temperature to whatever you want it to go down to. But then once it is at that temperature, the wind completely turns off and there’s no more blowing.

They got all these different types of pieces there that they show off that you can have for your commercial building, for your conference room.

[How are HVAC companies recruiting the next generation?]

I was thinking about that as I’m staying in a hotel and that air conditioning unit goes on and goes off and goes on and oh, my goodness. What’s the right temperature?

So, that is a really cool tool. There’s no blowing air on you. Sounds like a real nice innovative approach to keeping us cool when we’re at work, when we’re in a conference room, without having the blowing air.

Check out the demo:

Check out our AHR Expo coverage:

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O3 Sensor Hub from Delta Controls

Sarah spoke with two representatives from Delta Electronics: Joseph Oberle, vice president of corporate development and Mike Gazzano, marketing manager.

One of the innovative products they were featuring was the O3 Sensor Hub, which is an all-in-one sensor, kind of like an Alexa, that measures CO2 levels, temperature, light, blind controls, motion, humidity, and more.

This product is ideal for conference rooms, classrooms, hospitality, hotel rooms, etc. It’s placed on the ceiling but has a mic and speaker so you can talk to it or connect via Bluetooth.

Here’s a little taste of their conversation:

Joseph: And the idea of this O3 Sensor Hub, even at the room level, is it’s really innovative. And we’re the only ones in the world doing this (unintelligible) sensors, but the idea is you can see it is it’s going to be like an Alexa feature there.

The users can interface with the sensor to control with their voice. “Dim the lights, close the blinds, lock the doors, turn on the projectors,” whatever you want.

And then from a facility management perspective, we’re thinking about it more on the lines of, “I know who the users are in the room. I know what their preferences are for a meeting. When they need the projector on or like the temperature this range. They like the blinds open, they like the blinds closed.” So, we can handle that through the sensor as well.

So, we’re thinking about (unintelligible) security tags or even facial recognition with the cameras to know who’s in the room.

[More from AHR Expo: Ever-changing Environment of Facility Management]

Sarah: That’s amazing. So, that’s what you just showed me, right?

Joseph: That’s what we’re talking about.

Mike: That would be up on the ceiling and this would be running behind the scenes, really communicating with the lighting, the blinds, projector and everything.

Joseph: So, (unintelligible) would be door locks, security areas like IT areas or secure conference rooms, lighting controls, (unintelligible) blind controls are becoming more and more popular.

Mike: For example, Sarah’s got a meeting coming up by Bluetooth, by camera, you’ve logged in. You want the projector. You like it a little cool. Pick up the photo sensors, is it too bright outside for the projector and the tv? Lower the blinds. Do everything customized. It’s pretty slick.

Sarah: And you can talk to it to tell it to do that?

Mike: A little bit of that or by Bluetooth or occupancy sensors and see what’s going on. But to that individual room control, rather than the wing or more of the general style. Conference rooms, education, hospitality at the same time would be that instance.

Joseph: Yeah. So, it’s got a mic and a speaker. So, it’s set up to do that. A bit trickier was how do you make this thing work in a room because it’s (unintelligible) in the ceiling. Highest temperature’s always at the ceiling. So, we had to put algorithms and software and do a lot of things to put the sensor up (unintelligible). So, our integrators love it.

[End transcript]

Rheem Commercial Rooftop Model

Christoph stopped by to chat with Carrol Basham from Rheem Commercial. Here’s what Carrol had to say:

Hi, my name’s Carrol Basham. I’m with Rheem Commercial Sales Team. And I’m gonna talk to you today about our new Renaissance platform. This is our 7 ½ through 12 ½ ton rooftop models that we introduced at the beginning of 2018. We have packaged gas electric, package cooling and we just recently launched our new packaged heat pumps as well.

One of the nice new features about this is our advanced diagnostics, so if you look here on our control board, you will see that we have dual seven segment LED lights that allow you to see what’s going on with the equipment and diagnose any issues much more quickly than you could have in the past.

All the diagnostic codes are captured and are on the inside of the control panel here to show you what is going on with the unit.

[End transcript]

Armstrong Fluid Technology - Active Performance Management

Per Armstrong, this product is a patented onboard software that learns, predicts, adjusts automatically and makes optimization recommendations in real-time. Applied in conjunction with equipment upgrades and consulting services, Active Performance Management has been shown to improve energy efficiency in HVAC systems by over 40 percent.