Niagara University is located in Lewiston, New York, near
Niagara Falls. Founded in 1856, Niagara University has held
a prominent place in the community for many years, known for
excellence in education. As with any effective educational
facility, there is often a need for Media Retrieval and
facility automation. This need had been met by Synergy since
the mid 90's. When Synergy became obsolete, it was time for
the next generation. The facility was upgraded to Phoenix in
July of 2004.
The Evolution of a Control System
As the needs of the growing campus have evolved, so has the
control system. After implementing various solutions for
control of the buildings that cannot be hardwired to the
Head End, Niagara University settled on a solution whereby
some rooms have independent AXcess systems that communicate
with the Head End via TCP/IP. Actually, communication with
the "remote" buildings is accomplished via RS-232 using AMX
AXB-NET boxes to transmit the RS-232 data over the campus
network. In addition to the remote buildings automated by
Synergy, there are other rooms that are controlled directly
without AXB-NET boxes used for the communication mechanism.
Remote rooms are controlled by touch panels and local rooms
are controlled by handheld remote controls.
After years of tweaks, Synergy had stabilized for the most
part. However, various shortcomings of Synergy, coupled with
the need for new features, necessitated an upgrade, and this
upgrade would have to support the existing topology, thus
maximizing the initial investment on hardware.
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