August 11, 2006—Goodman Company, L.P., a subsidiary of Goodman Global, Inc. and the maker of Amana heating and air conditioning products, had introduced the wirelessly networked DigiSmart Control System, an operations management tool designed to be used with the company’s Amana brand packaged terminal air conditioners (PTACs).
The first wireless PTAC management product of its kind, according to the company, the DigiSmart system offers operations managers in hotels, nursing homes, schools, and other buildings that utilize PTACs substantial enterprise benefits, including energy, maintenance, and facilities management.
“Our new DigiSmart Control System will allow our customers to not only control the environmental conditions in individual rooms — it will also help them to manage their energy costs. Field studies of full-property installations indicate that a typical location may save up to 35% in energy costs,” said Dave Craven, Goodman’s director of advanced technologies. “Plus, this can be managed either on-site for a single property, or from one central location for multiple properties.”
The DigiSmart system, which Goodman developed in collaboration with Tridium, Inc., and Everex Communications, Inc., includes in-room wireless thermostats and occupancy sensors, which Goodman developed with Everex, and a Web-based control platform comprised of Tridium’s JACE controller driven by browser-based software built using Tridium’s Niagara (AX) platform.
The controller and the software work together to enable the DigiSmart Control to automatically discover all installed Amana brand PTAC units and wireless peripherals via the wireless mesh network and to communicate system information via Web pages and reports.
The DigiSmart Control System is easy to install or retrofit on previous Amana PTAC models, the company says.
For more information, visit the Amana Web site.
