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This is a really good video about how the accessibility of building automation with tools such as Raspberry Pi and Python is so much greater than people realise

This is a really good video about how the accessibility of building automation with tools such as Raspberry Pi and Python is so much greater than people realise. This most interesting point it towards the end, this was built in-house by an employee, they didn't go out and bring in an automation consultancy, they used their own experience and enabled their own employees to build it. Transcript of relevant part: > The funny thing is, people too often jump for the consultant and to go find the 200 quid an hour amazing mega person. > But you have universities, you have young talent bubbling up, you have talent inside your own staff. > You have got to innovate. If all you do is just chuck money at consultants you're not going to be beating the competition. > You've got to come up with new ideas and suck ideas from different places. > And this is just one example where one of our staff unlocked huge potential in our organisation.

m-ee 4y ago
In my (limited) experience this type of thing is very common on the design side but much more rare in manufacturing. An arduino/raspberry pi lets an ME/EE with limited software skills get a lot of test automation done. Last big company I worked for had a large automation team where everyone did a lot of consultant managing and zero engineering. The culture clash was rough during design handoffs. They’d come back to design after their three station monstrosity with 8 motors, hundreds of pounds of steel, and 12 pneumatic lines was failing to do the one simple task it had been over designed for. Another more specific highlight was getting a quote of around $50k to add an ambient temp sensor to one station.
pjc50 4y ago
Yes to all of this. It's something British businesses have traditionally been bad at, recognizing and developing the skills and knowledge of their staff, but it looks like Brompton are setting an extremely good example here. I suspect they're also small enough that this kind of thing is easier to do without politicizing within the organisation; you can have individual line workers talk to the CEO. It's also an unusual corner of skilled "mass-custom" manufacture: rather than turning out millions of identical bikes, they turn out thousands of bikes to millions of slightly different specification combinations.
enkrs 4y ago
I have given talks to factory managers about finding that one or two employees that know Arduino/Raspberry for these projects. Every factory has such persons. They would love to do it! The reception on this is mostly neutral or negative from management. When you identify these guys, turns out they have great hardware or programming skills, but no integration or architecture concepts. The existing system (ERP, MES) owners also like to put a lot of red-tape around anything unconventional connecting to their systems. Managers also are held accountable for the project, even if the costs are low. They prefer to spend a lot and have a consultancy to blame on failure, then their internal employee project they selected. What consultants do is they help the company navigate within it's own bureaucracy and processes. Even to implement the Raspberry solution.
- crispyambulance 4y ago
  I work in this area and know the mindset of ERP and MES folks. It's great for long-term volume production of stuff that's very well established, but makes innovation really, really intractable. That said, lots of people focus on how inexpensive things like the rpi are, but whether the unit costs $35 or $3500 makes a very small difference in the overall cost of the project. I am not totally against rpi's for factory stuff, as long as the folks who implement using those can slow their roll and think some more about the lifetime of their automation project and it's future maintenance. There are PLC's that can run FOR DECADES without problems in a factory environment. Will an arduino/rpi be able to do that? Will someone 15 years from now know even know what an rpi is or be able to buy one?
  - johnwalkr 4y ago
    I see so much stuff reinvented using raspberry pi, arduino and sparkfun sensors simply because people have exposure to those and don't know what a PLC is. And PLCs don't even have to be expensive, a $200 one from automation direct would often be enough.
    - sulcate 4y ago
      PLCs are often a pain to integrate with multiple systems and are not nearly as versatile and simple as an internet connected pi running python, for certain desired tasks. Please tell me which PLC you can get for $200 that runs python, can query some REST APIs, query and write to some databases, communicate with several other types of PLC and equipment, check a half dozen types of local sensors, and perform complex operations without purchasing a software subscription or having to be programmed in ladder logic. Obviously they are suitable to different tasks, but there's a reason someone might reach for a PI to integrate new functionality, including on top of an existing PLC. They're tremendously handy in this environment, not just used because people don't know better.

m-ee 4y ago

In my (limited) experience this type of thing is very common on the design side but much more rare in manufacturing. An arduino/raspberry pi lets an ME/EE with limited software skills get a lot of test automation done. Last big company I worked for had a large automation team where everyone did a lot of consultant managing and zero engineering. The culture clash was rough during design handoffs. They’d come back to design after their three station monstrosity with 8 motors, hundreds of pounds of steel, and 12 pneumatic lines was failing to do the one simple task it had been over designed for. Another more specific highlight was getting a quote of around $50k to add an ambient temp sensor to one station.

pjc50 4y ago

Yes to all of this. It's something British businesses have traditionally been bad at, recognizing and developing the skills and knowledge of their staff, but it looks like Brompton are setting an extremely good example here. I suspect they're also small enough that this kind of thing is easier to do without politicizing within the organisation; you can have individual line workers talk to the CEO. It's also an unusual corner of skilled "mass-custom" manufacture: rather than turning out millions of identical bikes, they turn out thousands of bikes to millions of slightly different specification combinations.

enkrs 4y ago

I have given talks to factory managers about finding that one or two employees that know Arduino/Raspberry for these projects. Every factory has such persons. They would love to do it! The reception on this is mostly neutral or negative from management. When you identify these guys, turns out they have great hardware or programming skills, but no integration or architecture concepts. The existing system (ERP, MES) owners also like to put a lot of red-tape around anything unconventional connecting to their systems. Managers also are held accountable for the project, even if the costs are low. They prefer to spend a lot and have a consultancy to blame on failure, then their internal employee project they selected. What consultants do is they help the company navigate within it's own bureaucracy and processes. Even to implement the Raspberry solution.

crispyambulance 4y ago
I work in this area and know the mindset of ERP and MES folks. It's great for long-term volume production of stuff that's very well established, but makes innovation really, really intractable. That said, lots of people focus on how inexpensive things like the rpi are, but whether the unit costs $35 or $3500 makes a very small difference in the overall cost of the project. I am not totally against rpi's for factory stuff, as long as the folks who implement using those can slow their roll and think some more about the lifetime of their automation project and it's future maintenance. There are PLC's that can run FOR DECADES without problems in a factory environment. Will an arduino/rpi be able to do that? Will someone 15 years from now know even know what an rpi is or be able to buy one?
- johnwalkr 4y ago
  I see so much stuff reinvented using raspberry pi, arduino and sparkfun sensors simply because people have exposure to those and don't know what a PLC is. And PLCs don't even have to be expensive, a $200 one from automation direct would often be enough.
  - sulcate 4y ago
    PLCs are often a pain to integrate with multiple systems and are not nearly as versatile and simple as an internet connected pi running python, for certain desired tasks. Please tell me which PLC you can get for $200 that runs python, can query some REST APIs, query and write to some databases, communicate with several other types of PLC and equipment, check a half dozen types of local sensors, and perform complex operations without purchasing a software subscription or having to be programmed in ladder logic. Obviously they are suitable to different tasks, but there's a reason someone might reach for a PI to integrate new functionality, including on top of an existing PLC. They're tremendously handy in this environment, not just used because people don't know better.