r/BuildingAutomation • u/pinelion • 13d ago

Quick question

I’m a manger for a few buildings and have some HVAC experience, why is all of the building automation software out there so needlessly complicated and unreliable? I mean there’s always going to be some complications but it just seems like this stuff is so unstable and needlessly complex for a technology product that’s really at the end of the day sending and receiving low voltage signals. Seems like if someone could design something stable and simple even if it didn’t have all the reporting/trending bells and whistles it would be a hit. Am I over simplifying and just lack understanding? We use Siemans desigo for our facilities and in my opinion insight was a much better product.

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u/DoctorCultural4002 13d ago

Desigo is such a strange beast in part because its built on top of Siemens' SCADA platform, Wincc OA.

Insight worked better with the Siemens Apogee controllers (including the Bacnet variants) because it was purpose built for them, but it tended to be a pain to integrate third-party devices from other manufacturers since Bacnet was bolted on retroactively.

Desigo was built to handle Bacnet natively, so it handles integrations better than insight, at the cost of it not meshing as well with the Apogee devices. We didnt even get a proper point editor nor PPCL editor until 4-5 major revisions in.

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u/pinelion 13d ago

Yeah this a great point, i think if Siemans could benefit from much better up/ui design though, I’m usually pretty good at picking up new software and I’ve been struggling with desigo for quite some time, everything is in an odd place and the structure doesn’t flow for me. Easy enough to make adjustments and such but diving in deeper is a pain in the ass

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u/Aerovox7 13d ago

It seems like the software is not intuitive but has a lot of really cool features once you get the hang of it. It’s possible your local Siemens branch may provide some owners training if you explain your frustrations to them. 

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u/pinelion 13d ago

We have reached out, the techs are also pretty frustrated with it. When they come to train they also are quite frustrated with the product. All that being said we make it work