For other improvements and fixes see release notes.
New Features
Standard and Professional Editions
In this version we have split our product into two different editions: Standard and Professional. All 1.3.x and earlier users and license holders will hold a Standard edition and functionality will be the same.
Professional edition will allow E2H to integrate to more than one type and/or instances of event providers at the same time in one instance of Events2HVAC server. Other new features will be rolled out later for this edition as well.
Read More: Product Editions
Support for Multiple Event Providers on Single Server
The Professional edition of Events2HVAC allows you to connect multiple types of reservation systems and multiple instances of the same type so you can have a single campus scheduling source to control your building automation system(s).
Large campuses typically have more than one scheduling system in use. Conference rooms may be using Exchange Room Resources to allow employees or students booking meetings via email while academic schedules are on an enterprise event management system. Other buildings may have different requirements so additional scheduling software or multiple instances of the same vendor might be utilized.
E2H can now manage the campus HVAC schedules from one or many scheduling sources.
Google Calendar Event Provider
If you use Google Apps for Work (Business, Non-Profit, Education) or you have a free (personal Google account) you can use the calendar to control Events2HVAC zones. Google Apps makes use of the built-in calendar room resources feature for booking spaces. Google personal calendar will all you to map additional calendars to each zone you want to control in E2H. Both options allow you to implement E2H to a very low cost alternative to automatic HVAC zone scheduling using an easy to use calendar interface.
Read More: Google Calendar
Improvements
Event Provider Manager
The event provider manager allows the user to manage and create one or multiple instances of any event provider for a single server instance. For Standard edition you can use the event provider manager to swap to different event providers without re-installing the software.
For Professional edition, create a new instance of any available event provider easily without reloading software. You can use as many instances that are allowed in your license.
Read More: Event Provider Manager
Event Provider Schedule Updates Changes
All schedule data received from event providers during normal schedule update polling will be cached to the local database. This will allow the UI to have a faster response when dealing with calendar and event data from systems that have slow response times.
You can select to view either the cached or remote data in the UI.
Event Provider Schedule Backup Data
Previous versions keep 24 hours of scheduled actions (commands) in the command queue. This allows scheduled commands to still be sent even though you might lose the connection to the event provider. Starting at v1.4, Events2HVAC will retrieve 7 days of schedule data once a day. This data will be cached to the local database and updated any time remote schedule data is retrieved.
Now for each regular schedule poll period, if live (remote) schedule data fails, Events2HVAC will look in the cache to see if backup data exists and use it if needed.
Preliminary Support For Room Capacity and %Capacity
Google and R25 Event Providers now retrieve additional event data that can be used to calculate % room capacity used during an event. This will be used later to be able to provide actions (controls) for the environment based on % capacity.
System Requirement Changes
We are dropping support for the following pre-requisite software:
- Windows XP, Windows Vista, Server 2003
- SQL Server 2005
New requirements:
- .NET Framework 4.5.2 or higher
- SQL Server 2008R2 or higher
Obsolete Device Interfaces:
- Proliphix NT Devices are obsolete and no longer supported and have been removed from the help documents and available device interfaces.