Turning buildings into data

The challenge: Isolated hubs leave device automation out of reach

When I started digging into this task, I learned our office’s “smart” lighting setup consisted of disconnected control hubs; one large Lutron Quantum server managing common areas and four Lutron Vive wireless nodes controlling individual meeting rooms. Each operated on its own private network, creating automation islands that couldn't be centrally managed or integrated with our broader technology ecosystem.

This fragmentation is typical across commercial buildings, with specialized access for lighting, HVAC, security, and miscellaneous others existing in functional silos. They all contain valuable data and control points, but they're typically locked behind proprietary interfaces or require expensive custom integration work.

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The solution: Turning proprietary technologies into standardized data sources and control points

The breakthrough came when I realized how Viam's flexible architecture could enable me to integrate with the lighting hubs through BACnet, an open standard protocol that also supports all the other specialized controls I mentioned earlier! Rather than purchasing new hardware or paying for custom integration, I leaned into a modular approach to create a bridge between our platform and our existing installations.

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What makes the platform uniquely suited for this challenge is its ability to represent any device or equipment as standardized components within its ecosystem. The BACnet-enabled lighting fixtures, regardless of manufacturer or specific implementation details, could be abstracted as sensor and switch components in Viam's platform.

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This abstraction layer is powerful because it transforms complex, proprietary technologies into standardized data sources and control points. For example, we're now able to monitor power usage across all lighting zones as sensor readings in Viam, tracking efficiency metrics in real-time. These power consumption patterns can be analyzed alongside other building data, giving us unprecedented visibility into our energy footprint and helping identify optimization opportunities.

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The beauty of the overall approach is that once these controls are integrated, they immediately benefit from Viam's security model, data management capabilities, and programmable interfaces; all without changing the underlying hardware.

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The lutron-bacnet module is composed of a few resources to enable this implementation. Before I could monitor or control the BACnet devices, I needed to figure out how to address them and what capabilities each one contained. So I started by creating a discovery service to query the network using “Who-Is” requests and turn the “I-Am” responses into the relevant sensor or switch component configurations that could be added to a machine configuration. Once I added those component APIs to the module, I could quickly add any discovered device to my machine, like any of my other automation projects.  All of this ran on a Raspberry Pi connected to the Viam network over Ethernet, to which I continually deployed my in-progress module using the Viam CLI, whether I was in the office or working from home.

From control to intelligence

What makes this integration powerful isn't just the ability to flip switches remotely. As I mentioned before, by bringing this data into Viam's platform, we've unlocked entirely new capabilities:

• ‍Cross-system orchestration: We can now create automation rules that span different hardware ecosystems. For example, adding mmWave sensors that can detect presence more accurately than the built-in occupancy sensors will be able to directly control the lighting.‍
• Data-driven insights: We're capturing power usage patterns across our office spaces over time, helping us optimize for energy efficiency and sustainability goals.‍
• Contextual automation: We've solved frustrating edge cases, like automatically illuminating areas where our robots operate during scheduled demos, ensuring they're never navigating in darkness during off-hours.

The bigger picture: hardware abstraction at scale

This project exemplifies Viam's approach to the physical world. Just as our platform provides hardware abstraction for robotics and IoT devices, it can do the same for building infrastructure. The implications for enterprise environments are significant:

• ‍Vendor flexibility: Organizations can choose best-of-breed hardware without worrying about compatibility, mixing and matching sensors and control elements as needed.
• ‍Single pane of glass: Technical teams now have one consolidated interface where they can monitor, manage, and control all connected building systems regardless of manufacturer or protocol. This eliminates the need to switch between multiple proprietary interfaces, streamlines troubleshooting, and puts everything you care about in one place, from lights to temperature to security.
• ‍AI-enabled alerts:  With data now flowing into Viam's platform, real-time alerting can detect anomalous power consumption, identify lighting zones that remain on after hours, and flag potential maintenance issues before they become failures. These alerts integrate with existing notification channels, allowing facility managers to respond immediately to issues rather than discovering them during routine inspections.
• ‍Secure by design: All communications use Viam's enterprise-grade security protocols, addressing a major concern with traditional building automation systems.

What this means for the future of physical spaces

This lighting project highlighted something profound: we're at an inflection point where the barriers between our digital capabilities and physical environments are beginning to dissolve. What excites me most isn't just connecting different physical components; it's the emergent possibilities when these connections scale.

Imagine buildings that truly understand their occupants, adapting to changing patterns without explicit programming. Consider manufacturing floors where every machine, regardless of age or vendor, contributes to a unified data fabric that enables continuous optimization. Think about smart cities where transportation, utilities, and public services form a responsive ecosystem rather than disconnected networks.

The technical approach we've demonstrated here, using open standards, hardware abstraction, and unified data platforms, represents a fundamentally different philosophy than traditional integration approaches. Rather than building brittle, point-to-point connections between systems, we're creating a common language that allows any physical technology to participate in a broader intelligence.

For technical decision-makers, this represents an opportunity to break free from the vendor lock-in and siloed solutions that have dominated facilities management for decades. The real strategic advantage lies not in having the newest hardware, but in having the most cohesive and adaptive infrastructure; one that can evolve as technology advances without requiring wholesale replacement.

Do you have building infrastructure collecting dust and data in isolation? Are you curious about how your existing infrastructure could be transformed into something more intelligent and responsive? Reach out to schedule a demo and explore how Viam can help you unlock the hidden potential in your physical infrastructure.