News

Newsletter | H2/2020

  • ●
  • 5 min

Dear partners and company representatives,

We are proud to announce a three major milestones in the history of our company:

Re-launch of Flowbox brand, new product portfolio and start of expansion outside of Europe.

Flowbox is not only about energy savings, Flowbox wants to be a friendly guide to your digital future. The new web site aims to be a source of knowledge and inspiration for the companies who started a long and challenging journey from digitization through digitalization to embrace digital transformation.

The Flowbox re-launch reflects our strategic focus and commitment to industrial digitalization. Our enhanced Flowbox software platform was used to design a newly presented product packages tailored to the needs of specific segments.

We are also announcing a strategic partnership with ComAp, the leading world provider of smart control solutions for the power generation and engine control industry. This partnership allows Flowbox a world-wide expansion in Energy Demand Management, targeting at B2B industrial and commercial customers.

In the current challenging times, I wish you a good health together with a healthy business and looking forward to potential future partnerships and future delighted clients.

Tomas Rendla
CEO, Flowbox – Supporting Digital Future!

 

NEW FACE OF FLOWBOX – new brand identity, new web site

The Flowbox is transforming itself into ambitious, fast-growing SME and this is reflected in the most visible way – new brand identity.

In November 2020, we introduced a new company logo and a unified visual style. During the transition period, until the end of 2020, we will transfer all our materials into a new design.

OUR NEW LOGO PHILOSOPHY

The three main digitalization segments (industry, building and cities) under supervision and management are represented by three squares with eye inside.

OUR NEW WEB SITE

From new branding to new product design. New website is a first step in new generation of Inteligent Digitalization platform design, new product lines, wide Flowbox product enhancement and stronger support of partner’s network. Supporting digital future!

The increasing number of partners across the world can be found in our interactive map and contact database.

NEW PORTFOLIO OF FLOWBOX

The Flowbox transition is not only related to brand and visual identity. We are using this moment to launch a new concept of product packages as a result of many years of experience with existing installations and newly defined strategic focus areas. We want to be a more specific and address unique needs and challenges of particular market segments. Therefore, our new product packages are divided into the following themes:

  • MANUFACTURING
  • MINING, OIL & GAS
  • TRANSPORTATION
  • BUILDINGS & PROPERTY MANAGEMENT
  • SMART CITIES & GOVERNMENT
  • TELECOM & DATA CENTERS
  • UTILITIES & ENERGY CARRIERS
  • RENEWABLES & MICROGRIDS
  • E-MOBILITY
  • RETAIL & FOOD
  • HEALTH & RESEARCH
  • DIGITALIZATION SERVICES

The overview of product packages can be found on www.flowbox.com/en/industries/

The existing experience from our projects showed extreme breath in horizontal (system functionality requirements) as well as vertical (industry-specific requirements) dimensions.  In order to accommodate this dynamic we introduced both a functional as well as industry-specific granularity in our new product packages portfolio. The functionality “tiers” are represented by 1000, 3000 and 5000 series of product packages:

  • 1000 “monitoring” series – monitoring of segment-specific parameters, analytics & preset alerts, history, reports, anomalies detection, IoT cloud
  • 3000 “control” series – active control of systems (e.g. HVAC), dynamic & adaptive energy optimization, prediction of energy flows
  • 5000 “management” series – multi-location optimization of company operations, advanced analytics, preventive maintenance, self-sufficient sub-domains using Flowbox Alliance Gateways

This functional and industrial segment division allowed us to develop a new, much more dynamic “pay-for-what-you-need” pricing scheme (effective from January 1st,, 2021) and easy to understand “pay-as-you-grow” upgrade scenarios to support you in digitalization journey. More details coming soon.

Flowbox – Supporting Digital Future!

 

NEW INSTALLATIONS

Manufacturing (MAN)

During the summer 2020, we finalized installation of the Flowbox MAN5000 product package in the following companies: GRAMEX, STROS, ASSAABLOY a DIBAQ.

Buildings & property management (BMS)

In cooperation with our strategic partner AXIANS we implemented a management and control system AXIOM powered by FLOWBOX in new administrative building in town Brno – amusement park, restaurant and kindergardedn FUNPARK LETOHRAD.

Smart cities and Government (SCG)

In city Zruč nad Sázavou we expanded connectivity of our FLOWBOX Smart City Manager SCG5000 with new building – kindergarden. Here we manage energy flows (electricity and heating), we monitor CO2 and manage energy in a same way as we do for other buildings in the city. We expect building operations efficiency benefits reaching 15%. Additionally Flowbox solution is a very effective tool for water leakage detection, which is a common case (e.g. toilet leakage or pipes/valves leakage). The return on investment for the city municipality is ca. 3 years.

Building & property management (BMS)

In cooperation with partner QUADRATIC s.r.o. we extended our FLOWBOX BMS5000 installation who manage buildings A,B,C of residential compound Maloměřické nábřeží to additional building D.

Digitalization services (IID)

In cooperation with our partner INNOGY, we installed a dedicated IoT platform IID1000 for government municipality of Vysočina country. As a winner of public tender, we delivered IoT platform for measurement, analysis and dispatch of environmental conditions. The initial application was a monitoring of enviro parameters in museum (exhibiton halls, storage rooms), castles, archives and other buildings under municipality administration.

SOFTWARE NEWS

The latest SW version in 3.16.5. The detailed change log is listed in (Technical – Changelog), here we select the most interesting new features:

 

  • Extended monitoring of notifications with possibility of defining user groups per particular incidents and more flexible notifications for each group (SMS, EMAIL, PUSHOVER, etc.)

 

 

  • Integration of access terminal HIKVISION (Hikvision DS-K1TA70MI-T) with support of face recognition and body temperature measurements

 

  • Support of IDM interface of Autocont AC Identita solution
  • Support of Single Sign On (SSO) in cases that Flowbox is integrated into existing software environment
  • For our partners in the Middle East and other Muslim countries we developed a new functionality based on local prayer times and subsequent optimal control of air-condition, heating, lighting in places of worship based on prayer times. This functionality can be parametrized to any scheduled events such as lunch breaks or specific time patterns based on geographic location.

 

  • Support of Wireless M-BUS (WM-BUS) protocol for wireless reading of energy consumption
  • We added SW controllers for diesel generators, cogeneration stations and hybrid controllers of DER/microgrids

New components and drivers

  • SalahTimes – Islamic prayer time calculator with output commands
  • Comap IS hybrid controller driver pro řízení energy demand
  • Comap AMF gen-set controller driver (diesel generátor)
  • Comet U3120M data-logger
  • Remak VCS airconditioning units
  • Mitsubishi air conditioning units via Procon MelcoBEMS MINI (A1M) protocol converter
  • Mitsubishi heat pump units via Procon MelcoBEMS MINI (A1M) protocol converter
  • Paradox security system via RT daemon
  • Midam WOUT2 driver
  • UPS SNMP
  • Toshiba FDP-3 air conditioning
  • Hikvision face recognition terminal (DS-K1T671)
  • RT (W)MBUS gateway support, (W)MBUS calorimeter, electrometer, watermeter
  • RT MQTT listener support
  • Tajima embroidery
  • Schulte infra panels via AW-UNI1
  • iSmart WiFi RGB driver
  • Schrack NA96 power analyser driver
  • Power meter Inepro 380max

New IoT components

  • Lora RisingHF1S001 Temperature and Humidity Sensor
  • Lora Dragino LHT65 Temperature & Humidity Sensor
  • Solidus NbIOTMiniUniWaterMeter (multiple variants – simple, HRI, UART)
  • VisionQ Eliot Lora parsing (direct LoRa connection without VisionQ servers)
  • Bluematic Tehum sensor – add pt1000 variant