The Connect Box radically lowers the effort, investment, and complexity of integrating devices and equipment to a common system and retrofitting additional functionality to optimize the building:

  • Plug and play installation and configuration experience optimized for installers such as electricians
  • Library of over 500 field and equipment devices ready to connect
  • Smart protocol gateway supports 11 communication protocols; both standard and proprietary, wired and wireless protocols including a local IoT private network based on LoRa
  • Typically retrieves equipment data at 10-minutes intervals – adjustable by user per protocol and data point
  • Powerful integration of third-party applications via public APIs, MQTT or Webhooks
  • User web interface to remotely configure and provide optional, but important BMS functionality for selected licenses at https://connectbox.siemens.com

 

The delivery consists of the Connect Box hardware, and a software license to unlock individual functionality in the IoT platform as well as the user web and machine-readable interfaces. An overview of the basic topology is shown below.

 

 

The Connect Box with cloud license provides collected data to the cloud either via LAN or 4G and from there via external API Restful, MQTT or Webhooks. It can also provide data locally via BACnet IP, Modbus TCP gateway or MQTT client through the integrated local server. A 4G SIM card and plan is included in the license and covers all device configuration and data traffic. Additional important BMS functionality such as graphs, alarms, trends and dashboards is included in the web interface.

The Connect Box with on-premise license provides data collection capability locally via the BACnet IP, Modbus TCP gateway or MQTT client through the integrated local server. Operational data is generally not sent to the cloud. A 4G SIM card and plan is included for remote configuration, updates and management during the first 3 years and can be renewed on request afterwards.

Both software types leverage the IoT platform via the user web interface at https://connectbox.siemens.com to activate, manage and configure the Connect Box and other Connected Devices. The Customer selects the required software license type based on use case; the plan can be changed remotely at a later time during the product life cycle.