China. Plant devices for "Smart Home". Learning and learning
The Russian market of professional automation equipment for home and building (aka Smart Home ) has always been filled with European and American brands. European companies whose products can be found in hardware stores - ABB, Schneider Electric, Legrand, Gira, JUNG - and American companies whose logos show off on touch panels in Class A offices - Crestron, AMX - have been working in this market for a long time, equipping expensive homes "Smart" features. But the market is growing, equipment needs a lot and production has to be moved to China. Not surprisingly, some of the Chinese companies that previously specialized in OEM manufacturing used the money they earned to create their own R & D units. And that means their own unique brand.
The HDL plant, which invited us to speak at its annual training for distributors and dealers (in Guangzhou), became the first Chinese brand to dilute American-European dominance in our market. In 2007, they began manufacturing their own line of Smart Home equipment, in 2009 they entered the Russian market (for them it was the first foreign experience). In 2015, their equipment is sold in 82 countries of the world, and their R & D unit of about 40 engineers releases new items more often than any competitor.
HDL is our good partner. The installers of this equipment are one of the fastest growing sections in our summary sales table. Some of these satisfied people are directly involved in the process.
')
This post is for those who have anything to do with the phrase "smart home" and are interested in how seriously the Chinese approach the issue of the production of appropriate equipment. This is not a record of updates or advertising anything. If you want to see what this plant does - go to its website or to the websites of Russian distributors. And here is just a story about our trip in chronological order. Initially, we planned to place it only in the social. networks, but it occurred to someone that this might be interesting to a wider audience.
The first day was not easy for us. A long flight and a difference of 5 hours did the trick. The Russian delegation (17 people) was met on a separate bus, which took us to the hotel. There, as in other countries, the surprise for many was that, in addition to paying for a room, everyone needed to make a deposit of 400-500 dollars, but all questions were quickly resolved. On Sunday there was no training, so we, accompanied by a sales manager in Eastern Europe (named Lawrence), were left to ourselves.
Any tourist Chinese immediately lead for clothes. So we were taken to the turnover and taken to the main attraction - shops.
According to reviews of experienced, prices over the past couple of years have become less interesting (10 percent increased by themselves, another 80 percent for us personally - due to the current exchange rate of the ruble). Nevertheless, I confess that we gladly wandered among Chinese handbags and shoes, in search of gifts to our wives and trying to find recognizable logos. Recognizable logos, as it turned out, it is forbidden to lay out on store shelves, but the sullen Chinese, who quietly sentenced “Copy, copy ...”, with pleasure took us to secret apartments, located a couple of floors above the shopping center. On the conditional knock and password cry, the door opened, and inside all the walls were occupied by Gucci, Dior, LV ...
With easy shopping, we went for a walk in the center. 32 degrees, skyscrapers, wonderful pedestrian streets and a beautiful embankment made some of them remind us of their homes with a slight longing. Still, China is China, now the main economy of the world.
Here is a library, for example:
We sat at the bar and told us about the great Chinese firewall. It immediately became clear why Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Gmail, Google did not work with us ... Someone urgently started looking for a VPN service, and someone took a break and turned off the phone for a while.
Coincidentally, I had a birthday on the day of arrival, and our colleague Edward had a day before. Surprisingly, Lawrence did not forget about it and brought us a cake, which we merry with a traditional Chinese food and beer. Thank you, I didn’t have such a birthday yet.
Chinese beer - a fortress of only 3%, but in bottles of 0.6l.
Harry P. was busy among us, but at that moment I did not recognize him:
On Monday, the training began. At 8 am, a bus for 40 people came to pick us up, in which we ran half asleep, barely having time to grab a banana for breakfast. An hour to the factory, located in the suburb of Guangzhou, everyone was asleep.
In general, HDL is not a Chinese-type story, but rather an American one. The man who in 1985 installed his first dimmers here:
now owns a factory and annually collects dozens of distributors from around the world. Quite an American dream. But wait ... I'm not quite sure that those sitting in this room had nothing to do with this process.
On reaching the factory, we saw another similar bus and several smaller vans who brought our colleagues from other hotels. The atmosphere of collective joy reigned here, no one expected that there would be so many people. Indians got acquainted with Dubai people who rubbed along with girls from Mauritius, who had already managed to make friends with an aunt from Qatar. Oddly enough, the atmosphere of goodwill and a slight surprise survived until the last day of our visit.
The introductory part was led by Noah Barker, an employee of the Chinese office, whom we had not previously met. Later we found out some unusual motives that made the Englishman move to China, they turned out to be completely personal.
I did not have time to complete the presentation, as I was caught by a very active Indian distributor Sanjay. He stated that he looked at all the iRidium online courses and did not understand anything, his main goal in this training is me. Then for another couple of days between classes, we devoted Sanjay's blitz-training, culminating in a triumphal independent creation of the project and a cheerfully controlled light bulb. In the photo on the left - a representative from Dubai and Sanjay do not let quietly have dinner to James Zenga, vice-president of the company:
Next to the conference hall, a very nice showroom showed up. From translucent touch glass to managed furniture, this is food for thought (about your own showroom) to any specialist in the home automation market.
Several partner companies called for HDL training and they all turned out to be Russian-speaking. It just so happens that companies whose strength is good hardware usually cannot make good software (with rare exceptions). Therefore, we are in a privileged position: we, iRidium mobile , Throne from Yaroslavl are the authors of the first (and, it seems, the only) in the world system of a three-dimensional visualization system for building management and Coolautomation (Israel, but Russian), the authors of the controller allowing to control all kinds of systems conditioning.
I turned out to be one of the rare specialists who had experience of real Coolmaster installations with HDL and asked me to help, show how this is done. Of course, nothing was turned on the first time, but after a couple of minutes of thinking, all the air conditioners were set up with a bang.
If anyone is interested in how to manage air conditioning - from the site .
This evening we ordered almost everything that was in the restaurant not far from our hotel, including a rabbit and a frog. Having eaten enough money, we paid the bill - about 4,000 rubles. for our money - and again we were sad about restaurants in our homeland, where you will leave so much for two (and no frog).
Frogs:
The fourth day, the organizers decided to start with a story about the nearest plans and updates ...
HDMI / HDBaseT switch:
Weather station and wireless dimmer for LEDs:
Installers from Moscow and Kazan even managed to disassemble the case from a pair of controllers:
Learn more about the wireless system. The strange thing is that HDL is a member of the Zigbee alliance, but it uses buspro's own (open) protocol for wireless devices:
Then we went to look at the plant.
SMD types themselves:
Solder themselves too:
HDL has very good demo bags, so they make and sell a lot of them:
Test benches in the R & D department:
Further, those who wanted to went to the nearest, not built-up apartment buildings, attraction - Lotus Mountain. For the first time we saw at least some Chinese nature - a very calm and beautiful place.
The Dubai delegation dressed in Chinese historical costumes and shot all the balls from the Kalashnikov pneumatic.
On the way back (as on any other) we sleep on the bus. Why is it not in my homeland that I cannot sleep on the bus like a baby ?!
Approaching the hotel found 2-storeyed parking. Near my house in St. Petersburg you need exactly this:
Having slept off in the bus, we decided not to do anything one night and went to a nightclub. The guys from Kazakhstan, whom we met a day before, were advised to us by the club Troe Color and thank them very much for that. Artem was then told that he had found a Moscow ICON in Guangzhou, and in St. Petersburg at once I wouldn’t mention where this is. I would not be surprised if the effects in this club are controlled by the equipment HDL - one of the famous manufacturers of DMX show equipment in China.
It became even more interesting when it turned out that, no matter how dressed, we were still very interesting to all the locals. They were ready to treat us with anything in any quantities, just because we are standing next to their table and can be photographed with us. Managed to feel a little exotic.
Later we learned that there were fierce fights here and we ourselves witnessed a small violent insanity because of a quarreled Chinese couple. The Russian / Ukrainian team from the show told us that they had no way to quarrel with anyone. Offended Chinese just come back and lead the gang.
On the fifth day, we finally got to the hotel equipment, about which there were so many questions. We trained on briefcases with controllers and a WiFi router, which they then successfully dragged with them to Russia.
This is the main thing that makes everything in a hotel room (lighting, climate, curtains, etc.)
One of the frequent questions was - how do we use this equipment if the hotel has a Fidelio PMS system? It turned out that in the first place it is now called Opera (uh, why not Firefox? But because Fidelio is Beethoven's only opera). And secondly, the integration is already right in the HDL software for hotel controllers, which greatly pleased us.
Then they brought a flyer advertising HDL funny aquariums. This we did not expect and went to look. Well, DMX, in general, the same technology as the nightclub. Interestingly, the fish do not get nervous?
Then Daniel Radcliffe talked about Yaroslavl Throne, but it was not easy for him, since their entire development works on the basis of a web service, which was actively opposed by the great Chinese firewall.
(well, his name is Yura)
The sixth and last day I started. I was sure that there would be no one early on the last morning, and on Saturday. But I was mistaken - everything came and even a little more than usual. I even heard from someone that he came from another part of the world only to hear about iRidium, but, of course, he did not believe it.
After that we plunged into the bus and drove to the big final dinner. While everyone was eating, they were entertained from the scene with stories about how HDL manages to win in equipment competitions for large objects against big competitors.
By coincidence, the owner of the restaurant where the dinner was held also has a yacht assembly factory. One of them was moored near the restaurant and filled with the automation equipment that we studied in previous days. Control of lighting, climate and music could be experienced while we walked around the yacht.
We were told that this is the largest yacht produced in China:
And immediately a negative example. What happens if for touch control the Chinese use not their own iFidium, but their own ILIFE software:
Panels near the bed control the lighting of the bedroom, the entire living space of the yacht, curtains, air conditioning, music and TV. Everything could be tried and everything worked well:
After such a farewell, we were seized with anguish and unwillingness to leave. Finding in the nearest restaurant tincture on the snake, we tried to rush into serious alcoholic adventures.
But nothing happened here and everything ended in a decent place on the bank of the river accompanied by beautiful music.
If someone has read this far, he will probably be interested in how iRidium supports the automation equipment of this plant. All information about this is here .
Phew It seems to be all. Thanks to HDL for interesting time spent. I hope that all hotels, skyscrapers and entire cities promised by new partners will be truly equipped with iRidium. And I hope to get on this training next year.
My personal photos and videos, as well as Eduard Arakelov, Sergey Kostin and Artem Tseplyaev, for which we thank all of them
The HDL plant, which invited us to speak at its annual training for distributors and dealers (in Guangzhou), became the first Chinese brand to dilute American-European dominance in our market. In 2007, they began manufacturing their own line of Smart Home equipment, in 2009 they entered the Russian market (for them it was the first foreign experience). In 2015, their equipment is sold in 82 countries of the world, and their R & D unit of about 40 engineers releases new items more often than any competitor.
HDL is our good partner. The installers of this equipment are one of the fastest growing sections in our summary sales table. Some of these satisfied people are directly involved in the process.
')
This post is for those who have anything to do with the phrase "smart home" and are interested in how seriously the Chinese approach the issue of the production of appropriate equipment. This is not a record of updates or advertising anything. If you want to see what this plant does - go to its website or to the websites of Russian distributors. And here is just a story about our trip in chronological order. Initially, we planned to place it only in the social. networks, but it occurred to someone that this might be interesting to a wider audience.
The first day was not easy for us. A long flight and a difference of 5 hours did the trick. The Russian delegation (17 people) was met on a separate bus, which took us to the hotel. There, as in other countries, the surprise for many was that, in addition to paying for a room, everyone needed to make a deposit of 400-500 dollars, but all questions were quickly resolved. On Sunday there was no training, so we, accompanied by a sales manager in Eastern Europe (named Lawrence), were left to ourselves.
Any tourist Chinese immediately lead for clothes. So we were taken to the turnover and taken to the main attraction - shops.
According to reviews of experienced, prices over the past couple of years have become less interesting (10 percent increased by themselves, another 80 percent for us personally - due to the current exchange rate of the ruble). Nevertheless, I confess that we gladly wandered among Chinese handbags and shoes, in search of gifts to our wives and trying to find recognizable logos. Recognizable logos, as it turned out, it is forbidden to lay out on store shelves, but the sullen Chinese, who quietly sentenced “Copy, copy ...”, with pleasure took us to secret apartments, located a couple of floors above the shopping center. On the conditional knock and password cry, the door opened, and inside all the walls were occupied by Gucci, Dior, LV ...
With easy shopping, we went for a walk in the center. 32 degrees, skyscrapers, wonderful pedestrian streets and a beautiful embankment made some of them remind us of their homes with a slight longing. Still, China is China, now the main economy of the world.
Here is a library, for example:
We sat at the bar and told us about the great Chinese firewall. It immediately became clear why Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Gmail, Google did not work with us ... Someone urgently started looking for a VPN service, and someone took a break and turned off the phone for a while.
Coincidentally, I had a birthday on the day of arrival, and our colleague Edward had a day before. Surprisingly, Lawrence did not forget about it and brought us a cake, which we merry with a traditional Chinese food and beer. Thank you, I didn’t have such a birthday yet.
Chinese beer - a fortress of only 3%, but in bottles of 0.6l.
Harry P. was busy among us, but at that moment I did not recognize him:
On Monday, the training began. At 8 am, a bus for 40 people came to pick us up, in which we ran half asleep, barely having time to grab a banana for breakfast. An hour to the factory, located in the suburb of Guangzhou, everyone was asleep.
In general, HDL is not a Chinese-type story, but rather an American one. The man who in 1985 installed his first dimmers here:
now owns a factory and annually collects dozens of distributors from around the world. Quite an American dream. But wait ... I'm not quite sure that those sitting in this room had nothing to do with this process.
On reaching the factory, we saw another similar bus and several smaller vans who brought our colleagues from other hotels. The atmosphere of collective joy reigned here, no one expected that there would be so many people. Indians got acquainted with Dubai people who rubbed along with girls from Mauritius, who had already managed to make friends with an aunt from Qatar. Oddly enough, the atmosphere of goodwill and a slight surprise survived until the last day of our visit.
The introductory part was led by Noah Barker, an employee of the Chinese office, whom we had not previously met. Later we found out some unusual motives that made the Englishman move to China, they turned out to be completely personal.
I did not have time to complete the presentation, as I was caught by a very active Indian distributor Sanjay. He stated that he looked at all the iRidium online courses and did not understand anything, his main goal in this training is me. Then for another couple of days between classes, we devoted Sanjay's blitz-training, culminating in a triumphal independent creation of the project and a cheerfully controlled light bulb. In the photo on the left - a representative from Dubai and Sanjay do not let quietly have dinner to James Zenga, vice-president of the company:
Next to the conference hall, a very nice showroom showed up. From translucent touch glass to managed furniture, this is food for thought (about your own showroom) to any specialist in the home automation market.
Several partner companies called for HDL training and they all turned out to be Russian-speaking. It just so happens that companies whose strength is good hardware usually cannot make good software (with rare exceptions). Therefore, we are in a privileged position: we, iRidium mobile , Throne from Yaroslavl are the authors of the first (and, it seems, the only) in the world system of a three-dimensional visualization system for building management and Coolautomation (Israel, but Russian), the authors of the controller allowing to control all kinds of systems conditioning.
I turned out to be one of the rare specialists who had experience of real Coolmaster installations with HDL and asked me to help, show how this is done. Of course, nothing was turned on the first time, but after a couple of minutes of thinking, all the air conditioners were set up with a bang.
If anyone is interested in how to manage air conditioning - from the site .
This evening we ordered almost everything that was in the restaurant not far from our hotel, including a rabbit and a frog. Having eaten enough money, we paid the bill - about 4,000 rubles. for our money - and again we were sad about restaurants in our homeland, where you will leave so much for two (and no frog).
Frogs:
The fourth day, the organizers decided to start with a story about the nearest plans and updates ...
HDMI / HDBaseT switch:
Weather station and wireless dimmer for LEDs:
Installers from Moscow and Kazan even managed to disassemble the case from a pair of controllers:
Learn more about the wireless system. The strange thing is that HDL is a member of the Zigbee alliance, but it uses buspro's own (open) protocol for wireless devices:
Then we went to look at the plant.
SMD types themselves:
Solder themselves too:
HDL has very good demo bags, so they make and sell a lot of them:
Test benches in the R & D department:
Further, those who wanted to went to the nearest, not built-up apartment buildings, attraction - Lotus Mountain. For the first time we saw at least some Chinese nature - a very calm and beautiful place.
The Dubai delegation dressed in Chinese historical costumes and shot all the balls from the Kalashnikov pneumatic.
On the way back (as on any other) we sleep on the bus. Why is it not in my homeland that I cannot sleep on the bus like a baby ?!
Approaching the hotel found 2-storeyed parking. Near my house in St. Petersburg you need exactly this:
Having slept off in the bus, we decided not to do anything one night and went to a nightclub. The guys from Kazakhstan, whom we met a day before, were advised to us by the club Troe Color and thank them very much for that. Artem was then told that he had found a Moscow ICON in Guangzhou, and in St. Petersburg at once I wouldn’t mention where this is. I would not be surprised if the effects in this club are controlled by the equipment HDL - one of the famous manufacturers of DMX show equipment in China.
It became even more interesting when it turned out that, no matter how dressed, we were still very interesting to all the locals. They were ready to treat us with anything in any quantities, just because we are standing next to their table and can be photographed with us. Managed to feel a little exotic.
Later we learned that there were fierce fights here and we ourselves witnessed a small violent insanity because of a quarreled Chinese couple. The Russian / Ukrainian team from the show told us that they had no way to quarrel with anyone. Offended Chinese just come back and lead the gang.
On the fifth day, we finally got to the hotel equipment, about which there were so many questions. We trained on briefcases with controllers and a WiFi router, which they then successfully dragged with them to Russia.
This is the main thing that makes everything in a hotel room (lighting, climate, curtains, etc.)
One of the frequent questions was - how do we use this equipment if the hotel has a Fidelio PMS system? It turned out that in the first place it is now called Opera (uh, why not Firefox? But because Fidelio is Beethoven's only opera). And secondly, the integration is already right in the HDL software for hotel controllers, which greatly pleased us.
Then they brought a flyer advertising HDL funny aquariums. This we did not expect and went to look. Well, DMX, in general, the same technology as the nightclub. Interestingly, the fish do not get nervous?
Then Daniel Radcliffe talked about Yaroslavl Throne, but it was not easy for him, since their entire development works on the basis of a web service, which was actively opposed by the great Chinese firewall.
(well, his name is Yura)
The sixth and last day I started. I was sure that there would be no one early on the last morning, and on Saturday. But I was mistaken - everything came and even a little more than usual. I even heard from someone that he came from another part of the world only to hear about iRidium, but, of course, he did not believe it.
After that we plunged into the bus and drove to the big final dinner. While everyone was eating, they were entertained from the scene with stories about how HDL manages to win in equipment competitions for large objects against big competitors.
By coincidence, the owner of the restaurant where the dinner was held also has a yacht assembly factory. One of them was moored near the restaurant and filled with the automation equipment that we studied in previous days. Control of lighting, climate and music could be experienced while we walked around the yacht.
We were told that this is the largest yacht produced in China:
And immediately a negative example. What happens if for touch control the Chinese use not their own iFidium, but their own ILIFE software:
Panels near the bed control the lighting of the bedroom, the entire living space of the yacht, curtains, air conditioning, music and TV. Everything could be tried and everything worked well:
After such a farewell, we were seized with anguish and unwillingness to leave. Finding in the nearest restaurant tincture on the snake, we tried to rush into serious alcoholic adventures.
But nothing happened here and everything ended in a decent place on the bank of the river accompanied by beautiful music.
If someone has read this far, he will probably be interested in how iRidium supports the automation equipment of this plant. All information about this is here .
Phew It seems to be all. Thanks to HDL for interesting time spent. I hope that all hotels, skyscrapers and entire cities promised by new partners will be truly equipped with iRidium. And I hope to get on this training next year.
My personal photos and videos, as well as Eduard Arakelov, Sergey Kostin and Artem Tseplyaev, for which we thank all of them
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/366919/
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