At some point as well as people entering information, we'll need more things to report about themself (and their surroundings) into the BIM.
Imagine a "Structural Element" reporting the current forces on it or a "Light Transmission Coefficient sensing Window" begging to be cleaned :)
This may be all possible with IoT The Internet of Things. IoT is the interconnection of uniquely identifiable embedded computing like devices with the existing Internet infrastructure. These microcontrollers and the sensors connected to them are relatively cheap and highly available items.
To examine the idea further I've built an Occupancy Comfort Sensors Pod.
It was encouraging to see a lot of people building such devices and sharing their knowledge.
In fact OCS and / or a Weather Station seems to be the first project anyone getting into Arduino builds.
Although the idea was not achieving a device with a pro-grade accuracy, I've done my best to do so.
I'd like to thank everyone sharing their knowledge of calibrating the sensors I've used and friends lending me serious toys to calibrate to.
BIM OCS senses (from top left to bottom) Light, Carbon Dioxide, Dust, Sound Level, Temperature, Humidity, Heat Index and Barometric Pressure.
BIM OCS has a wireless connection to the internet and uploads the sensors' data to Xively in every cycle.
Xively (formerly known as Cosm and Pachube) offers an Internet of Things (IoT) platform as a service.
You can check the readings of BIM OCS here. (The BIM OCS may not be online all the time as I'm disconnecting the prototype to do modifications from time to time.)
Now I'll be working on getting this information into BIM. I've emailed Ramtin Attar for more information about Autodesk Projects Dasher a month ago (140627) but couldn't get a return.
So I'll be focusing my efforts on the good ol' Revit and its Analysis Visualization Framework (AVF)
