When Francisco Barrantes attended AHR Expo 2025, he entered Contemporary Controls’ 50th Anniversary Sweepstakes and won a BAScontrol‑E36 36‑point Edge Controller.
Barrantes quickly put the controller to work, developing an HVAC training module that continues to evolve through ongoing enhancements and new integrations.
Barrantes is a BMS Design Engineer at Asesoría en Automatización Industrial S.A. (AAISA) in Costa Rica. For more than 20 years, AAISA has provided engineering services specializing in HVAC systems for clean rooms and controlled environments within the medical device industry. Barrantes has more than 35 years of experience in the building automation industry. As a BAS systems designer and consultant, he teaches basic HVAC courses, including control theory, sensing elements, actuators, and controllers.
“Once I had the controller in my hands, I began thinking about how to use it proactively in my training for mechanical, electrical, and control engineers,” said Barrantes.
He decided to use the BAScontrol‑E36 to build a demonstration unit that simulates a variable pressure system using a proportional–integral–derivative (PID) control loop, similar to those commonly used in air handling units (AHUs) that supply variable air volume (VAV) units.
Defining Project Objectives
Barrantes outlined three primary objectives for the demonstration unit:
- Demonstrate how a direct digital control (DDC) controller regulates static duct pressure.
- Simulate operating scenarios with varying pressure setpoints.
- Show how a PID loop maintains constant pressure despite system disturbances, such as VAV box opening and closing.
One of the biggest challenges was finding a centrifugal motor‑fan assembly capable of producing reliable performance data, such as compression, airflow, and power, on a small‑scale. Accurately simulating duct static pressure and controlling it with a PID loop proved difficult.
After testing several fan types, Barrantes successfully implemented a centrifugal fan paired with a small duct section and a variable louver. This configuration allowed the system to simulate a static pressure control loop within a range of 0–0.5 inches of water column (IWC), a common measurement range in clean room environments.
A small variable frequency drive (VFD) was added to handle variable airflow from 0 to 60 Hz. The completed unit achieved a maximum airflow of 143 CFM at the duct discharge.
Barrantes then implemented the BAScontrol‑E36, which offers 36 universal I/O points and supports BACnet/IP and BACnet MS/TP client/server communications. The controller is web‑configurable and freely programmable using Contemporary Controls’ Sedona Application Editor (SAE) which is included in the BAScontrol Toolset— a free set of software tools to configure, test, emulate, and archive controller operation on a Windows PC.
“Contemporary Controls provided the BAScontrol‑E36 controller and also trained me in its use in Spanish,” Barrantes said. “Using simple yet powerful Sedona programming, I implemented a static pressure control loop with setpoints of 0.05, 0.10, 0.15, and 0.25 IWC.”
The BAScontrol‑E36 includes edge‑connected features, such as real‑time graphical dashboards, PID performance visualization, trend monitoring, and remote control. Users can remotely configure I/O points through a web interface and develop custom graphical user interfaces (GUIs) hosted on their own web server. These dashboards display both digital and analog variables, generate trend graphs, and support read/write operations.
Expanding Project Applications
The training platform has continued to expand well beyond the initial build. Barrantes added BACnet MS/TP interoperability by integrating secondary DDC controllers from multiple manufacturers—including Delta Controls, Johnson Controls, and Price Industries—as remote I/O devices. These integrations demonstrate long‑distance MS/TP communication, multi‑vendor compatibility, and real‑world read/write control using the Sedona programming framework.
More recently, Barrantes bridged building automation and industrial automation by connecting the BAScontrol‑E36 to a supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) network. Using BACnet/IP, the controller communicates with Inductive Automation’s open‑source Ignition SCADA platform through an OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) link. In this setup, the SCADA system functions as the BACnet server, while the BAScontrol‑E36 operates as the BACnet client. This integration demonstrates how modern BAS platforms can interface with open, industrial‑grade SCADA systems—an increasingly valuable skill set for today’s engineers.
The most recent expansion added two additional BACnet MS/TP devices from different manufacturers: a Neptronic controller and an Accuenergy energy meter. The Neptronic controller serves either as a fan coil unit (FCU) controller or a standalone HVAC controller, while the Accuenergy device provides detailed electrical measurements. In this application, sensor readings from the Neptronic controller are read remotely, processed through arithmetic comparisons in the BAScontrol‑E36, and used to overwrite output relays as needed. For the energy meter, all records are available; in this case, the line‑to‑neutral voltage reading of 120 VAC is monitored.
The platform now incorporates five DDC devices from different manufacturers—Delta Controls, Johnson Controls, Price Industries, Neptronic, and Accuenergy—with the BAScontrol‑E36 serving as the master MS/TP device.
Figure 2: Integration of DDC controllers from five different manufacturers
Delivering a Versatile Training Platform
With interactive web dashboards, wireless access, trend graphs, and multi‑vendor integration, the HVAC demonstration platform is a powerful training and knowledge‑sharing tool for the BAS/BMS community.
“Users can turn HVAC equipment on and off, adjust setpoints, graph process variables, and build a complete system interface,” Barrantes said. “These capabilities make the demonstration unit an excellent educational tool. The controller’s USB Wi‑Fi accessory further enables wireless access, allowing interaction with the system without opening the enclosure.”
As Barrantes continues testing and adding new capabilities, the project stands as a practical demonstration of open systems, interoperability, and applied HVAC control theory in action.
To learn more about Contemporary Controls’ 36-point open controllers, visit the BAScontrol-E36 product page.
