Field Devices

What are Field Devices?
By David Gill

 

Field devices are the products that connect any building automation system to its physical environment. They provide the system with the information and also the means to continually adjust building environment and safety conditions, making buildings more energy efficient, comfortable and safe for occupants. Field devices therefore represent a critical element in any building automation system, without which settings would remain constant regardless of changing conditions or user needs.

 

The products
Products categorized as field devices include: sensors to measure temperature, pressure and humidity; relays to control fans, pumps and motors; valves and actuators to regulate the flow of water through heating and cooling coils, or to regulate the flow of air into a building; and security devices to sense and/or control access to or from a building or area. If you think of the complete TAC system as a human body, while the building automation system itself can be likened to the brain or nerve center, field devices are like the system’s limbs. They have skin (sensors) to feel what is going on at the point of contact with the physical environment, and they have muscles (e.g. valves or actuators) with which to take action or make changes.

 

A long history
If field devices are such an essential part of any building automation system, why do they require a separate definition? The reasons for this are historic. Over the last 40 years, as the technology of control systems has developed from purely electromechanical to computer controlled and more recently to digital devices, companies have focused on different specialties. Those who have been around the longest (like IBS, with origins dating back to 1894 and the Barber-Colman Company) originally developed core competencies in electromechanical and electrical control products. Today, these devices are still required to complement even the most sophisticated digital control technology. What the merger between TAC and IBS does is bring the electromechanical devices, including strong brands such as Erie® and DuraDrive®, inside the TAC portfolio.

 

New Product Division
The term “field device” was chosen by TAC as a way of distinguishing these products from its “systems” products, i.e. those that are typically installed in a control panel. The new TAC product division is composed of three elements: TAC’s former Peripherals Business Unit, IBS’ PS3 (Partnership for Single Source Solutions) and the former IBS manufactured valve, actuator and sensor product lines. So we are using the name Field Device to describe quite a broad range of different products. What they all have in common is that they offer performance, value and uncompromised reliability.

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