Frequently Asked Questions

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TEP connects tenants to their office air conditioning and building management team via a mobile app. When occupants make individual requests for warm or cold air based on their comfort needs using their smartphone or desktop, TEP activates a 10-minute stream of warm or cool air to the requested zone. TEP aggregates occupant request data and leverages machine learning to optimize building temperatures. TEP also includes useful features such as extending air-con operating hours, reporting building issues.

TEP is unique because it focuses on the occupant experience, rather than the engineers managing the building. Since temperature preference is very personal and constantly changing, TEP provides occupant with a simple app to provide feedback on their comfort level, whether they want to cool or warm their space. By doing so, we turn your HVAC system into a hyper-optimized climate control system that optimizes occupant comfort and operational efficiency.

Tenant applications typically focus on connecting occupants to the building management team or provide information and convenience on amenities such as products/services within or near the building. TEP is unique because we connect occupants like yourself to the building, by enabling you to control your thermal comfort for maximum satisfaction and productivity. This technically challenging solution enhances the tenant-landlord relationship and elevates further growth and service differentiation. Of course, you can choose to integrate TEP into your existing tenant application, if any.

Most thermal comfort issues are temporary – someone has just come inside on a hot day or has been standing in a cold lobby. TEP provides immediate but temporary relief for these without overcorrecting and causing comfort issues for others. Our machine learning algorithm learns users’ preferences and adjusts the temperatures to find the best balance. With a data log of all thermal requests, the system can alert admin to make physical corrections such as adjusting air vents or replace faulty temperature sensors to resolve otherwise hidden issues that are difficult to identify without data. In more extreme cases, where possible, administrators can re-arrange seating plans according to the temperature zone. For more info, please read our blog on Thermostat War.

TEP is designed for quick and easy deployment in commercial buildings equipped with Variable-Air-Volume (VAV) or Variable-Refrigerant-Volume (VRV) systems. If your building uses Fan Coil Unit (FCU), you may need to upgrade the existing thermostats to a connected version. Currently TEP does not support split-type or window-type air conditioning units.

Certainly! Our clients typically see between 5% – 20% saving on their HVAC energy costs. This saving comes from ensuring extra cooling/ heating is provided only on-demand instead of by default. This is why you often find offices too cold or too hot. TEP effectively matches the HVAC operations and local set points to real-time occupancy patterns, ensuring areas that are not occupied are not cool or heat unnecessarily.

Thermal preference is very personal and constantly changing. Office temperatures are difficult to regulate because it is affected by many factors including number of occupants, heat sources, proximity to windows, and amount of sunlight reaching those windows. People are therefore the best sensor for their perceived comfort. TEP improves comfort by enabling users an instant and precise control of the office temperature at the selected zones. You can learn more about how TEP increases occupant comfort in our whitepaper here.

No. With TEP, building managers do not have to deal with temperature-related complaints anymore. These comfort requests are now handled immediately and automatically by the system. This means the building management team no longer has to act as a middleman and can focus on resolving real issues only.

TEP is a consumer-facing application designed for building owners and managers to improve their tenants’ comfort and satisfaction while reducing HVAC operating costs. A smarter and more efficient building also helps to attract and retain quality tenants and improve NOI.

TEP is a SaaS solution where building owners pay an annual subscription fee based on the building gross floor area. A one-time setup/hardware fee may be applied depending on the complexity of the setup and integrations. There is no limit on the number of end-user licenses. Please contact sales@en-trak.com for more details.

Certainly. We can work with you to determine the best way to do this. Typically, we will integrate with your user authentication system, ensuring that your occupants can enjoy the benefits of TEP in one seamless experience.

Like TEP, En-trak Smart Office enables building occupants to control and personalize their office temperature via their smartphone. However, Smart Office also enables users to control their office lighting using the same application.

Smart Office enables authorised users to control and personalise their office lighting and air conditioning via their smartphone. Users send requests to turn ON/OFF their office lightings or adjust the temperature of air-conditioning. This instruction is sent to the cloud via En-trak platform, which in turns commands the office lighting and/or air-con wirelessly via the lighting controllers or connected thermostats respectively.

Smart Office works with most centrally-command air-con systems including VAV and VRV/VRF. For FCU-controlled air-con systems, we would need to replace the thermostat with a connected version. We currently do not support split-type or window-type air-con units. For the lighting control, we can either install new lighting controller (work with all types of lighting/brand) or integrate with your existing BACNet, Modbus, DALI or API lighting control system.

Smart Office is unique because we connect occupants to their building. Instead of relying on expensive to install and maintain sensors, we see people as the best sensor for their perceived comfort. You tell the system if you are feeling cold or warm, and the system will provide you with immediate relief with 10mins of warm/cool air. Our machine-learning algorithms will learn your preferences over time to optimize your comfort and operational efficiency.

Certainly! Our clients typically see between 5% – 20% saving on their HVAC energy costs and 25-40% on their lighting costs. These savings come in two ways. First, we ensure that extra cooling/heating is provided only on-demand instead of by default, reducing energy use even when the office is fully occupied. Second, we match HVAC and lighting operations to real-time occupancy patterns, down to individual workstations. This ensures that unoccupied areas are not cooled or lit up unnecessarily.

Thermal preference is very personal and constantly changing. Office temperatures are difficult to regulate because they are affected by many factors including number of occupants, heat sources, proximity to windows, and amount of sunlight reaching those windows. People are therefore the best sensor for their perceived comfort. Smart Office improves comfort by enabling users to control the temperature at their selected zones. You can learn more about how Smart Office increases occupant comfort in our whitepaper here.

No. With En-trak Smart Office, building managers do not have to deal directly with temperature- or lighting-related complaints anymore. These requests are now handled automatically by the system. Building managers no longer have to act as a middleman and can focus on resolving issues that require their unique knowledge.

En-trak Smart Office is a SaaS solution. You pay an annual subscription fee based on the building gross floor area (GFA). A one-time setup and/or hardware fee may be applied depending on the complexity of the setup and integrations. We do not charge based on the number of end-users. Please contact sales@en-trak.com for more details.

This is a real-time, interactive energy learning platform designed specifically for schools to empower students’ learning and awareness of their energy and sustainability topics. By capturing energy data and using engaging visualizations, it informs students on where, when and how their school energy is consumed.

We measure your energy use for different areas of the school in real-time and send that data to a cloud software platform where students can engage with and learn from it. This live, detailed and intuitive data turns your school buildings into laboratories, so students can practice STEM skills with real-life applications and make a sustainable impact in their school community.

Our software is designed specifically for schools, from students to teachers to administrators. A dedicated student page lets students explore energy use at their school, a simple widget plugin lets you showcase your commitment to parents, and many other features help to drive whole-school sustainability and STEM-learning initiatives. All the powerful features available in the Enterprise version are still included, but the educational and engagement element is what makes the data truly valuable for K-12 schools.

Students can learn how their action impacts our environment through the system and identify areas and ways to save energy by exploring the student-friendly energy data. This data is also used in mathematics and science lessons, or advanced topics such as data handling. Learn how other schools benefited from using En-trak.

Schools typically measure individual block or floor energy use, often split into air conditioning energy use vs. lights, sockets and others. Some schools may choose to measure energy consumption classroom by classroom, but this will require more hardware and installation. Our consultant can help propose the best solution for your school to meet your objectives and budget.

Yes, you can. Your school IT coordinator can easily embed our provided system code into your intranet. We will provide you the API for feeding live data to your school’s homepage.

Yes. Students and teachers can access the cloud-based platform anytime, anywhere, from any web-enabled device. This increases flexibility in teaching and learning.

Yes. Students and teachers are given different access rights. Students can view and download data but cannot change the settings such as alerts, which are managed by administrators.

Yes. We have a beautifully designed dashboard that is perfect for public display at your lobby TV to showcase your school’s efforts.

Energy exists in many forms. Electricity (kWh) is one; food (calories) is another. We pioneered the concept of translating electricity into food and other units to engage students and teachers to better visualize and understand energy.

Energy for Schools is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution. Your school will pay an annual subscription fee based on the amount of data processed by the system. A one-time setup and/or hardware fee may be applied depending on the complexity of the setup and integrations. We do not charge based on the number of end-users. Please contact sales@en-trak.com for more details.

En-trak works with all standard browsers, including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer 10+.

Yes, and you have two options for network connection. You can choose to have a direct LAN connection which is also most commonly preferred by schools as it provides the most stable connection. Alternatively, you can choose to use 4G data card. This does incur some additional on-going cost. We recommend this only for special situations.

Our solution connects to your existing controls system (e.g. BMS, VRV controls, etc.) or to our connected fan coil thermostats via our Smart Office Hub. Administrators (usually building management) set operating schedules and default temperature set points through our interface.
Occupants can then submit requests for cooler or warmer temperatures in their designated areas, which our algorithms will translate into controls commands that will immediately satisfy the occupant while maintaining system efficiency and stable operations. The system may also be configured to accept air conditioning requests from 3rd party systems like room booking systems or access control systems (e.g. automatic extra cooling upon entry from outside, pre-cooling before meetings, etc.). At no point can occupants directly change any set points or other settings – they may simply request cooler or warmer temperatures.

In most cases, you will need to connect our Master Hub to your BMS or VRV control panel. This gateway device is no bigger than a tissue box and can be configured remotely. In some cases, you may need to upgrade your offline thermostats to connected versions, which we can provide and deploy. With this one-time upgrade of thermostats, you will now have centralized control over your building A/C system for more efficient building performance.

No. TEP only sends commands to the terminal units (VAV boxes, fan coil units, or VRV indoor units). It does not touch the chiller plant or AHU at any time. For systems where AHUs or RTUs serve terminal units downstream, we will typically read-only a status point to determine that the building is “on”. This could be airflow, supply fan status, etc. Again, we do not write to this point at the AHU equipment level, except in specific and rare circumstances, which are always agreed with the customer in advance.

Yes. Your building service engineer can adjust the default upper and lower limits to suit your requirement. Just remember that the setpoint temperature may not be the actual temperature felt by occupants, so we will need to give them some wiggle room to find their comfort zone.

In most cases, there wouldn’t be any issue. This is because TEP does not alter or modify any of the HVAC equipment such as chiller plants, cooling towers etc. It simply connects to the BMS via the standard BACNET communication port to write to the occupied cooling/ heating setpoints every 20mins and immediately after users’ requests for 10mins.

During the setup process, your administrator will assign your colleagues to their corresponding air conditioning units or vents based on their seating location. You will then be able to request temperature adjustments for your assigned area(s).

The system works by connecting your existing lighting control system or the wireless lighting controllers to the cloud using our Smart Office Hub. You can then create different user groups, set different operating schedules and assign users to their corresponding lights using the admin portal. Users can then submit requests to control and personalize their office lighting using their smartphone or desktop. You can also integrate and sync the lighting control with your meeting room booking or access control system for seamless experience.

It depends! If you already have a BACNet, Modbus, DALI or API lighting control system, we simply connect our Smart Building Gateway to your existing control box or server. In other cases, we will need to deploy wireless lighting controllers to make your lights remotely controllable. We can supply and install these controllers for you.

Each controller is installed for a single light or lighting circuit. This controller can turn on/off those lights and is managed by our Smart Building Gateway using Zigbee wireless technology. This gateway ensures each controller follows the pre-set schedule, user requests or any other commands from your room booking or access control system. You can easily re-group and/or re-zone any lights independent from the existing wiring for ultimate control, flexibility and energy saving.

No, they won’t. En-trak Smart Lighting controllers operate with extremely low power consumption of about 0.02mA, which equates to just $0.052 per year.

No, it won’t. The ZigBee wireless network operates independently from networks such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth by automatically avoiding the same channels. For added peace of mind, our controllers are all TUV-certified for electromagnetic interference in accordance with EN 301489, 55015, 61547 and 61000 standards.

En-trak Smart Lighting adopts the proven ZigBee security architecture which includes AES-128 data encryption, authentication and integrity which has been classified by the US National Security Agency (NSA) as appropriate for protection of secret information. Learn more about our Security Protocol here.

If your office network is down, each controller will maintain the last recorded status for each light, whether on or off. Once the network reconnects, the gateway will update all statuses automatically. You can resume manual control of the lights anytime.

Should this unlikely event happen, the controller(s) will default to the ON position, regardless of their original status. The controller should automatically reconnect within a few minutes. Again, you can always override the system by using your original wall switch to regain control anytime.

All our supplied hardware is protected by our comprehensive two-year warranty.

No. Once you are subscribed to the system, you can invite any number of users without additional licenses.

Similar to our A/C control, your administrator will assign individual staff to their corresponding lights based on their seating location using drag and drop. Individual staff can then control their assigned lights based on these settings.

En-trak Real-time Energy Management is an advanced analytics platform designed to give you insights into your energy performance. We do so by integrating energy data from your Building Management System (BMS) or from existing Modbus or BACNet power meters. The system then uses your data to build models of building energy performance, so we can determine what is (and isn’t) normal in your building.

It depends. In most cases, we simply need to connect our Smart Building Gateway to your BMS to extract the required data. This device is smaller than a tissue box, is remotely configurable and can connect to all major BMS brands/models. In some cases where BMS is not available or if data is incomplete, you may need to install new power meters. En-trak Energy is hardware-agnostic and can easily integrate data from most major BMS and energy meters in the market You can choose to purchase and install any compatible power meters hardware in the market.

Yes, we can. Our smart power meters are multi-channel which can monitor up to 15 single-phase circuits (or 5x three-phase). This is very cost effective for measuring multiple data points. It also includes an integrated data logger that can store data onboard for up to 365 days. This ensures you will not lose any data high data integrity in the event of any network failure.

The metering equipment is typically installed inside your switch room or electrical panel. Our project manager will advise you about the optimal set-up during the site check.

Installation is non-invasive. It will not affect your normal business activities. A typical installation for a single office floor takes between 2 to 5 hours. If necessary, we can also arrange for after-office and/or weekend installation.

There are two options for network connection. Direct LAN is the most common and stable connection method. Most customers choose to have a dedicated LAN cable for this reason. Alternatively, you can choose to use 4G data cards. As this may incur additional on-going costs, we only recommend this for special situations.

No worries. If the meters are disconnected from the network, they can store data for up to 365 days, ensuring that you have plenty of time to resolve the issue without facing any data loss.

No. En-trak Energy provides a continuous, real-time view of your energy use, with powerful features such as reports, trends, alerts and benchmarking across your portfolio to help you manage and optimize energy spending. Energy audits, on the other hand, give you a one-off snapshot of your energy consumption.

The savings depend on your existing situation and the actions you take after you know what, when and how you are spending your energy dollars. Our clients typically identify between 10-35% of savings within 12-24 months. You can learn more about how others have benefited from using En-trak Energy here.

No. En-trak Energy is a cloud-based solution. There is no software to install and/or maintain.

En-trak Energy is internationally scalable, equipped with market-leading support and references across Asia-Pacific. You can easily expand the system to multiple locations to suit your business needs.

No. As long as you are subscribed to our service, you can invite any number of users without additional licenses and all software updates and upgrades are free of charge.

Yes, customizations such as dashboard theme design and data units are available upon request.

All our supplied hardware is protected by our comprehensive two-year warranty.

En-trak is committed to playing an open and cooperative role in the smart building ecosystem. We welcome any opportunity to build value through external integrations. As a software-centric company, we have no interest in encouraging you to replace existing systems or hardware with our proprietary models. We want to build on what you have to leverage its value.

We typically integrate with below major types of building systems and solutions. Please contact sales@en-trak.com if you like to know more about integrating your existing solution to our platform.

  • BMS – extract data for advanced analysis and visualizations
  • Access Control Systems – control lights/aircon based on occupant activity
  • Room Booking Systems – sync lights/aircon with your schedules
  • Lighting Controls – enhance existing controls by connecting them to the cloud
  • A/C Controls – enhance existing controls by connecting them to the cloud
  • Other Data Monitoring Systems – collect extra data like foot traffic for more advanced analysis of your energy use

No. We have already built open APIs and SDKs to facilitate integration with most systems. However, in some cases, your existing system may require some minor upgrade to provide an external communications option. In these cases, we recommend you work with your vendor directly.

We map each Modbus or BACNet meter and its relevant registers (usually kWh and kVA) to our Smart Building Gateway, which is connected to both the BMS and our cloud servers. The gateway collects this data in real-time (1-15-minute intervals) and transmits it to our servers for processing.

We provide your access control vendor with a simple API and a short bit of code they can deploy on their system to send lighting/aircon commands when someone enters or exits the office or building. Contact sales@en-trak.com for more details.

We integrate with core systems like Outlook and Google, and other popular meeting room booking systems such as Condeco and Evoko via API. Whenever a user books the meeting room, En-trak will pre-cool and light up the room based on the duration, user preference, number of participants and weather condition. When there is a change to the room status, an instruction will be triggered to En-trak to immediately update the lighting/aircon schedules.

Depending on what existing lighting controls systems you may have, we can either integrate through API if you already have an existing lighting control software, or via BACNet or DALI control if available. Contact sales@en-trak.com to see if your existing lighting system can be integrated.

In VAV cases, we map each VAV box to our Smart Building Gateway using standard BACNet. No chillers or water-side equipment are connected in this process. In VRV/VRF cases, we connect to your existing controls panel and map each indoor device to our Smart Building Gateway. In both cases, the Smart Building Gateway serves as an on-site hub connecting our cloud software to your existing on-site controls.

Yes! We are fully committed to providing an open and responsive system that enables creative smart office/building projects. Click here to find our API documentation
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