The Edge: Broken Record

Netflix has a great documentary on The Last Man on the Moon. This came to my mind when listening to a great "Lighting and the Smart Building" panel at the DLC Stakeholder Meeting in St. Louis. The Edge was brought multiple times. Again. And then - almost nothing else. It was the example of a Smart Building a year ago. And three years ago...

It still seems there is no other Edge. Like Saturn-5/Apollo. The Edge has been the first smart building. And the last.

The reason is clear. While technically possible, the technologies that make The Edge are like those that allowed landing men on the Moon, and bringing them back. Out of reach for commercial implementations. We all know what needs to be done and how to do it. The challenge though is to make it all affordable.

Bluetooth mesh holds a great promise here. It is "just" a matter of putting it all together in a package that can land in any building, especially those that do not have extra budgets for fancy stuff.

The Apollo program proved possible what had been considered impossible. Southwest, Ryanair, Easyjet and other low cost airlines make flying (although not to the Moon yet...) accessible to billions of people, more affordable than ever, thanks to availability of B737s and A320s. Do we have a smart building equivalent of a workhorse jet airliner yet?