A Commissioned BMS That Cannot See the Air Conditioning
Chillers, AHUs and FCUs usually arrive BACnet-ready. Split, DX and VRF systems generally do not. Each manufacturer runs a proprietary bus between the outdoor unit and its indoor units, and that bus is not a protocol any head-end speaks. So the units sit outside the BMS: no schedule, no setpoint limit, no alarm, no runtime history. In a retail floor, a hotel or an office fit-out that is often the largest single block of uncontrolled energy in the building.
The fix is a protocol gateway. It terminates on the manufacturer bus, reads every indoor unit, and republishes them as standard BACnet or Modbus objects. From the head-end they then look like any other piece of plant.
Our position is the same as everywhere else on this site: Intellicon is the controls and integration layer, not an air conditioning supplier. Your units stay; we make them visible.
What You Get Per Unit
Protocol gateway on the AC bus
CoolMaster Pro, Intesis or Aidoo Pro sitting on the manufacturer bus and republishing every indoor unit as BACnet or Modbus objects.
Per-unit state and setpoint
On/off, mode, setpoint, room temperature, fan speed and louvre position, unit by unit, on the same graphics as the rest of the plant.
Manufacturer fault codes
Native error codes surfaced as BMS alarms, so a fault is diagnosed before an engineer is sent rather than after.
Scheduling and setpoint limiting
Occupancy schedules and enforced setpoint bands, which is where most of the energy saving on a DX estate actually comes from.
Runtime and filter trending
Compressor and fan runtime accumulated per unit, with filter-dirty status trended for planned rather than reactive maintenance.
High-accuracy sensing
BAPI and Greystone temperature and humidity sensors where tolerance matters — data halls, clean rooms and controlled storage.
CoolMaster Pro, Intesis and Aidoo Pro
CoolAutomation CoolMaster Pro is the workhorse for larger mixed estates. It integrates up to 255 VRF/VRV indoor units, speaks Modbus RTU and IP, BACnet MS/TP and IP, and KNX, and supports the major AC brands natively — so a building running two or three different manufacturers does not need a different integration device and a different points strategy for each.
Intesis gateways from HMS Networks cover an unusually wide catalogue of specific manufacturer-to-protocol combinations. Where a site has an older or less common unit range, Intesis often has the one device that talks to it.
Airzone Aidoo Pro fits smaller inverter and VRF installations, and also covers air-to-water and ventilation units. It integrates over Modbus RTU/TCP and BACnet MS/TP or IP, which makes it a clean choice for a fit-out with a modest unit count where a full estate gateway would be oversized.
We are not tied to any of the three. The selection follows unit count, the brands actually installed, and whether you need full control or monitoring only — which a site survey establishes before we quote. See BACnet & Modbus integration for how these land on an existing head-end.
High-Accuracy Sensing: BAPI and Greystone
A standard room sensor is fine for an office. It is not fine for a data hall, a clean room, a pharmacy store or a calibration lab, where the tolerance band is narrow enough that sensor error eats most of it. For those we supply and integrate BAPI and Greystone instrumentation.
BAPI humidity transmitters are available in 2% and 3% RH accuracy classes, and the manufacturer lists data centres, hospitals and clean rooms among its target applications. Greystone's high-accuracy temperature and humidity ranges — the HANTRC and HASPC series among them — transmit natively over BACnet and Modbus, so they join the same network as the rest of the BMS instead of requiring analogue inputs, dedicated cabling and a spare controller channel each.
In a data hall this pairs directly with data centre BMS and DCIM integration and, at higher rack densities, with liquid cooling controls.
Standby Power, and Where Solar Fits
Cooling is only half of a data centre's availability story. We monitor and control the electrical side alongside it: generator and UPS status, transfer events, duty/standby rotation, power quality, and alarm handling — integrated with custom transformers and voltage stabilisers where the supply warrants them.
Where a client also wants solar generation for running cost or ESG reporting, that sits outside our scope and we introduce them to Harutto Solar, a Dubai solar EPC contractor we work alongside. Worth being plain about the engineering: in a data centre solar offsets running cost and carbon — it does not replace the standby generator, which remains the availability backstop.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why can a BMS not see DX and VRF units by default?
Because most DX and VRF manufacturers use their own proprietary bus between the outdoor unit and its indoor units. That bus is not BACnet or Modbus, so a head-end has nothing to read. The practical result is that a building can have a fully commissioned BMS and still have dozens of air conditioning units that nobody can see, schedule or alarm on. A protocol gateway sits on the manufacturer bus and republishes the data as BACnet or Modbus objects the BMS already understands.
Which gateways does Intellicon deploy?
Three, chosen per site rather than by preference. CoolAutomation CoolMaster Pro handles large mixed estates — it integrates up to 255 VRF/VRV indoor units and speaks Modbus RTU and IP, BACnet MS/TP and IP, and KNX, with native support across the major AC brands. Intesis gateways from HMS Networks cover a very wide catalogue of individual manufacturer-to-protocol combinations. Airzone Aidoo Pro suits smaller inverter and VRF installations and also covers air-to-water and ventilation units, over Modbus RTU/TCP and BACnet MS/TP or IP. Which one fits depends on unit count, the brands on site and whether you need per-unit control or monitoring only.
What can you actually see and control once the gateway is in?
Per indoor unit: on/off state, operating mode, setpoint, room temperature, fan speed, louvre position where supported, filter-dirty status, and manufacturer fault codes. On top of that the BMS can apply scheduling, setpoint limiting so tenants cannot run a room at 16 degrees all afternoon, occupancy interlocks, and runtime accumulation per unit for maintenance planning. The fault codes matter most in practice: they turn a tenant complaint into a diagnosis before an engineer is dispatched.
Do you have to replace the existing air conditioning?
No, and that is usually the point. The gateway connects to the existing manufacturer bus, so the indoor and outdoor units, refrigerant pipework and wall controllers all stay exactly as they are. The work is typically a day or two per system: mount the gateway, terminate onto the AC bus and the BMS network, address the units, and commission the points. What is possible does depend on the specific model range — a site survey confirms which units expose a bus before we quote.
What sensors do you use where accuracy matters?
For data halls, clean rooms, pharmacy storage and similar, we supply and integrate BAPI and Greystone sensors. BAPI humidity transmitters are available in 2% and 3% RH accuracy classes and the manufacturer lists data centres among its target applications. Greystone high-accuracy temperature and humidity series such as the HANTRC and HASPC transmit natively over BACnet and Modbus, so they land on the same network as the rest of the BMS rather than needing analogue inputs and separate wiring.
A data centre needs standby power as well as cooling. Do you cover that?
We cover the monitoring and controls layer — generator and UPS status, transfer events, power quality, duty/standby rotation and alarm handling — and we integrate transformers and voltage stabilisers for the electrical side. Where a site also wants solar generation as part of its resilience or ESG strategy, that is outside our scope and we introduce the client to Harutto Solar, a Dubai solar EPC contractor we work alongside. Solar is not a replacement for a standby generator in a data centre; it offsets running cost and carbon while the generator remains the availability backstop.
Air Conditioning You Cannot See From the BMS?
Tell us the unit brands and roughly how many. We will confirm which gateway fits and what points you would get.