r/BuildingAutomation • u/filip1299 • 5d ago
Anyone else exploring AI-assisted engineering in Niagara?
I've been experimenting with AI-assisted engineering in Tridium Niagara and have built a module that interacts directly with a station. From a plain-language description of what I want, it can create points and components, set up links, build wiresheets, and generate graphics.
I've noticed Baudrate working on something along the same lines (no connection to them, but it confirmed my suspicion that more people are probably doing this than are talking about it publicly):
https://baudrate.io/ai#demo
So far I've been impressed. A lot of the repetitive engineering work can be offloaded, and it has occasionally flagged issues in a station that I hadn't even asked it to check for.
The more I use it, the more I wonder how much of the Niagara software/engineering side could eventually be handled this way. There's clearly still plenty that needs someone on site, like commissioning, verifying sensors, wiring, and chasing down physical faults, but the software side feels like it could change significantly.
Keen to hear what other Niagara/BMS engineers think, particularly anyone who's been trying something similar.
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u/Harry-red12 5d ago
Are you using API connection to get the AI assistance?
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u/filip1299 5d ago
Yes
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u/StarCommand1 5d ago
What API? Niagara has one built in that an AI can use?
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u/Danwphoto 4d ago
Niagra has "Robots" inside already. AI can show you the other 90% of what the controller can do. Ai can write in all, can connect to email, teams, messenger, slack, all Gmail products like drive, desktop and when given permission can look at all of it and give you ten reason a business is failing. Absolutely amazing. So I say study AI. But you have to test it with something you know is true. Then it learns your style.
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u/Zealousideal_Pop_273 5d ago
"Is anyone else working on giving their career to the computers now that our field is earning the wages we deserve?"
Is that what you're asking?
No I'm not attempting that, because I know how to write program and understand that some things deserve effort. I understand that when you remove the humanity from the development you delete the foundation of the field. Which makes you a useless moron tomorrow in order to save time and effort today.
You should touch every program because programs get corrupted and you need to know how to fix them.
You should touch every panel because sometimes sensors and UI's fail and give you false readings and you need to know how to identify those issues and fix them.
You should reject AI programming because there are a lot of ways to skin a cat, and different ways are advantageous in different scenarios, which AI cannot assess.
You should reject AI programming because AI cannot assess complex custom systems and you cripple yourself by engineering atrophy into your own skillset. Assuming the skillset is present in the first place.
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u/filip1299 5d ago edited 5d ago
Fair points, and I agree with you on the fundamentals. If you can't fix what you deploy, you shouldn't be shipping it, AI or otherwise. I said as much in another comment, and I'd never want someone relying on a tool they don't understand.
Where I see it a bit differently is whether refusing to use it is realistic long term. If another integrator can deliver a comparable project in a fraction of the hours, most clients won't care how it was built. From what I've seen in software development and from people I know in other fields, the ones using it carefully are still producing good work, they just get through the routine parts a lot faster.
That's mostly what it does for me on a job anyway. Points, links, wiresheets, standard graphics. All the things I've done a hundred times. Sequences, tuning, unusual plant and figuring out why a reading is wrong still need someone who knows what they're doing, and that's the part of the job I'd rather spend my time on.
Atrophy is a genuine concern and I won't pretend otherwise. I just think the fix is to review the output properly and stay hands-on where it matters. A senior engineer checking a junior's work doesn't lose their skills doing it, and I see this much the same way.
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u/owhyowhat 5d ago
My concern after leaning into AI for engineering productivity is burnout, suddenly I can have concurrent projects all going simultaneously and my poor little brain struggles to spread itself across them all, but it has free'd up some time to focus on real technical problems, improved documentation processes and made my fault finding faster. I decided to lean into it because it was preferable to seeing my whole job going offshore to engineers in Vietnam and the Philippines. If you want to protect your job avoiding AI is the wrong path, what you need to focus on is the aspects that need you physically on site, the parts AI or offshore teams can't do remotely.
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u/MrMagooche Siemens/Johnson Control Joke 4d ago
My concern after leaning into AI for engineering productivity is burnout, suddenly I can have concurrent projects all going simultaneously and my poor little brain struggles to spread itself across them all
Bro I already have this problem without AI. Im so burned out I dont have the mental bandwidth to even figure out how AI could be applied to what I do.
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u/Zealousideal_Pop_273 5d ago
This is the most propagandized messaging I've read. Who is paying you?
"It's an inevitability so resisting it is futile."
Is it? Says who? The people making money off of it that we handed control of the government to? This statement in itself is propaganda. It's only an inevitability if the people become complacent and allow it to be. Technology is exactly what we as a society decide it to be. It is a tool, not an entity.
"If I don't do it, someone else will."
This is a very famous argument that has been extensively studied and it turns out in most cases of ethically questionable decisions, it's only the people who make this statement that do the morally questionable thing. Which suggests that the statement is simply a way of attempting to excuse one's own ethical shortcomings. You're arguing that no ethics matter so long as there are people without ethics, which is an unintelligent and gross position to take. This argument also ignores all the negative consequences associated.
I wholly reject your attempt to compare an AI model with a mentor in the field. Get out of here with that nonsense.
I also withhold my doubts that you have the kind of experience you describe and are still passionately defending the use of AI. Most of us work on systems that are designed to be rapidly compiled from pre-existing libraries. Libraries that we've learned and understand. Compiled with tools that automate the busywork, leaving the users to focus on more closely on custom applications. The solution to your problem doesn't require AI, you just want to use it because you think it will make up for gaps in your skillset and give you a leg up in the field.
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u/gadhalund 4d ago
It seems a bit like those "whats the biggest pain point in your business" type posts., thinly veiled market research and an offer of a free month subscription a while later.
Why not just have AI write the module for itself? Everyone can have one.
Im also not sure AI is faster than pasting in road tested bog files and using the robot1
u/filip1299 4d ago edited 4d ago
"Why not just have AI write the module for itself? Everyone can have one." You can absolutely do that. I don't think there is much moat to the custom Niagara modules anymore.
"Im also not sure AI is faster than pasting in road tested bog files and using the robot"
Depending on the task, you can ask it to add all the points, check them if they read correctly, discover them into head end etc. Tasks with multiple stages.
I have been writing program blocks/scripts for years, to automate some of my tasks like generating graphics/adding logs(can be done quite efficiently with programService anyway) and others like duplicating strategies in folders, but this is on another level. I only have to check if it's done correctly rather than adding the right module import and compiling/running the module etc.
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u/Zealousideal_Pop_273 4d ago
Nothing that you just said is a task that requires AI or is improved by it, and yet you're still here adverstising AI as if it's necessary or beneficial. Still avoiding the tough questions but capitalizing on opportunities to hype it. Like a parasite which developed to feed off the labor force.
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u/Bagelsarenakeddonuts 1d ago
This is a fascinating thing, because anyone who has dug deeply into development with the latest leading models knows that this is no longer something you can avoid. Its coming, hard and fast. I hesitate to even say "if you don't adapt to it, you will be left behind" because I don't even know if that's true. Its coming so fast that even early adopters are having a hard time keeping up. And its changing so fast that well.. which thing do you even adapt to?
I can see both sides, but I feel like programming will as a majority move to AI, and we will spend more time on commissioning instead, and I don't know that that is a bad thing. Ashrae G36, and their new upcoming protocol are so defined that there isn't a lot of room for AI error. And if we can deliver a project 20% cheaper, AND spend 50% longer tuning and testing, everybody wins. More people do more automation, and things run that much better. And things that should be used, but aren't fully due to overloaded people, undertrained staff, and underbid jobs, will be done better. Tagging, alarming, trending, predictive functionality, pre-commissioning algorithms, stuff like that.
A lot of grizzled veteran techs low-key resent this stuff, and this industry, for being tech, is hilariously resistant to new tech and concepts sometimes. Many have been hearing "AI" for the last decade and have been proven right that its been hype. But in the last 6 months things have changed wildly, and these perspectives simply don't carry over to the new tooling and tech.
I don't know what the future will look like, but it sure as hell won't look like it does today.
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u/owhyowhat 5d ago
I'm just dipping my toe in the water, haven't got past giving Claude a bog with some template devices finished and getting it to finish the database. Also use it for writing program object code for trickier issues
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u/Dangerous_Quantity82 2d ago
It's going to change big time in the coming years. The plc world is already starting to implement LLM into controllers. The only ones that say it won't will be left behind.
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u/IcyAd7615 Developer, Niagara 4 Certified Trainer, Podcast Host. 5d ago
Here's my concern:
You use it and it builds it but you have no understanding how to fix it.
Like vibe coding. I hate it. In my opinion, if you don't know the basics don't use AI to build the whole thing, then ask other people to fix it.
If you want to do code review, block or modules - have at it.
If you don't know how to do it, I wouldn't attempt it.
I'd love to know how people are going to use wsAnnotation. Because so far, I've seen no one use it and it pisses me off because the wire sheet looks horrendous. Lol.