BTM Controls is an innovative designer of specialty controls components. Our first complete BAS controller — the BTM-K1 — goes head-to-head with the Tridium JACE 9000 and Distech ECLYPSE APEX at a fraction of the price.
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A supervisory controller, unitary controller, vision-AI edge device, and wireless gateway — in one DIN-rail box. No per-point licensing. No vendor lock-in. Linux platform.
Industrial TI Sitara-class quad Cortex-A53 @ 1.4GHz with a dedicated real-time M4F core and 1GB DDR4 — JACE 9000-class horsepower on a Debian Linux platform.
Dedicated NPU co-processor with camera input runs person detection — waking the display when a tech steps up — plus points-list and programming-document scanning: show the K1 your submittal schedule and it reads the points for setup. All at the edge, fully offline, no cloud. No competitor ships this.
Integrated color touchscreen shows live points, alarms, and trends right at the panel — plus a full HTML5 web UI and phone-based commissioning hotspot.
4 universal inputs (0-10V / 4-20mA / 10K thermistor / dry contact / pulse), 2 analog outputs, 4 relays, 4 triacs — 14 points, miswire-protected. Enough to run a packaged RTU standalone. The base JACE ships with zero on-board I/O.
BACnet/IP & MS/TP, Modbus RTU/TCP, CAN-FD, MQTT, 1-Wire, Zigbee/Thread/Matter, BLE 5.3, WiFi 6, and private US915 LoRaWAN — plus dual Gigabit Ethernet with daisy-chaining.
The K1 is the site’s private US915 LoRaWAN gateway, network supervisor, and protocol translator. Its multichannel SX1302-class concentrator connects long-range BTM field controllers without putting every device on the customer’s WiFi or IP network. ChirpStack, device enrollment, RF health, alarms, and BACnet/MQTT translation stay local.
24VAC/DC panel power, isolated RS-485 field bus, surge & miswire protection on every terminal, power-fail safe shutdown, hardware secure element.
Integrated maintenance-free supercapacitor backup with intelligent load shedding, graceful shutdown, and outage reporting — the K1 tells you the power failed instead of just going dark. Hardware soft-shutdown is built into the circuit itself, so power-down is always clean — even if software hangs. No competitor controller ships battery-free ride-through as standard.
Neural-network Model Predictive Control learns your building's thermal inertia and optimizes against real-time grid pricing — pre-cooling when power is cheap, coasting through the peak. Reactive PID controllers can't do this. See how it pays for itself →
Push-to-talk voice assistant at the panel. A tech presses the button, asks "why did the fan lock out?" — and the K1 answers on its own screen, from its own data, fully offline. An embedded language model, no cloud, no account, no subscription.
One alarm cascade, forty alarms — one button. On-board AI reads the K1's own trend history and tells you which alarm is the root cause and which are just consequences. Grounded in your data, not internet guesses.
Predictive machine-health algorithms in the core runtime. The K1 baselines what it already measures — cycle counts, run hours, temperatures, filter DP — plus inexpensive vibration sensors on its inputs, then flags bearing wear, imbalance, and short-cycling as alarm points before failure. The $5,000 vibration-monitoring system is the included standard integration with K1 with everything included except readily available vibration sensors.
One rule is wired into the K1's architecture: the AI never touches an output. Intelligence reads, explains, and proposes — but every physical write goes through the standard BACnet priority array, executed by a dedicated real-time core that doesn't take suggestions. You get the insight of AI with the determinism your AHJ, your insurer, and your 2 AM callback all demand.
K1's update architecture uses an authenticated HTTPS channel, a per-controller security token, and SHA-256 package-integrity verification. Hardware architecture includes secure-element key storage. Core control remains local and can operate without cloud access, while AI is read/advisory only: every physical write stays behind the deterministic control path and standard BACnet priority handling. For deployment, K1 is intended for a dedicated BAS/OT VLAN with firewall rules limited to approved management, update, and integration hosts.
With 4 universal inputs, 2 analog outputs, 4 relays, and 4 triacs on-board, the BTM-K1 directly handles a surprising percentage of small mechanical systems — no expansion module, no second enclosure, no extra bus. A complete packaged rooftop unit fits inside the K1's own terminals:
Fan status, supply-air, mixed-air, and filter DP on the inputs. Fan enable, two cooling stages, and heat on the relays. OA damper, heating valve, cooling valve, and an auxiliary actuator on the triacs — a very capable standalone controller before you ever add a BTM-IO module.
| Packaged RTU — point-for-point on one K1 | |
|---|---|
| UI 1 | Fan status |
| UI 2 | Supply-air temp |
| UI 3 | Mixed-air temp |
| UI 4 | Filter DP |
| Relay 1 | Fan enable |
| Relay 2 | Cooling stage 1 |
| Relay 3 | Cooling stage 2 |
| Relay 4 | Heat enable |
| Triac 1 | Outside-air damper |
| Triac 2 | Heating valve |
| Triac 3 | Cooling valve |
| Triac 4 | Auxiliary actuator |
The K1's on-board CAN-FD / J1939 port connects directly to equipment ECUs — emergency generators, engines, chillers, VFDs — over a single pair of wires. No protocol gateway, no extra box, no integrator markup.
Wire the K1 to a generator's engine controller and it reads RPM, oil pressure, coolant temp, fuel level, battery voltage, engine hours, load, and active fault codes — then exposes every point upstream as BACnet/IP, BACnet MS/TP, Modbus TCP, MQTT, and the K1 web interface. The K1 becomes the protocol translator. A dedicated J1939-to-BACnet gateway alone runs $800–$1,500 — the K1 has it built in.
| Emergency generator — direct over CAN/J1939 | |
|---|---|
| RPM | Generator engine speed |
| PSI | Oil pressure |
| °F | Coolant temperature |
| VDC | Battery voltage |
| % | Fuel level |
| HRS | Engine hours |
| kW | Generator load |
| DTC | Active faults & diagnostic codes |
| → served upstream as BACnet/IP · MS/TP · Modbus TCP · MQTT · Web UI | |
Remote I/O that cuts the wire. BTM-IO modules connect directly to the BTM-K1 over private US915 LoRaWAN, WiFi 6, Ethernet, or isolated RS-485. The K1 supervises the private long-range network while each field controller retains its own deterministic control, safeties, last commands, and fallback program.
Every BTM-IO is a private US915 LoRaWAN Class C field controller with an external antenna path for metal panels. It sends telemetry and receives supervised commands through the K1 gateway, while Ethernet, WiFi 6, and isolated RS-485 provide additional installation paths.
On-board flash stores the last valid commands and a fallback program. Lose connectivity and outputs hold or fail to configured safe states, inputs keep logging, and everything syncs when the K1 reconnects. BTM PowerGuard™ supercap backup adds intelligent load shedding, graceful shutdown, and outage reporting on power loss.
24VAC/DC panel power, miswire-proof universal inputs, isolated RS-485, 5A relays, and phone-based commissioning over Bluetooth. Same universal input flexibility as the K1 — 0-10V, 4-20mA, 10K thermistor, dry contact, pulse.
BTM-IO modules are designed around MQTT over TLS with hardware secure-element storage for device keys, commissioning that does not require an exposed cloud service, and only the services needed for the selected BAS integration. Modules are intended for segmented BAS/OT networks with least-privilege firewall rules. If communications are interrupted, configured hold-last or safe-state behavior remains local to the module rather than depending on the network.
BTM-IO security controls are part of the product design and remain subject to production firmware, interoperability, and penetration validation.
BTM-IO family is in design. Specifications and pricing published at launch.
Four precision analog inputs, two protected digital inputs, two dry-contact relay outputs, Ethernet/PoE, 9–36 VDC auxiliary power, Wi-Fi 6, private US915 LoRaWAN, and a fully local dashboard in a compact field controller. The quarter shows the actual scale.
Built for telemetry, metering, retrofit sensing, equipment status, remote point collection, and two supervised dry-contact outputs. Deterministic firmware owns physical output behavior; network commands pass through the controller’s authorization and safety path.
Four precision analog channels plus two digital/contact/pulse channels and two supervised dry-contact relay outputs. The production Rev-A front end adds field protection, scaling, burden resistors, comparators, and a 16-bit ADS1119 ADC.
Private US915 LoRaWAN carries metering, alarms, point updates, and acknowledged supervisory commands directly between the MICRO-8 and the K1 gateway. The field device has no direct route into the customer’s corporate IP network.
WPA2-protected setup access point, authenticated HTTPS dashboard, persistent point names and modes, minimal health endpoint, mDNS discovery, secured configuration API, and signed local firmware updates. No cloud account is required.
Authenticated HTTPS dashboard and REST/JSON, MQTT 3.1.1 telemetry, Modbus TCP register reads, and BACnet/IP Who-Is/I-Am discovery response over the local network.
1-Wire for temperature and identification sensors, plus short-distance I²C for the precision ADC and local expansion devices.
ESP32-C6-WROOM-1U-N8 with a certified-module RF path and approved external antenna—better suited to metal control panels than a hidden PCB antenna.
The current prototype firmware has working network services; serial and sensor buses require the production Rev-A hardware.
HTTPS DASHBOARDAUTHENTICATED REST / JSONmDNSMQTT 3.1.1MODBUS TCP FC03BACNET/IP DISCOVERYSIGNED DUAL-OTAWPA2 SETUP APTHREADZIGBEEMATTERBLUETOOTH LEMODBUS RTU*BACNET MS/TP*1-WIRE*I²C** Production-hardware interface. BACnet/IP currently provides Who-Is/I-Am discovery response; full B-ASC conformance is not claimed. Thread, Zigbee, Matter, and Bluetooth Low Energy are MICRO-8 wireless capabilities.
MICRO-8 prototype security has been exercised on the physical ESP32-C6: unique per-device WPA2 setup credentials, an authenticated HTTPS dashboard and API on port 443, and cleartext HTTP limited to a minimal health response with management redirected to HTTPS. Modbus TCP and BACnet/IP listeners are disabled until explicitly enabled. Firmware updates require local physical presence, a five-minute maintenance window, and a valid ECDSA P-256/SHA-256 signature before the inactive OTA image can be selected for boot. The controller operates locally without a cloud account.
Production deployment should use a dedicated BAS/IoT VLAN, least-privilege firewall rules, unique device certificates, and protected offline release-signing keys. Formal penetration and production-hardware validation remain pre-release requirements.
Open the MICRO-8 from a phone or laptop to see all eight points, network health, firmware identity, and protocol status. Rename points, configure Wi-Fi and MQTT, inspect diagnostics, and upload firmware locally.
Dashboard shown from firmware 0.2.2-poc with clearly identified representative prototype values.
BTM-MICRO-8 combines protected mixed I/O, wired and wireless networking, local commissioning, and deterministic field control in one compact controller.
Every feature below is part of the BTM-K1 platform design. Final production specifications published at launch.
Every competitor controller reacts. A PID loop sees the space is hot, then starts cooling — after the peak-price meter is already spinning. The BTM-K1 thinks ahead.
The K1's quad-core engine runs Model Predictive Control (MPC): it learns your building's actual thermal inertia from its own trend data, then simulates hundreds of control strategies against tomorrow's real-time electricity price curve — ERCOT hourly pricing first, the most volatile grid market in America.
The result: the K1 pre-cools your building's thermal mass when power is cheap and coasts through the afternoon price peak with the compressor off — while a reactive controller is buying its energy at the day's worst prices. Published field studies of this class of neural-network MPC on edge controllers report 23–37% energy cost reductions, ~70% less overshoot, and dramatically faster settling than traditional PID loops.
At $1,499, one Texas summer of peak-shaving can return the entire cost of the controller. The competition can't answer this — their architecture reacts; the K1's plans. And the split is engineered for reliability: the application cores compute the optimal trajectory, while a dedicated real-time core executes the electrical control deterministically.
Savings figures cite published third-party field results for ANN-based MPC on edge controllers. Your results depend on building mass, equipment, and utility rate structure.
| A day in the life — predictive vs. reactive | |
|---|---|
| 4:00 AM | Grid price low → K1 pre-cools building thermal mass |
| 7:00 AM | Reactive controllers wake up and start buying energy |
| 1:00 PM | Price peak begins → K1 coasts on stored cooling |
| 4:00 PM | Peak pricing ×10 → competitor compressors at full draw |
| 6:00 PM | Peak ends → K1 resumes normal staging, comfort never lost |
| → Published field results: 23–37% energy cost reduction vs. reactive PID control | |
BTM Controls has developed foundational Grid-Interactive Efficient Building technology. The BTM-K1 autonomously optimizes large package units while simultaneously communicating with broader Energy Management Systems (EMS) and SCADA networks — over BACnet/IP, Modbus, and MQTT, out of the box.
That combination — edge autonomy plus grid connectivity — is exactly what the U.S. Department of Energy's multi-year GEB vision calls for: buildings that act as flexible, resilient assets on a decarbonized grid, shifting and shedding load in response to grid signals instead of consuming blindly. Most controllers can be told what to do by an EMS. The K1 can think for its equipment and answer the grid at the same time.
BTM-K1 vs. Tridium JACE 9000 vs. Distech ECLYPSE APEX — the two flagship supervisory controllers in commercial BAS today.*
| BTM-K1 | JACE 9000 | ECLYPSE APEX | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Processor | Quad-core 64-bit @ 1.4GHz + real-time core | Quad-core ARM | Quad-core ARM |
| Vision AI / NPU on-board | ✔ NPU + camera input | ✘ None | Edge analytics (no vision) |
| Touchscreen HMI on unit | ✔ Integrated | ✘ None | ✘ None |
| On-board field I/O | ✔ 4 UI / 2 AO / 4 relay / 4 triac — runs an RTU standalone | ✘ Requires IO-R modules | ✘ Requires ECx-IO modules |
| Dual Gigabit Ethernet | ✔ + daisy chain | ✔ | ✔ |
| WiFi | ✔ WiFi 6 + hotspot commissioning | Optional module | Adapter / model dependent |
| Zigbee / Thread / Matter | ✔ Native 802.15.4 | ✘ | ✘ |
| BACnet/IP + MS/TP | ✔ Isolated MS/TP port | ✔ (licensed drivers) | ✔ |
| Modbus RTU/TCP | ✔ | ✔ (licensed drivers) | ✔ |
| CAN bus (CANopen/J1939) | ✔ CAN-FD | ✘ | ✘ |
| MQTT / IoT | ✔ MQTT + REST + NATS | ✔ via Niagara | ✔ REST API |
| Expansion I/O bus | ✔ BTM-IO (coming) | ✔ IO-R (to 4,000 ft) | ✔ ECx series |
| Hardware secure element | ✔ ATECC608 | TPM-based | Model dependent |
| No lock-in | ✔ Debian Linux | ✘ Niagara licensed | ✘ Proprietary + licensed |
| Per-point / driver licensing | NONE | Point/driver packs + SMA | License tiers |
| Predictive energy optimization (MPC) | ✔ Learns thermal mass, optimizes vs. grid pricing | ✘ Reactive PID / scheduled logic | ✘ Reactive PID / scheduled logic |
| AI vibration analysis / machine health | ✔ Built-in — baselines equipment, flags bearing wear & short-cycling | ✘ Requires third-party system | ✘ Requires third-party system |
| Two-way AI communication with technician | ✔ Push-to-talk voice + on-screen answers, fully offline | ✘ None | ✘ None |
| AI alarm root-cause diagnostics | ✔ One-button "Explain This Alarm" from on-board trends | ✘ Raw alarm list | ✘ Raw alarm list |
| Scan commissioning documents / point changes | ✔ Camera + AI reads points lists & submittal schedules for setup | ✘ Manual entry | ✘ Manual entry |
| Supercap backup + outage reporting | ✔ BTM PowerGuard™ standard — load shedding, last-gasp report | ✘ None standard | ✘ None standard |
| Phone commissioning | ✔ Built-in hotspot | ✘ | ✔ BLE app |
| Typical cost* | $1,499 | $4,000–$7,500+ | $2,500–$5,000+ |
Enterprise-class supervisory control shouldn't cost more than the equipment it manages. Estimated street pricing, typical configurations:*
We're controls people who got tired of paying enterprise prices for decade-old hardware wrapped in license agreements.
Designed by people who wire panels — 24VAC transformer power, miswire-proof inputs, isolated field bus, terminals labeled the way techs actually think.
Current-generation industrial processors with 10+ year lifecycles — not 2011-era chips at 2026 prices. AI acceleration built in, not bolted on.
Linux. Standard protocols. Real REST APIs. Your data, your logic, your building — no ransom licensing, no certified-dealer gatekeeping.
The BTM-K1 is in final development. Get launch pricing, beta program invites, and integration previews.
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