For modernization and retrofit specialists
Old lifts. Mixed makes.
Still connectable.
Elevator modernization IoT engineered for the controllers you actually find in the field: relay panels, early VVVF drives, and discontinued OEM boards nobody has documentation for. Survey the portfolio, add connectivity without replacing the drive, roll out in stages, and give building owners the evidence that funds the next phase.
The retrofit reality
The hard part is never
the new equipment.
Modernization specialists are good at the mechanical and electrical work. The friction is upstream of it, in getting a portfolio surveyed, getting an owner to commit, and proving the result afterwards.
| Controller family | Built interface | Fixed IoT product |
|---|---|---|
| Relay panel, 1980s | Read via discrete states | Expects a data bus, unsupported |
| Early VVVF drive | Decoded per family in firmware | Partial or no support |
| Discontinued OEM board | Mapped at signal level | Out of scope |
| New family encountered | Scoped, then reached over the air | Wait for a vendor roadmap |
The portfolio is every make and every decade
A modernization contract rarely covers one brand. Relay panels from the eighties sit two buildings away from early VVVF drives and a discontinued OEM board nobody has documentation for. A product that assumes one controller is useless here.
The owner wants evidence before capital
Building owners and facility managers approve modernization budgets against a business case. Without measured uptime, fault frequency, and component condition, the case is a technician opinion and the decision slips another year.
Full replacement is a hard first ask
Replacing controllers across a portfolio is a large, disruptive, expensive project. Getting to yes is easier when there is a smaller, non-invasive step that produces information the owner can act on.
The work is proven only while you are on site
After a retrofit is handed over, performance improvement disappears into anecdote. Nothing measures the before and after, so the next contract is negotiated from scratch on price.
Survey to repeatable install
Six steps from a legacy panel
to live data.
A portfolio of two hundred lifts is not two hundred engineering problems. It is usually five or six controller families and a lot of installs. The work is in identifying the families and solving each one properly.
Census by make and controller family
Signals mapped, board and firmware per family
Validated on the oldest controllers first
Each further unit is a known install
Portfolio and controller census
Every unit documented by make, controller family, revision, drive type, panel condition, and site constraints. The output is a map of how many distinct engineering problems the portfolio actually contains, which is usually far fewer than the number of buildings.
Signal-level mapping per family
For each controller family: available signals, pin configuration, protocol format where one exists, fault register structure, and electrical characteristics. Relay panels are handled by reading discrete states rather than by expecting a bus.
Passive interface design
The interface board is designed to read without modifying controller logic or reprogramming the drive, sized for the panel space and conditions found in the survey rather than a laboratory bench.
Firmware per family, variants handled
Firmware decodes each family into the same structured output: floor position, direction, door state and timing, motor current, trip counts, and faults in plain language. Revision differences within a family are handled in firmware rather than in a spreadsheet of exceptions.
Pilot validated against live units
A pilot batch is installed and validated on real lifts before production commitment. You see accurate live data from the oldest, ugliest controller in the portfolio before anyone scales.
Repeatable install per family
Once a family is supported, every further unit of that type is an install job with a known duration, not an engineering project. That is what makes portfolio-scale rollout economically sensible.
Send us the controller list from your worst building. We will tell you what can be read from each one.
Book a portfolio survey call →The owner conversation
Sell the next phase with
data from the last one.
Connectivity is the cheapest thing you can install in a modernization programme and the only thing that measures everything installed after it. Six outputs that change how a building owner reads your proposal.
- Uptime per unit, measured continuously
- Fault frequency and type across the portfolio
- Response and restoration times from the fault
- Condition trends behind each recommendation
- Before and after on the same scale
- Owner-facing reports in your brand
Uptime per unit, measured
Availability by lift, by building, and across the portfolio, recorded continuously rather than estimated at review meetings.
Fault frequency and type
Which units fail, how often, and on what. Door faults clustering on three lifts is a different conversation from a general complaint about reliability.
Response and restoration times
Timestamped from the fault rather than from the phone call, so the service performance in the building is a number rather than a claim.
Condition trends behind each recommendation
Door timing drift, rising motor current, and abnormal cycle patterns give a modernization proposal physical evidence. The owner can see why the scope is what it is.
Before and after on the same scale
Because measurement starts before the intervention, the improvement after it is comparable. That record is the strongest argument for the next building in the portfolio.
Reports in your brand
Owner-facing reporting carries your name. The data becomes part of what you sell rather than a back-office tool nobody outside sees.
Why RnD Square
Built for the controllers
nobody else reads.
Fixed IoT products need the controller to cooperate. In modernization work it frequently does not, and with an off-the-shelf product the unit is simply out of scope. RnD Square designs the hardware and writes the firmware, so an unsupported controller becomes a scoping question your team can plan around instead of a dead end.
Passive by default
Reading rather than intervening keeps the certified behaviour of the lift unchanged and keeps the commercial conversation small enough to say yes to.
OTA across the deployed base
Support for a newly encountered controller variant reaches units already installed without revisiting sites. In a geographically spread portfolio that is the difference between viable and not.
The business layer comes with it
Surveys, proposals, staged project scopes, and the invoicing behind them are part of the same system. A modernization programme is a project business, and the project side is built rather than bolted on.
FAQ
What retrofit teams ask.
Related
The engineering behind it.
Start with the survey.
Scale by family.
Tell us the makes and vintages in your portfolio and the buildings you are pitching. We will come back with a feasibility view per controller family and a staged rollout plan.