Capacity planning before you buy
These field-proven planning numbers come from commissioning experience — an overloaded bus or gateway shows up as intermittent offline devices and delayed scenes, exactly the faults that trigger service calls:
- Keep a wired RS-485 bus at or below 32 RCU nodes; split larger buses and add a repeater.
- A BLE Mesh segment behaves well up to roughly 30 devices; add repeater nodes beyond that.
- One wireless gateway handles about 50 concurrently controlled devices.
- One RCU can serve up to 16 thermostats, so suites and connected rooms stay on a single controller.
Match the configuration to the room type
Standard rooms typically need lighting scenes, air-conditioning control, keycard power and a service button. Suites add curtain motors, multi-zone thermostats and dimming. Public areas extend the same platform with lighting circuits and energy metering — one architecture instead of several systems.
A selection checklist before signing
- Building status — new-build (wired first) or occupied (wireless first)?
- AC type — fan-coil, split or VRF; decides between thermostats and an AC gateway.
- PMS brand and interface document availability.
- Guest-facing panels — finish, language and button layout.
- After-sales reach — who ships spare parts and how fast they arrive.
Architecture background: wired vs wireless room control and the guest room control system guide.
