GridPoint's Use of Elixir and Nerves for Energy Management

Alex McLain discusses GridPoint's adoption of Elixir and Nerves to construct an energy management platform for commercial spaces. The company's customers face challenges in optimizing energy expenses without compromising customer comfort. GridPoint employs an energy management controller, thermostats, and a cloud services dashboard to facilitate energy savings and provide customers with control and insights into their energy usage. McLain explains the reliability issues of the earlier system and how the adoption of Nerves, a tool for running Elixir on embedded systems, is crucial to improving reliability and upgradability. Nerves allows them to develop robust systems with Up-to-date fixes, ensuring functionality and real-time updates. Alex provides a walkthrough of GridPoint's controller, contrasted with the older EC2K, newly retrofit to run Nerves. He details the technical layers to transition from a C++ to Elixir-based system and various libraries and tools used in development, including Buildroot, Microchip's evaluation kit, and other open-source Elixir tools. GridPoint's strategic choice to go wireless for installation cost efficiency and updates on its new controller prototype, featuring various wireless technologies, is showcased. Lastly, McLain touches on the importance of domain knowledge in the cross-training of developers and the shift towards self-service customer support.