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τTau Technology

APEX

Agnostic Protocol Edge Exchange.

Hardware and software for smart buildings. The edge devices that speak the protocols already on your estate, and the software layer that makes the whole thing legible. Vendor-agnostic by design.

How it’s built

Embedded Rust on the edge. Python in containers above.

The edge hardware runs embedded Rust. It is small, lean, and built to keep running for a decade without anyone touching it.

The vendor connectors run as Python containers on top. Two reasons: Python makes the connector layer quick to update and easy to swap out when a vendor changes their protocol or releases new kit, and containers make it portable. The same connector runs on a panel-mounted microcontroller at a small site and on a rack-mounted server at a large one. Performance- critical paths drop to Rust.

The hardware varies by site. The software does not.

Compatibility

What APEX speaks to.

Vendors we’ve shipped against

  • Schindler
  • Otis
  • Johnson Controls
  • Honeywell
  • Schneider
  • Dynalite
  • Salto
  • Hikvision

No vendor gets favoured. No vendor gets locked out. The list grows when a job calls for it; a new connector is a new container, not a new product.

Protocols, open standards

  • BACnet

    The building automation protocol. IP, MS/TP, and BACnet/SC, the secure variant.

  • Modbus

    Industrial serial and TCP. Old, simple, and still everywhere.

  • OPC UA

    Industrial automation. Strong typing, strong auth, increasingly the lingua franca for new kit.

  • SNMP

    For the network gear and the long tail of IT-adjacent devices on the estate.

  • MQTT

    Lightweight publish-subscribe. Useful when the device is small and the network is unreliable.

Scale

From two storeys to twenty-five levels.

Smallest deployment

2 storeys

Largest deployment

25 levels

Largest floor area

80,000 sqm

The same software runs at both ends of that range. The hardware is sized to the site, the connectors are sized to the kit. Nothing gets thrown away when the next building is bigger.

You get

  • Edge devices that speak the protocols on your estate
  • Vendor connectors covering the systems you have already got
  • A single software layer over a multi-vendor estate
  • Asset registers and operating documentation for what is actually deployed
  • Commissioning, handover, and runbooks the next engineer can use
  • No lock-in by accident

Where it fits

  • A multi-site operator with a dozen different vendors and no single source of truth
  • An integrator re-solving the same vendor quirks on every commission
  • A real-estate owner whose strategy team wants estate-wide data and whose engineering team wants to keep what already works
  • An access-control or security vendor who needs an edge runtime they don't want to build themselves

BACnet, Modbus, OPC UA, SNMP, MQTT. The protocols change. The work doesn’t.

Ready when you are

Talk to us about APEX.

A short call is usually enough to know whether APEX fits your estate. Bring the questions. We’ll bring the protocol list.

Start a conversation