Richard Blackwell

Richard Blackwell is the President and Chief Visionary of Linked2Software, a cloud-based building automation and equipment monitoring company. A Veteran U.S. Navy Nuclear Propulsion Plant Supervisor and Graduate of Ga. Tech in Physics and Electrical Engineering, Richard has been in the AV and software industries for 20+ years. Richard received the first U.S. Patent awarded for Video Conferencing Integration in 1996. He speaks and writes regularly about industry topics ranging from Green-AV to IoT and cloud computing. He serves on the InfoComm Foundation Board of Directors and IoT Steering Committee. In the past he has also served on InfoComm Membership Committee, InfoComm Independent Programmers Council, and as a member of InfoComm 100.

Calling All Entrepreneurs and Start-ups: Come Show Your Stuff at IC18

A few years back the InfoComm Trade show decided to nourish its own by opening the Innovation Showcase — it quickly became a star attraction in the InfoComm crown. What’s not to like? There are big prizes, creativity oozing out of every crack, Soon to be famous entrepreneurs (there are rumors Elon Musk considered showing, […]

Editor’s Note: The following is a difficult post to read. It is not about technology; it is about suicide. I am posting it here because it’s important and because my friend Richard asked me to. If telling his story, with the knowledge that it may help prevent a similar situation, gives him even the smallest […]

The latest Macbook uses a USB-C port for both power and USB communications, and rumors are that the iPhone 8 will also switch over to the USB-C. Wait…what!? Yup, just when you finally got everything you own converted to the one cable style it’s going to change, but this time you may be a little […]

When the IC-2015 show opened at 9 a.m. I recall that it was several hours before the first show attendee came wondering into the Showcase, and well after lunch before anyone would say there was a semblance of a crowd. The Showcase was a new event and word sometimes travels slow. Fast-Forward to IC17 and […]

There is nothing more energetic or vibrant than what you find associated with a technology start-up, unless of course you have eighteen of then all in one spot. This year InfoComm hosts the third edition of the Innovation Showcase and placed it in a primo location to highlight how strongly they feel about the need […]

You know 4K video, AVB, laser projectors and most anything Ethernet-equipped will have a big year in 2017, but there are two technologies that people are only whispering about that you should pay attention to this year. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Augmented Reality (AR) will both pop up to the level of common conversations this year. I’m not suggesting either […]

My companies have been acquired twice and I have attempted numerous acquisitions. While I don’t have the experience of an investment banker like GE or SilverLake, I have been down many roads that few have the opportunity to travel, and it’s nothing like you think. Yes, there is almost always human impact because maximizing profits […]

The AV industry relies heavily on new technology, but until recently it was not a very good parent when it came to supporting its young innovators creating the next big trend. Last year’s InfoComm 2015 Show changed everything with the roll out of the Innovation Pavilion, an entire section of the show floor dedicated to young […]

Everyone likes a nice office to work in, and there are many factors such as employee retention and public persona that drive companies to upgrade their buildings, but budgets still are the deciding factor. Here is why you can’t afford not to make these three upgrades now. Energy Monitoring – This fact is crazy but true: Just by monitoring your building’s […]

Your meeting space needs have grown past the capabilities of the Yellow Sticky Note on the door, and you are looking into how you might effectively manage the spaces. However you are not certain what a good Room Scheduler should include? This is a very loaded question, because there are so many different needs. Most […]

Campus environments are a special animal when it comes to automation. While they sometimes behave like one large building, that is where the similarities end and automation becomes a challenge to all but the most skilled in the automation trade. An educational campus, office park or any other gathering of buildings under single administration creates […]

My youngest daughter was accepted into a new public charter school to open in the fall of 2014. The school caught our attention because they planned to be a high tech school issuing laptops to all children, as well as use video based learning and very little paper. The summer before opening they asked for […]

Parking Decks are likely one of the last buildings you think of when considering building automation, but they are a prime opportunity for Iintelligent use of automation for enhanced safety, energy conservation and light harvesting. This is what you should be considering when you build your next parking deck: Green – Light Harvesting Lamp Dimming Solar […]

All digital audio today has in some way been effected by the research and discoveries of this French Physicist. Ever wonder why simple analog audio became so complicated when converted to digital? Take two minutes here and I will tell you how an amazing set of apparently unrelated discoveries 200+ years ago, became so important […]

If you haven’t heard of HoloLens you need to see this Microsoft announcement. HoloLens is more than Google Glass in that it presents 3D images overlaid onto your view, but not the total immersion of the Oculus Rift which completely replaces your view with CGI. While both Glass and Rift have been in the public eye under development for […]

It is 2018 and the Intelligent Building has become the norm rather than the exception as it was back in 2015. Now there is a new set of challenges, and one of them is Data Overload from all the sensors we installed everywhere. Computers will do their best to filter the data and share it as needed, […]

Very few buildings even today are intelligently automated, and the few that do are the large showcase projects. Are you building new office space, or perhaps refreshing a couple floors at a time of your current space? If yes, take two minutes to let me share experiences of 30+ years in automation and I will […]

The lighting industry is of late highly focused on energy efficiency and cost of ownership. However, some long standing research, and some recent work point to a much greater savings in worker efficiency if the type of light and color of light are taken into account along with efficiency. In the ’70s, fast food chains performed market […]

Wikipedia: In 2010, an Australian company called DKTOB pioneered Bluetooth for indoor proximity sensing in its Seeknfind location attendance solution. In 2013, the retail industry saw Beacons and their ability to approximate a customer’s location as an ideal method for drawing attention to targeted products. While passive access control cards can alert the building to your presence, […]

A customer with a large aquatic center asked us to look into a better way to manage lighting, and offer a solution for reducing damage from rambunctious children to the existing low voltage light switches. The building already had an existing high end Crestron Lighting Control System, but in this case it was not being […]

Wikipedia: The light-emitting diode (LED) began appearing as practical electronic components in 1962 in IR and Red. The first high-brightness blue LED was demonstrated in 1994 and within a couple years the first White LED (combined Red, Green and Blue LEDs) was demonstrated. The use of LED lamps in commercial applications continues to grow with every project […]

Foreword: My youngest daughter attends a new public charter where I volunteer more time than I can afford as the “Technology Guy.” The students were issued on day one Chromebooks and Kindles, and they do very limited work with paper of any sort. I worried would all the technology and apps come together, but recently she commented […]

Internet of Things (IoT) — refers to uniquely identifiable objects and their virtual representations in an Internet-like structure. The term Internet of Things was proposed by Kevin Ashton in 1999 though the concept has been discussed since at least 1991. In 1994, the Internet of Things was known as “control networks,” which Reza Raji discussed […]

Universal Classroom Design

I’ve seen thousands of automated classrooms. Take away 10 percent of these as super exotic for law schools and medical schools and what’s left are pretty much the same within every room type. Classrooms I’m referring to here, and we write control code to make them work and I think there is a better way […]