President's message: RC-FLEX family - the next generation has arrived

The year 2021 tossed up a few more challenges than many of us were probably expecting. Extreme weather events, parts shortages, spiking fuel costs, and freight logistics disruptions all weighed heavily over to the enduring concern of the global pandemic and its Delta and Omicron variants. As business leaders, it sometimes feels like we are honing our skills at a global game of “whack-a-mole.”

Despite these business continuity challenges, our companies must continue to look forward and remain positive. We must envision, innovate, and engineer optimistically toward the opportunities that will inevitably emerge in the built environment. That means we must continually re-invest in our people, processes, and partners so we can seize on new opportunities and deliver new and improved products and services to meet customer expectations. In doing so we position ourselves to become part of the solution that improves our customers’ lives and resolves some of the real challenges they must boldly face.

Throughout the pandemic, Reliable Controls has been very busy not only maintaining and growing our sterling reputation of having the best technical support in the building automation industry but also researching and developing an entirely new generation of building automation controllers that will complement previous-generation products and take our customers to the next level. After many tens of thousands of hours of planning, designing, developing, and testing, we are absolutely delighted to announce the arrival of the all-new RC-FLEXair^® advanced VAV controller. 

The RC-FLEXair is the first of an entirely new family of freely programmable dual-Ethernet BACnet building controllers and is designed to be integrated with any IP-connected BACnet Testing Laboratories–listed device. We designed this next-generation family of controllers to be configured using our existing RC-Suite of software, allowing you to integrate the RC-FLEXair with legacy controllers manufactured by Reliable Controls. This significantly extends the ROI of your existing Reliable Controls installations by eliminating the expense associated with purchasing gateway technologies or learning entirely new software interfaces.

As the first in a family of new devices, the RC-FLEXair sets the stage as the premier platform of hardware technology for the next decade of production at Reliable Controls. Aside from its blazing-fast and massively scalable technology, the RC-FLEXair is packaged in an all-metal enclosure constructed of aluminum and steel, and its Linux-based operating system is super-secure and extensible. These design elements elevate the usefulness and resilience of RC-FLEX products as they will endure for many years—likely beyond the life of the equipment being controlled. With the RC-FLEX family, we wanted to fulfill our “better by design” engineering philosophy. We designed these products using robust, extensible, recyclable components that will withstand the test of time, experience many value-added updates, and be easily streamed back into the materials economy at the end of their useful life.

Simple, flexible, and sustainable are the hallmarks of Reliable Controls technology. We are delighted to carry these hallmarks forward into the new RC-FLEX family. We encourage you to learn more about the RC-FLEXair by visiting our website and contacting a local Reliable Controls Authorized Dealer. The next generation has arrived!