Office & Workspace Setup Guide

Overview

Modern offices consume more energy than necessary. Lights stay on in empty rooms, HVAC runs at full blast on unoccupied floors, and equipment failures go unnoticed until they cause real problems. Giantronic turns every floor of your office into a smart, self-managing workspace that responds to the people inside it.

Deploy ESP32 microcontrollers across each floor and zone, wire them to relay modules, motion sensors, and energy meters, and connect everything to a single dashboard. From there you can automate lighting schedules, track kilowatt-hour consumption per floor, configure instant alerts for energy spikes or equipment failures, and generate monthly cost-savings reports — all without replacing your existing electrical infrastructure.

Hardware You Need

Every component listed below is off-the-shelf, inexpensive, and compatible with Giantronic out of the box. Start with one floor and scale to the entire building as budget allows.

Fleet Setup

A fleet groups ESP32 devices by physical location or function. Create one fleet per floor, then add individual devices for each zone (e.g., "Floor 1 – Lobby", "Floor 1 – Open Office"). Fleets let you apply bulk firmware updates, shared pin configurations, and unified alert rules across every device on a floor.

Organizing devices into fleets makes it easy to apply changes at scale. When you update a lighting schedule on the fleet, every ESP32 in that floor picks up the new configuration automatically.

Creating Your First Fleet

1. Navigate to Fleets

   Open the Giantronic dashboard and click Fleets in the sidebar. This lists all fleets across your organization.

2. Click "Create Fleet"

   Enter a name like Floor 1 – Main and select a region. Optionally assign tags such as floor-1 or lighting for filtering.

3. Register ESP32 Devices

   Flash each ESP32 with the Giantronic firmware. On first boot, the device registers itself and requests enrollment. Approve it from the dashboard and assign it to your fleet.

4. Assign Pin Templates

   Upload a pin configuration template to the fleet (see Pin Configuration below). All devices in the fleet inherit the same pin mapping automatically.

5. Configure Shared Rules

   Set fleet-wide alert thresholds, energy reporting intervals, and automation schedules. These propagate to every enrolled device within seconds.

Pin Configuration

The table below shows a representative pin mapping for a single-floor ESP32 controller managing lighting relays, a motion sensor, and a current sensor. Adjust GPIO numbers to match your actual wiring.

Motion-Based Automation

PIR sensors let lights turn on only when someone is actually in the room. When the zone is empty, lights switch off automatically — no timers to manage, no energy wasted.

The automation flow is simple: the PIR sensor detects human movement, the ESP32 immediately activates the corresponding relay, and a configurable inactivity timer shuts the relay off after the zone has been empty for a set period.

Automation Flow

1. Detect Motion

   The PIR sensor on GPIO14 goes HIGH when it detects infrared movement within its 120° cone. The ESP32 interrupts its idle loop and registers the event.

2. Turn On Lights

   The ESP32 immediately drives GPIO2 HIGH to close the relay for Floor 1 lights. Lights reach full brightness within milliseconds — faster than a human can notice.

3. Reset Inactivity Timer

   Every time motion is detected, a 5-minute countdown resets. As long as someone remains in the zone, the timer keeps restarting and lights stay on.

4. Auto-Off After 5 Minutes

   If no motion is detected for 5 consecutive minutes, the ESP32 drives the relay LOW, turning off the lights. The device returns to motion-watching mode.

Pin Configuration

Schedule Logic

// Simplified motion-based lighting logic
if (digitalRead(GPIO14) == HIGH) {
    digitalWrite(GPIO2, HIGH);    // Turn lights ON
    lastMotionTime = millis();      // Reset inactivity timer
}

if (millis() - lastMotionTime > 300000) {  // 5 minutes = 300 000 ms
    digitalWrite(GPIO2, LOW);       // Turn lights OFF
}

Energy Tracking

Real-time energy monitoring is the foundation of cost savings. By reading current sensors on each floor, you can pinpoint waste, validate savings claims, and catch equipment anomalies before they become expensive problems.

Giantronic reads ACS712 current sensor values at configurable intervals, converts them to wattage using the measured voltage, and streams the data to your dashboard in real time. Daily, weekly, and monthly reports are generated automatically.

Reading Current Sensor Values

The ACS712 outputs an analog voltage centered at VCC/2 (≈2.5 V for a 5 V supply). The voltage shifts ±185 mV per amp (for the 5 A variant). The ESP32 reads this via its 12-bit ADC on GPIO34, and the firmware converts the raw value into amps and watts.

1. Sample the ADC

   Read GPIO34 at 1 kHz over a 200 ms window (200 samples) to capture a full AC cycle at 50 Hz. Average the samples for stability.

2. Convert to Current

   Apply the ACS712 sensitivity formula: current = (adcValue - 2048) * (5.0 / 4096) / 0.185. This yields instantaneous amps.

3. Calculate Power

   Multiply current by measured voltage (230 V for EU, 120 V for US) to get watts. Integrate over time for watt-hours and kilowatt-hours.

4. Stream to Dashboard

   Push energy readings to Giantronic every 10 seconds. The dashboard aggregates data per fleet and displays live consumption graphs.

Dashboard Display

The energy dashboard shows per-floor consumption in real time. You can switch between live view (instantaneous watts), daily view (cumulative kWh), and monthly view (cost estimates based on your electricity rate). Compare floors side-by-side to identify outliers immediately.

Daily Reports

Configure Giantronic to email a daily summary at midnight. The report includes total kWh consumed per floor, peak demand, average load, and a comparison with the previous day. Alerts fire automatically if consumption exceeds your configured threshold.

Energy Data Format

{
  "device_id": "esp32-floor1-lobby",
  "fleet": "floor-1-main",
  "timestamp": "2026-07-28T14:30:00Z",
  "sensors": {
    "current_a": 4.82,
    "voltage_v": 230.1,
    "power_w": 1109.1,
    "energy_wh": 3081.4,
    "energy_kwh": 3.08
  },
  "status": "ok"
}

Scheduled Operations

Time-based schedules ensure lights and HVAC follow your office's working hours. Motion automation handles edge cases, but schedules form the backbone of energy savings by enforcing baseline off-hours shutdowns.

Work Hours Schedule

1. 8:00 AM — Lights ON

   ESP32 drives all lighting relays HIGH at 8:00 AM on weekdays. Occupancy sensors still override if a room is unoccupied — the scheduled ON is a floor-wide baseline, not a hard rule.

2. 6:00 PM — Lights OFF

   All lighting relays are driven LOW at 6:00 PM. If someone is working late, the motion sensor re-activates lights in their zone only, and those lights auto-off 5 minutes after they leave.

3. HVAC Integration

   HVAC relays follow a parallel schedule. Heating starts at 7:00 AM (pre-warm) and cooling at 5:00 PM (pre-cool for the next morning). Setback temperatures apply outside work hours.

4. Weekend Mode

   On Saturdays and Sundays, all lights and HVAC remain off by default. Motion sensors still operate for security — any movement triggers lights in the affected zone and sends a notification to the facilities team.

Night Security Schedule

1. 10:00 PM — Motion Lights Only

   After 10:00 PM, scheduled lighting is fully disabled. The only way lights activate is through motion detection. This keeps energy at near-zero while maintaining basic security illumination.

2. Alert on After-Hours Motion

   Any motion event between 10:00 PM and 6:00 AM triggers a push notification to the security team. The notification includes the zone name, timestamp, and a snapshot of current energy consumption for context.

3. Automatic Logging

   All after-hours events are logged to the Giantronic audit trail. Review them in the dashboard under Activity Log → Security to track patterns over time.

Alerts & Monitoring

Giantronic monitors every registered device continuously. When something goes wrong — a device goes offline, energy consumption spikes unexpectedly, or a relay fails — you receive an alert within seconds.

Fleet Alerts for Offline Devices

Each ESP32 sends a heartbeat to the Giantronic cloud every 60 seconds. If a device misses three consecutive heartbeats (3 minutes), the fleet marks it as offline and fires an alert. This is critical for office environments where a dead device means lights or HVAC stop responding with no visible warning.

Energy Spike Detection

Configure a maximum wattage threshold per floor. If real-time consumption exceeds this threshold for more than 30 seconds, an alert fires. Common causes include equipment left running overnight, HVAC faults, or wiring issues causing ground faults.

Equipment Failure Alerts

Relay modules can fail open or closed. Giantronic detects this by reading a feedback pin (or by comparing expected vs. actual energy draw). If a relay is commanded ON but current doesn't change, the system flags a potential relay failure and notifies the maintenance team.

Alert Configuration

{
  "fleet": "floor-1-main",
  "alerts": {
    "offline_threshold_min": 3,
    "energy_spike_watts": 4600,
    "spike_duration_sec": 30,
    "relay_mismatch_enabled": true,
    "after_hours_motion": true,
    "notify_channels": ["email", "push", "slack"]
  }
}

Cost Savings

The combination of motion-based automation, scheduled shutdowns, and energy tracking delivers measurable, provable savings. Most offices recoup the hardware investment within 3 to 6 months.

Motion Sensors — 30% Lighting Energy Savings

In a typical office, lights burn in empty rooms for 30-40% of working hours. PIR sensors cut this waste entirely. Rooms without occupants have their lights off, while occupied rooms stay lit only while someone is present. Over a quarter, this translates to a 30% reduction in total lighting energy.

Scheduled Shutdown — Eliminate Off-Hours Waste

Without automation, lights and HVAC frequently run overnight, on weekends, and during holidays. Scheduled operations enforce a strict power-down after 6:00 PM and on non-workdays. This eliminates the baseline energy waste that accumulates when humans rely on memory and manual switching. Typical offices report an additional 15-20% reduction from scheduling alone.

Energy Tracking — Identify and Eradicate Waste

You can't fix what you can't see. Per-floor energy tracking surfaces anomalies instantly — a floor drawing 40% more power than its neighbors tells you something is wrong. Common findings include HVAC units running with clogged filters, servers in storage closets left on, and lighting zones stuck in manual override. Fixing these issues typically saves another 5-10%.

ROI Summary

* Based on a 200-seat office with $8,000/month electricity cost.

Next Steps

You've seen the full Office & Workspace setup. Now it's time to dig deeper into the platform and start building your fleet.