Slian.org · Slian Think Tank — Engineering-Grade Smart Residential Technology Research

ABOUT SLIAN

One thread of silk, connecting the world

Slian began as Slian Technology. The company has since been deregistered, but the name lives on in a new form: no longer a company, it is now a technology think tank.

The name itself states the whole mission. "Slian" comes from the Chinese 丝联: 丝 (sī), "silk," and 联 (lián), "to connect":

丝

The Silk Road

The ancient trade route, continued — and running in both directions: Chinese engineering solutions go out to the world, and advanced technology from abroad comes in.

联

Interconnection

Built on the internet, connecting standards, case studies, and engineers — so that frontline project experience becomes knowledge the whole industry can reuse.

RESEARCH

Research engineers can actually use

No macro essays, no buzzwords. Every output goes down to the level of drawings, piping runs, and hardware — it counts only if a peer can build from it.

MEP Systems Integration, in Depth

The deep end of residential building-services engineering: from top-level architecture down to millimeter-level execution.

KNX whole-home backbone and low-voltage construction drawings
Routing coordination, clash detection, and elevation management
Constant temperature, humidity, and oxygen environmental control, and underlying network roaming
Routing challenges in retrofit and aging-in-place projects

AI × Residential Engineering

AI deployed on real job sites. No stories — only measured results.

Field tests: AI drawing review and routing clash detection
Protocol reverse engineering and cross-brand device interoperability
AI agents for whole-home control: which decisions they can actually make
AI predictive maintenance: from reactive repair to early warning

Global Technology Watch

Connection in both directions: taking the best of what's abroad apart to see how it works, and bringing Chinese solutions to the world.

Technical teardowns of notable smart-home projects overseas
Cross-country MEP standards comparisons (electrical / plumbing / fire protection / smart systems)
Residential technology trends and policy updates along the route markets

METHOD

Four rules for technical work

A think tank doesn't win on the size of its resources, but on how narrow the cut is and how deep it goes. These are the constraints we set ourselves:

Drawings first, opinions later

Job sites, drawings, and measured data come first; reports follow. No first-hand engineering input, no project.

Narrow cut, deep drill

One system, one country, one hard problem at a time. One deep dive done properly is worth ten broad surveys.

AI: tested, not hyped

Every AI conclusion comes from field tests on real projects: hours saved, miss rates reduced — argued in numbers.

Guidance, not legal advice

Cross-country standards comparisons are practical guidance, not legal advice. For any specific project, the local official text and a licensed engineer's sign-off govern.

NETWORK

The "tank" is a network of engineers

We employ no full-time researchers. Slian.org's research capacity comes from a part-time expert network — one or two contributions per person per year is the think tank's entire asset base. We are currently inviting three kinds of contributors:

Academics and researchers

Providing academic grounding and theoretical frameworks, so the deep dives hold up.

Frontline engineers

Providing real project drawings and hard-won lessons from the field, so the deep dives stay grounded.

Overseas contributing reviewers

Engineers and plan-review bodies based locally in each market, calibrating the accuracy of our cross-country standards comparisons.