Supervisory Controller Trivia!

[MCP]

Well i'm bored waiting for a meeting to start so i'll post this question.

We have a site that has been running for about 9 years now. It consists of about 240 VAVs, 100 RTUs, and about 30 misc. controllers. There is no skimping of points as the owner has access to probably 20+ points per VAV and 40+ for each RTU.

There is but a single supervisory controller running the entire site and it does not even break a sweat. Name it.


P.S. As far as i know, there is only one answer as I only know of one controller that can handle this much data/devices. There could be more than one answer though as I have not worked with every system that is out, just most of them :)

[The Reaper]

American AutoMatrix SAGE. I have one that has over 400 controllers and I've never had it puke on me.

[MCP]

Winner! :) Yeah Sages are very beefy. A bit old school with no graphics built in but if you want your building to work, there is not much they can't do.

[mallron]

That was pretty quick. I would have never guessed the answer because I've never heard of that controller.

[beer30]

I was going to guess Companion!

[davem]

And given that you're an Integra guy too, MCP, all you have to do is wait for AAM to get around to embracing a real workhorse like the JACE NXS, and you'll finally have the Sage replacement we've been anticipating for many years...
You have to get around the lack of comm ports on the NXS with a nifty USB-to-serial port(s) converter, but then you're off to the races. My first go-around with this was a Sage swap-out with a JACE-545 (the Integra 500) - four ports on the Sage, four ports on the 500, all's good, right? Big mistake - 250+ controllers brought that 500 to its knees...which was disappointing to see, since how could a 1990-vintage DOS box run communication circles around the state of the art? Of course, all the Sage has to do is talk, and a tiny little bit of disk activity, nothing compared to all the stuff an AX box has to process...but the NXS solved all that.

I've only got three Sages still out there running, but what a great little engine-that-could they are...just pile on another controller, no problem...another SPL program, no problem...the BACnet implementation's a bit cheesy, but it tries hard...

[osiyo]

And given that you're an Integra guy too, MCP, all you have to do is wait for AAM to get around to embracing a real workhorse like the JACE NXS, and you'll finally have the Sage replacement we've been anticipating for many years...
You have to get around the lack of comm ports on the NXS with a nifty USB-to-serial port(s) converter, but then you're off to the races. My first go-around with this was a Sage swap-out with a JACE-545 (the Integra 500) - four ports on the Sage, four ports on the 500, all's good, right? Big mistake - 250+ controllers brought that 500 to its knees...which was disappointing to see, since how could a 1990-vintage DOS box run communication circles around the state of the art? Of course, all the Sage has to do is talk, and a tiny little bit of disk activity, nothing compared to all the stuff an AX box has to process...but the NXS solved all that.

I've only got three Sages still out there running, but what a great little engine-that-could they are...just pile on another controller, no problem...another SPL program, no problem...the BACnet implementation's a bit cheesy, but it tries hard...

We've got a LOT more than 3 Sages still out there. Heck, we've got single buildings with 3 Sages in them, LAN networked together, with Autopilot and Webpilot setups that display info from all of them concurrently.

We also work with Integra, which is a nice device. But with the shear number of points and controllers we have at many (most) of our installations, the Integra devices bog down badly. So we only install them at the smaller installations.

Haven't seen or worked with the NXS yet. From what you indicate, I'm looking forward to it.

Our only notable problem with BacNet has been with trying to implement it using MSTP. Haven't really had much trouble with BacNet IP.