UNT141 Comm Problem

[mohare7]

I have a brand new UNT141-1 Rev H and I'm using HVACPro Vers 8.08 to try and access it. The green Z Bus light blinks really, really fast as soon as I power the controller and when I try to connect with HVACPro, I get a message "Communications not initialized" This is the 2nd new controller I've tried. Any help?

[berg2666]

You must have 8.08B to use usb adapter.

[Johnny-B]

The only usb adapter that would work with the cable-pro that I was using was the Digi adapter. After that no problems.

[s2sam]

You must have 8.08B to use usb adapter.

Good day,

This version may be true for JCI supplied USB adapters with their CVTPro's, however, our USB to N2/RS232 Converter (S2USB485) has been working with HVACPro since version 8.04b (circa 2004).

Cheers,

Sam

[berg2666]

Good day,

This version may be true for JCI supplied USB adapters with their CVTPro's, however, our USB to N2/RS232 Converter (S2USB485) has been working with HVACPro since version 8.04b (circa 2004).

Cheers,

Sam

Good sales pitch!!!!!!!!

[s2sam]

Good sales pitch!!!!!!!!

Good day,

You liked that eh :) ? All kidding aside, it wasn't meant as a sales pitch. I see and hear a number of people commenting how "Company X" product is the only one that works with HVACpro, etc and I just wanted the information to be correct and to set the record straight...we had the first USB to N2 (and RS232) interface to work consistently and reliably with HVACPro since 2004. We are a small manufacturer and so our egos bruise easily :)

Cheers,

Sam

[freddy-b]

Good day,

You liked that eh :) ? All kidding aside, it wasn't meant as a sales pitch. I see and hear a number of people commenting how "Company X" product is the only one that works with HVACpro, etc and I just wanted the information to be correct and to set the record straight...we had the first USB to N2 (and RS232) interface to work consistently and reliably with HVACPro since 2004. We are a small manufacturer and so our egos bruise easily :)

Cheers,

Sam

But you always fail to mention that your box has no zone bus. Which is a deal killer for 90% of the market.

[s2sam]

But you always fail to mention that your box has no zone bus. Which is a deal killer for 90% of the market.

Good day Freddy,

It has been my experience that most people use the N2 bus for communication and so commenting on Zonebus (ZB) is erroneous. If someone asks for Zonebus support, I am the first to say that we do not support Zonebus. We could develop a Zonebus interface (in fact JCI asked us about this a few years ago), but I have yet to see a a real need for it. We receive maybe 1 call out of 300 or so that need Zonebus. On a secondary note, JCI themselves is our largest customer for our S2USB485 device and their techs do not seem to mind that we do not support Zonebus... it would be nice if it did, but it is not a deal breaker. Now, to be fair, I would imagine that the JCI Techs have their CVTPro for ZB, but is is very interesting that they prefer our device for N2 than their own corporate product.

As for your comment of ZB needed for 90% of the market... Personally, I think you have this reversed with N2... at least given the countless discussions I have had with JCI branches throughout US, Canada, Mexico, and Singapore and with independents everywhere.

That being said, if you need ZB then the CVTPro is what you must use. If you are happy with the CVTPro or some other product for N2, then great use whatever suits your needs and/or budget. My original comments in this thread and other threads relating to USB to N2 via HVACPro is that there are other options available and historically our device has been there before they were.

Cheers,

Sam

[freddy-b]

Good day Freddy,

It has been my experience that most people use the N2 bus for communication and so commenting on Zonebus (ZB) is erroneous. If someone asks for Zonebus support, I am the first to say that we do not support Zonebus. We could develop a Zonebus interface (in fact JCI asked us about this a few years ago), but I have yet to see a a real need for it. We receive maybe 1 call out of 300 or so that need Zonebus. On a secondary note, JCI themselves is our largest customer for our S2USB485 device and their techs do not seem to mind that we do not support Zonebus... it would be nice if it did, but it is not a deal breaker. Now, to be fair, I would imagine that the JCI Techs have their CVTPro for ZB, but is is very interesting that they prefer our device for N2 than their own corporate product.

As for your comment of ZB needed for 90% of the market... Personally, I think you have this reversed with N2... at least given the countless discussions I have had with JCI branches throughout US, Canada, Mexico, and Singapore and with independents everywhere.

That being said, if you need ZB then the CVTPro is what you must use. If you are happy with the CVTPro or some other product for N2, then great use whatever suits your needs and/or budget. My original comments in this thread and other threads relating to USB to N2 via HVACPro is that there are other options available and historically our device has been there before they were.

Cheers,

Sam

OK I will revise my statement.

But you always fail to mention that your box has no zone bus. Which is a deal killer for 90% of JCI/N2/average Joe Shmo Service Tech market.

[s2sam]

OK I will revise my statement.

But you always fail to mention that your box has no zone bus. Which is a deal killer for 90% of JCI/N2/average Joe Shmo Service Tech market.

Good day Freddy,

No, I do not fail to mention that we do not support ZB... In all of my responding posts in other threads, it (ZB requirement) has never been mentioned. If it was, then I would be the first to say that we do not support ZB. All of the S2USB485 documents clearly state that we do not support ZB. How clear can I make it? Sadly, your statement has a slight "slant" that I am somehow "glossing" over ZB support and I take offense to that. This is absolutely not true and totally unfounded. If the original poster's intent was problems with ZB (although he did mention the ZB light blinking, but I interpreted this as the UNT "Alive" LED), then I apologize for the confusion and my original post.

As for a deal killer statement... Then your area of the country must be totally unique, as this has not been my experience... not by a long shot. However, like I said earlier, use whatever tool you want... If you need ZB, then you must use the CVTPro, full stop. If I saw a reasonable need for ZB, the I would develop a ZB product... but I just do not see it.

As for the JCI/N2/average Joe Shmo Service Tech market that must use the CVTPro then you better buy two as they tend to not last too long...

Cheers,

Sam

[freddy-b]

Zone Bus comes in handy. I don't get where you dont see the value?

AHU Controllers wiring base comes to mind. Dragging your laptop to the ceiling "wherever it may be" over desk..a patient bed....25 ft' in the rafters..no need to find power/extension cords/ladders..etc...etc......when there is a perfectly good metastat with zone bus at 5' to do most things you need to do.

As for the CVTpro...the newer Digi Style..although pricey and humongous ..has been reliable enough.
Ya..the older little ones were crap.

Although CVTpro cost more ..you carry one device. and don't worry about powering it when using the zone bus. Lets say you can find a old cable pro (that wont be free either) to carry....thats two devices to carry around in a already full and expanding daily tool set.

I am not trying to be a a-hole....Its just the way I see it. I have no idea where you did your market study?...but I bet anyone here with N2 experience will tell you the benefits of zone bus in many situations.. in a device such as yours.

[s2sam]

Zone Bus comes in handy. I don't get where you dont see the value?

AHU Controllers wiring base comes to mind. Dragging your laptop to the ceiling "wherever it may be" over desk..a patient bed....25 ft' in the rafters..no need to find power/extension cords/ladders..etc...etc......when there is a perfectly good metastat with zone bus at 5' to do most things you need to do.

As for the CVTpro...the newer Digi Style..although pricey and humongous ..has been reliable enough.
Ya..the older little ones were crap.

Although CVTpro cost more ..you carry one device. and don't worry about powering it when using the zone bus. Lets say you can find a old cable pro (that wont be free either) to carry....thats two devices to carry around in a already full and expanding daily tool set.

I am not trying to be a a-hole....Its just the way I see it. I have no idea where you did your market study?...but I bet anyone here with N2 experience will tell you the benefits of zone bus in many situations.. in a device such as yours.

Good day Freddy,

Indeed ZB is very handy and at times necessary if you cannot get access to the N2 bus or if the N2 Bus is not accessible (can someone say finished ceilings?). I am not saying that it is not needed, but in the last 6 years the need via phone calls, e-mails, and just general chatting with people, the demand has not been very high. Like I said, maybe 1 in 300 or so...or let's be even more generous and say 1/100. It is hard for a small firm (we are not even a rounding error to a rounding error to a rounding error to JCI or other big firms) to amortize the Design, Development, and Support costs over such a small market. Remember, too, once we release a product we are there for the long haul. We even support our systems that we developed in the mid-90's. In fact, two of our discontinued products were are still supporting in order to help our customer toward a transition (in one case we are actually designing a new piece of hardware just for them).

So, where does it leave us? Since we are a small firm, it is best for us to focus our resources on future technologies in order to better amortize our R&D costs so that we can offer great products for great prices (like HMI interfaces for 1/3 the price of similar products...this is not meant as a sales pitch, but as a dramatic comparison). Unfortunately ZB has a limited life, as is evidenced by no ZB in the newer products. If it were possible for us to update the S2USB485 to include ZB, then maybe we could offer it (in fact we were talking to JCI about doing this in 2005 until a JCI higher-up killed the project/discussions). The issue here is that there is virtually no room on the printed circuit board (PCB) for additional circuitry and connectoring for ZB... so this would mean new mechanicals (enclosures, endplates, etc)... so in essence a virtually new design.

Secondly, because the ZB service tool market is already served by the CVTPro, the ability to penetrate it would be challenging (a number of people already have CVTPro's)... so a double whammy with regards to recovering the R&D costs.

As for the latest CVTPro and its quality, hard to say where its at. I still receive calls from people that have CVTPro door stops that JCI fails to warranty. Are these the new ones or old ones? I do not know. All I know is that I still supply our product to JCI branches and techs everywhere.

Anyway, I am in complete agreement with you that ZB has its place and hopefully you can see why we have not created a suitable ZB supported product. If there is a need, then I would suggest everyone to send e-mails to our company and perhaps this will encourage us to create a ZB based device.

Cheers,

Sam

[exwtk]

Except for VMA's .... I use zone bus where ever I can.
No need for external power. Easier access. Another disadvantage of using N2 is that the supervisory device NCM or NAE has to be disconnected from the N2 bus.... this does not always go over very well.

[SuperDuperTech]

I use n2 and zone buss about equally. I liked the earlier CVT better then this huge black box.

[freddy-b]

I know its N2 is dying, but its still here. Maybe the window has passed for a big market splash with a new box, However IMO you missed the boat on that one.

I have a big one for you. I have been after SteveS4 to develope a N2 tunnel through the Tridium AX platform...he ignores me.. If you develop that I guarrantee you make a huge splash. Sell it as a license per station...it would be sweet..and its just software..no hardware overhead to deal with.
Give it a thought. With what you already know, and a little java voodoo is probably all it would take.

[Cagey57]

...I have a big one for you. I have been after SteveS4 to develope a N2 tunnel through the Tridium AX platform...he ignores me.. If you develop that I guarrantee you make a huge splash. Sell it as a license per station...it would be sweet..and its just software..no hardware overhead to deal with.
Give it a thought. With what you already know, and a little java voodoo is probably all it would take.

s2sam,
WoooHooo! I am with freddy on that ! I will even volunteer to help with alpha/beta testing...on my own time. If you want to venture into that you have a captive market, guaranteed !!!!!!

On the Zone Bus topic, I haven't connected with the Zone Bus (CVTPRO100/300) in months. We use a mix of CVTPRO100/300 and the B&B converter (sorry sam, we bought them before we found out about your device). The "Old" Cablepro's still work for Zone Bus if you have them. I have not tried one wih the Digi Edgeport/1 though.

[s2sam]

I know its N2 is dying, but its still here. Maybe the window has passed for a big market splash with a new box, However IMO you missed the boat on that one.

I have a big one for you. I have been after SteveS4 to develope a N2 tunnel through the Tridium AX platform...he ignores me.. If you develop that I guarrantee you make a huge splash. Sell it as a license per station...it would be sweet..and its just software..no hardware overhead to deal with.
Give it a thought. With what you already know, and a little java voodoo is probably all it would take.


Good day Freddy,

In response to your comment "However IMO you missed the boat on that one." and I am assuming you meant USB to ZB, then the boat must have been even bigger than N2, as we have sold mondo amounts of the S2USB485 device.... I can honestly say we have received no more than 20 to 30 requests for ZB in the last 6 years. Perhaps we did not receive too many calls for ZB because the JCI ZB product is really good :) ...

As for the N2 Tunnel via AX, thanks for the heads up! I will have to look into it further. Sadly there may be other issues at play here that prohibit its deployment (i.e. licensing, etc) through this method. JCI licensing of the protocols are fairly unrestrictive, but never the less it is always prudent to check... JCI has teams of lawyers that can bankrupt mere mortals if one is not careful (in fact Tridium was on the wrong side of JCI lawyers a number of years ago...). Secondly, software licensing and its nuances also have its "warts"... which at times can really make support difficult. Thirdly, I heard that Tridium was producing their own N2 infrastructure. What it is supposed to do and what it supports, etc is unknown to me. However, it would be quite risky to develop a similar product given Tridium's potential involvement. That being said it is not a show stopper, but items that I would and do consider for new product development.

Cheers,

Sam

[s2sam]

s2sam,
WoooHooo! I am with freddy on that ! I will even volunteer to help with alpha/beta testing...on my own time. If you want to venture into that you have a captive market, guaranteed !!!!!!

On the Zone Bus topic, I haven't connected with the Zone Bus (CVTPRO100/300) in months. We use a mix of CVTPRO100/300 and the B&B converter (sorry sam, we bought them before we found out about your device). The "Old" Cablepro's still work for Zone Bus if you have them. I have not tried one wih the Digi Edgeport/1 though.

Good day CCIKelly,

Excellent, thanks for the offer! I will keep it in mind!

As for the Converter, no apologizes necessary! As long as you have a product that works for you, then I am happy! We are an "old school" biz and as such we just like to ensure that the customer is happy. If they buy one of our products great! If not, then we are still happy to assist if we can. I cannot tell you how many people that I have helped that had issues with other products (not ours) that called us in hoping that our product would sort them out (they wanted to buy ours). In most cases we enlighten them on what could be causing theirgrief and in turn they discovered it wasn't their current product... "What goes around, comes around" or "Karma" they say :)

Cheers,

Sam

[SuperDuperTech]

Getting a pass threw option for old N2 devices would be very usefull.

[s2sam]

Getting a pass threw option for old N2 devices would be very usefull.

Good day SuperDuperTech,

One has to be careful (with me at least) in the terminology here. To me, Tunneling means using one communication protocol to transfer another (i.e. encapsulating the N2 protocol in an TCP/IP Packet). Pass-through on the other hand to me means an exposed virtual interface to the "tunneled" protocol so that an external application (i.e. HVACPro) thinks it is directly connected to the remote device.

Given the current state of HVACPro (i.e. how it is currently written), it is extremely difficult to have the ability to upload and download field device programs via a Pass-through (via TCP/IP / Ethernet) type of interface with any sense of consistently and reliability. This is simply because HVACPro has little tolerance to packet latency (delays, etc) that is inherently present on Ethernet based networks. So, this particular functionality may not be able to be done. (there are some ways that one can overcome this, but does involve some design gymnastics).

Cheers,

Sam

[simux]

I've used a direct connect cable for years... They're easy to make and it's really sweet because you can make it long enough to access controllers in the ceiling.

Materials
DB-9 connector
470 Ohm resister
3-18 Conductor shielded cable
N-2 connector
USB to Serial adapter


Db-9 Pin 5 to N2+, Db-9 Pin 2 to N2-, and DB-9 Pin 3 to ref, with a 470 ohm resistor between Pins 2 and 5.

[Kontrolfreek]

Pardon my ignorance Freddy, but why is zone bus a big deal? You can can commision, download & upload through the devices N2 connection right? I've been told that zone bus is a whole lot slower than N2 any way.

[s2sam]

Pardon my ignorance Freddy, but why is zone bus a big deal? You can can commision, download & upload through the devices N2 connection right? I've been told that zone bus is a whole lot slower than N2 any way.

Good day Kontrolfreek,

I cannot speak for Freddy, but I suspect that for some access to the N2 bus is difficult, whereas the ZB can be accessed from some Wall-Stats. As you have probably read in the above threads, all of the feedback / communication I have had, N2 was the preferred choice over ZB by a significant amount. Freddy's experience is obviously different.

As for speed... ZB is 1200 baud...N2 is 9600 ... Indeed ZB is a whole lot slower...

Cheers,

Sam

[s2sam]

I've used a direct connect cable for years... They're easy to make and it's really sweet because you can make it long enough to access controllers in the ceiling.

Materials
DB-9 connector
470 Ohm resister
3-18 Conductor shielded cable
N-2 connector
USB to Serial adapter


Db-9 Pin 5 to N2+, Db-9 Pin 2 to N2-, and DB-9 Pin 3 to ref, with a 470 ohm resistor between Pins 2 and 5.


Good day Simux,

I am glad that this has worked for you. However, it will not always work and you may have inconsistent communication in time. The reason being is that RS-232 (your serial port) uses a completely different type of electrical signaling than RS-485 (The N2 and MS/TP busses). RS-232 is voltage-level signaling where any voltages between +/- 3V are considered indeterminate (means the signal can be ignored or mis-interpretted) by the EIA-232 specification . Secondly, the voltages are referenced to the RS-232's ground pin (pin 5 on the DB-9) and are not designed for daisy chain applications, so minimal drive for loaded busses. Thirdly, the characteristic impedance of your interface is non-compliant and so as data rates increase you will find nasty communication issues.

RS-485, on the other hand, uses a differential signaling method. Here a digital signal is not related directly to its absolute voltage, but rather the voltage difference between the A and B or (N2+ and N2-) signals. Voltages differences between +/- 200mV are considered indeterminate. By this alone you can see that a voltage difference of 300mV is a valid RS-485 (N2) signal but is invalid for RS-232 because RS-232 needs at least 3V. Secondly, because RS-485 is a differential method, it is not sensitive to common-mode noise voltages that will crap out RS-232. RS-485 can be made to communicate up to 4000 feet whereas RS-232 is 50 feet. RS-485 is designed for daisy-chained applications (spec defines a minimum drive of 32 unit-loads), and has the correct characteristic impedance for higher data rates (RS-485 can communicate up to 10 Mb/s).

Anyway, you get the picture. In your case it appears that your interface works but it may not depending upon the controller, your USB/Serial adapter, your network, or your data rate.

Cheers,

Sam

[Kontrolfreek]

GOTCHA!!! Yeah I forgot about those VAV boxes mounted 20 feet above a 10 foot drop ceiling. Zone bus RULES there! Well thanks for your input S2Sam & Freddy.:oops:

[SuperDuperTech]

I am used zone bus today three time so far.

[freddy-b]

Anyone who does not see the benefit of ZB has never worked on much metasys outside of a test lab.

[Kontrolfreek]

Hey Freddy, how do I get me some of that test lab work? I just got off the roof. Had to fix some M.A. dampers. Went to open the O.A. dampers & found this!:eek2: .......no worries it's dead.

[Cagey57]

Anyone who does not see the benefit of ZB has never worked on much metasys outside of a test lab.

I agree 100%.

Ignoring the benefits of the Zone Bus is almost like an HVAC/R tech that never uses a Temp/Pressure Chart, always going off the scales on the gauges.

" Beware the Man that doesn't know what he Doesn't Know" !

[SuperDuperTech]

We do not useually Metastats in labs, they do not keep acurate enough temp readings.