Niagara AX to Trane comm3 and comm4 advise

[chadtech]

Looking for some advise from some folks who have sucessfully completed a AX to Trane comm3 and or comm4. I have a job with 2 BCUs, BCU1 is comm4 to 12 Voyagers, and BCU2 is COMM3 to 11 voyagers and 1 TCM. How many JACES do you think is necessary to pull this off?

How smooth do the AX to comm3/4 integrations go? Because I am rather green at AX.



Thanks for any input

[rad1]

MrBAS may be able to help you. He has a profile on this site with his email address in it. Contact him directly.

[dave2142]

I would install a large Jace with comm4 driver and remove the BCU with the comm4 devices and go direct into the Jace. The comm4 from Infocon works very well I have used it several times and it works great plus their support is awesome. I do not know of a reliable comm3 driver at least not right now. You do not have much on that side so I would just leave that BCU and bacnet ip the data from it into the Jace. You would need to get Trane to create the points in the BCU for bacnet ip unless you have acceess to the Summit workstation then you could just do it yourself. It is a little time consuming but without a good comm3 driver it is you only real reliable choice or it is possible that the voyagers rooftops have the combo comm3/comm4 cards in them. A good majority of the cards in voyagers can be set up either way depending on how the triangle shape card is installed. If you could convert any of them to comm4 I would sure go that way and eliminate as much bacnet ip as possible. If you have any questions just contact me I would be glad to help.

[chadtech]

Would a JACE6 handle it all, including embed workbench, and couple of graphics?

[dave2142]

Should work fine

[dlhvac]

bcu with com three just remove bco go to rooftop tci boards change board from isolated com3 to non isolated com3/ com4 do it just like the other one

[CountryBumpkin]

I did a job one time that had an old Trane comm 4 chiller and we were replacing the summit system with a Jace and instead of getting the comm 4 driver we just used bacnet over IP to communicate with the BCU and just used the BCU to pass through any values that we needed to send to the comm 4 chiller.

[dlhvac]

Looking for some advise from some folks who have sucessfully completed a AX to Trane comm3 and or comm4. I have a job with 2 BCUs, BCU1 is comm4 to 12 Voyagers, and BCU2 is COMM3 to 11 voyagers and 1 TCM. How many JACES do you think is necessary to pull this off?

How smooth do the AX to comm3/4 integrations go? Because I am rather green at AX.



Thanks for any input

1 JACE 600 YOU DID NOT MENTION IF THE COMM3 IS ISOLATED OR NON ISOLATED THEIR IS AS OF YET NO ISOLATED COMM3 DRIVER I HAVE MY DEMO JACE SETUP AT A SITE WITH INFOCON DOING THE TESTING BUT COMM3 NON ISOLATED IE POLARITY SENSITIVE IS THE SAME AS COM4

[krac]

1 JACE 600 YOU DID NOT MENTION IF THE COMM3 IS ISOLATED OR NON ISOLATED THEIR IS AS OF YET NO ISOLATED COMM3 DRIVER I HAVE MY DEMO JACE SETUP AT A SITE WITH INFOCON DOING THE TESTING BUT COMM3 NON ISOLATED IE POLARITY SENSITIVE IS THE SAME AS COM4

Looking to find the best way to integrate 3 existing Trane RTAA 240 air cooled chillers into a Tridium based system. It sounds like the chillers use the isolated comm which has a voltage higher than 15vdc. Other than buying a new BCU and using BACnet IP to integrate with the Jace, (which actually doesn't sound that bad) does anyone know of another hardware interface that works with comm3?

Not sure what information is even available over the chiller comm port, which would really help decide what to do. The customer is looking to see the error code that displays on the chiller controller.

[dlhvac]

Looking to find the best way to integrate 3 existing Trane RTAA 240 air cooled chillers into a Tridium based system. It sounds like the chillers use the isolated comm which has a voltage higher than 15vdc. Other than buying a new BCU and using BACnet IP to integrate with the Jace, (which actually doesn't sound that bad) does anyone know of another hardware interface that works with comm3?

Not sure what information is even available over the chiller comm port, which would really help decide what to do. The customer is looking to see the error code that displays on the chiller controller.

The rooftops have a trane tci board if you rotate the daughter board 90 degrees it becomes comm4 instead of comm3 isolated this is integratable to a jace with an infocon comm4 driver

[dlhvac]

The rooftops have a trane tci board if you rotate the daughter board 90 degrees it becomes comm4 instead of comm3 isolated this is integratable to a jace with an infocon comm4 driver

sorry should wear glasses when reading messages you wrote chillers what comm card is in the chillers now i believe a comm 4 card is available
for these chillers

[dlhvac]

looked this up you should be able to get lon cards for these lci-c

[krac]

LON would be perfect. I don't see the RTAA-240 listed but I am going to get the serial numbers off the machines and see what comm options are installed. What is the price range for the cards and is it a plug and play installation or do we need a technician to configure the chiller board.

Thanks

[shovelhead]

The isolated comm3 driver hasn't been perfected yet, problems with the checksum I hear. RTAA chillers are isolated comm3 so the best way to do the integration is throught BACnet mstp. The SC wasn't out when I left Trane but people that I keep in touch with tell me that the SC won't do comm3 or comm4 that they have to use the BCU as a gateway themselves. The BMTS can't do IP and only ethernet with a chip above version 5, the BMTW and BMTX will both do IP so BACnet over IP will work for those. Never do BACnet over ethernet to a BCU, the packets are malformed and will cause problem....found that one out the hard way! :grin2:

[kevin stone]

LON would be perfect. I don't see the RTAA-240 listed but I am going to get the serial numbers off the machines and see what comm options are installed. What is the price range for the cards and is it a plug and play installation or do we need a technician to configure the chiller board.

Thanks
Use the comm4 driver I haved used it on several jobs and have had no problems.
As for the lon boards.............................. :(

[krac]

Use the comm4 driver I haved used it on several jobs and have had no problems.
As for the lon boards.............................. :(

Are suggesting we use a comm 4 option card on the chillers? Care to share you issues with the LON cards. LON would be the best solution since we using LON in other parts of this project including a new chilled water pump controller.

[shovelhead]

Lonworks uses the chiller profile which isn't all of the information that comm4 will get you, if that's not a problem then I would use lon. The RTA series use isolated comm3. The comm4 driver works great with VAVs, intellipaks, voyagers and UPCMs.

[dlhvac]

Lonworks uses the chiller profile which isn't all of the information that comm4 will get you, if that's not a problem then I would use lon. The RTA series use isolated comm3. The comm4 driver works great with VAVs, intellipaks, voyagers and UPCMs.

There are some issues with the commissioning of the lci-c chiller lon cards you have to set the response to the jace at no response to commission because some of the cards do not send this response

[dlhvac]

Forgot using lon requires the firmware in chiller to be the latest Trane will have to upgrade recommend using comm4

[theintegrator]

I'm trying to bring some Trane Precedent units into Niagara AX with the Infocom Comm4 driver and have a quick question about how to remotely get them to control. I can write to the occupied heating and cooling setpoints, it changes the active setpoints (input points), but the unit keeps doing whatever it was before.

I have raised the setpoints so that heating was four degrees above the space temp and cannot get the heat to come on. Outdoor temp is approx 56 degrees, unit has gas heat, fan is on, is there some other point that I have to write to to put it into Tracer/remote mode to get it to control to network settings or is it possible that it controls to a supply air setpoint?

Thanks!

[dlhvac]

I'm trying to bring some Trane Precedent units into Niagara AX with the Infocom Comm4 driver and have a quick question about how to remotely get them to control. I can write to the occupied heating and cooling setpoints, it changes the active setpoints (input points), but the unit keeps doing whatever it was before.

I have raised the setpoints so that heating was four degrees above the space temp and cannot get the heat to come on. Outdoor temp is approx 56 degrees, unit has gas heat, fan is on, is there some other point that I have to write to to put it into Tracer/remote mode to get it to control to network settings or is it possible that it controls to a supply air setpoint?

Thanks!
you have to put the unit in tracer control and command the input mode

[krac]

Does anyone know the details of the isolated Comm3 electrical interface? What is the interface (RS-485 2 wire, RS-422) and what voltage does the bus operate at (RS-232 is 12vdc, rs-485 around 5vdc)
Anyone interested in an isolated Comm 3 AX driver?

[krac]

Stumbled on this device sold by Trane in Europe: BAS-SVX08D-E4. I am sure this is not something available in USA. Can't imagine why the Europeans don't use BCU's.

[dlhvac]

The interface is a torroid transformer the protocol is audio just as modem audio that is the data highway

[scrooloose]

The device mentioned in that literature is a Comm3 and Lontalk to Modbus gateway. Dont think there is much market for that in the US.

[dlhvac]

Yes it could be a big deal as long as it is comm3 isolate ie not polarity sensitive already have driver for the comm3 non isolated ie polArity sensitive

[krac]

The device mentioned in that literature is a Comm3 and Lontalk to Modbus gateway. Dont think there is much market for that in the US.

For customers that would like to integrate their Trane equipment and not have to purchase a $10k BCU.

[krac]

The interface is a torroid transformer the protocol is audio just as modem audio that is the data highway

Not sure if you are joking or not. With Trane you never know...