Nae with Lon Trunk

I have a lot of experience with the NAE connected to a BACnet or an N2 network, but never with a lon network. I'm going to be on a site soon that has an NAE with a Lon network throughout the building. I don't know much about the lon protocol other than the wiring is not polarity sensitive, each controller has a neuron ID, and the topology can be a mesh. I also have experience with FX Builder which I know uses a few lon rules when programming. Other than that I'm lost. I was hoping to get some feed back about the NAE and lon being used together. Any help is appreciated. Also, I know there is a ton of info about lon on this board, but I'd like to know how to set it up with the NAE which I'm sure is a pain.

Well, I heard they worked. Bought one, tried to use it and failed. I'm sure someone around here has gotten them to successfully work, and I'm sure once they do, they are as easy as N2 or MS/TP. Check the Quicklit site for the info on setting up their lon trunk. It's quite tricky.

NAE & Lon = :gah:

Does anyone know what LN Builder does? You can't setup the database in the NAE?

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Originally Posted by Igotworms

Does anyone know what LN Builder does? You can't setup the database in the NAE?

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You cannot setup the lon bus in the NAE. JCI uses LN Builder to build the lon trunk with the NAE on it. You have to commission the NAE into LN Builder to get it read the other devices on the trunk. Then you have to run a special plugin to make the SNVTs in the NAE match with the ones in the controllers. Then you get to do a reboot and watch while it takes like 10 minutes to read in and sync all the values from the controllers.

If you plan on doing anything other than looking at an already set up NAE with lon working on it then you will need LN Builder and a copy of the database that was used to set up the network. If you don't you can rebuild the network database. It is painful and if it is somewhat old you might not have the program code for the controllers backed up and you will have to rebuild that.

On the whole when I was at JCI lon was anathema. No one wanted to work on it, no one wanted to deal with it and there were only 1 or 2 guys in the branch that knew how to use the products.

Thanks for the reply nick. It looks like im in over my head with this one. The branch doesn't know what their doing and the other JCI contractor in the area is much worse than the branch. I know the nae pretty well when its connected to bacnet or n2. I have ln builder on my laptop but I think I need to license it. What I would really like to do is put in an fx70 if I can sell them on it since I've heard the jace handles lon very well. Im sure ill have more questions especially when I find out what field controllers are being used.

Bumping another old thread. Looks like I am finally going to this job site. Am I able to use lonmaker instead of LN Builder? If I want to add a single device can i add it manually and discover the points with the .xif file?

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Originally Posted by Igotworms

Bumping another old thread. Looks like I am finally going to this job site. Am I able to use lonmaker instead of LN Builder? If I want to add a single device can i add it manually and discover the points with the .xif file?

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You can use lonmaker to setup the network and install .xif files in nae

Im going to setup a demo jace on this site since the customers are sick of the NAEs. If I were to unplug the LON trunk on one of the NAEs and do a quick learn on the jace, would that screw anything up? I would plug the lon trunk back into the NAE after im done.

You only REALLY need LN builder if you are going to setup,program JCI Lon devices.
If not then LonMaker will work fine..
Yes you have to license LN Builder. You can use LN in demo for 30 days and have 4 credits...

This building has McQuay water source heat pumps. I dont think there are any JCI lon devices. I still want to sell them on the jace. Also where can I get lonmkaer? I dont see it on echelons site, only lonmaker 3.1 service pack 3. I think I need lonmaker 3.1 before I can install that.