Trane Summit to Niagara AX

[chadtech]

Building has Summit and they want to get it to a web based system. It has 2-BMTW BCU's and a summit workstation onsite, its my understanding that i would have to create all the points as bacnet points and pull them into niagara over bacnet/ip. How time consuming is the point creation and how many points will the BCUs handle? Its seems I have seem a number somewhere around 250 before, the non-volatile memory on both is around 70% and volatile memory around 65%. The building has around 138-VAVs, 6-CSC's SWUDs, and a couple of PCMs for lighting and tower/pump control on each BCU. Sound like a lot to me? If you don't think this is going to work then I will have to look into Plan B and at this point there is no Plan B......

Any advise is appreciated.

[scrooloose]

You can get around 2000-3000 points if you have a high cap card. I have done couple jobs where i reached that point. You just have to watch your memory and when you start getting to high you need to stop. I would only bring in the absolute critical points first, then expand from there if you have room.

Point creation is very consuming, it will take a long time. If you are fast and you can create a point a minute including referencing it then you can do the math.

You could always use the comm4 driver and just get rid of the bcus, then upgrade the few units and pcms that you can't pull in.

[chadtech]

You can get around 2000-3000 points if you have a high cap card. I have done couple jobs where i reached that point. You just have to watch your memory and when you start getting to high you need to stop. I would only bring in the absolute critical points first, then expand from there if you have room.

Point creation is very consuming, it will take a long time. If you are fast and you can create a point a minute including referencing it then you can do the math.

You could always use the comm4 driver and just get rid of the bcus, then upgrade the few units and pcms that you can't pull in.

How can I tell if it has high cap cards? Thrashing the BCU hasn't been ruled out. Is there anyway to communicate with CSC other than comm3? Lon or BACnet?

[scrooloose]

There are two slots behind the modem/ethernet card. The bottom card slot is standard cap, and the top card slot is for high cap.

[mallron]

The 250 point number was the limit for a BMTS BCU with a serial card.

Also, you can do BACnet/Ethernet or /IP with those BCU's. And I don't think removing the BCU's would be any faster than creating points, especially if all they want is a web interface.

[chadtech]

Between the 2 BCUs I'm thinking its going to be somewhere around 2000-3000 points to map to BACnet! I'm afraid I might go crazy mapping that many points! The other route would be to rip the BCUs out and install 2 JACES, install either LON or BACNET interfaces in the CSCs (if there upgradeable) and use infocon comm4 driver for the vavs and replace the couple of PCMs with BACnet spyders, then hit the Discover button and never look back. Going this route I would hopefully never have to deal with Trane again, nor support the junk BCUs.

What ya think. Anybody ever installed the trane Lon or BACnet interface in a 2001 year model CSC?

[dave2142]

I have done several jobs removing the BCUs and using the infocon drivers. Everything went very well and that is the route I would go. I would not replace the few PCM but would leave then in the BCU and just Bacnet IP those points out for now but if the cost is not an issue then replace them. Building the points in a BCU is a real pain in the butt and at best takes a minute a point which at least based on the point count you have is a weeks worth of labor. Could probably replace the BCUs and PCMs in less time. Not too mention they get a much better system with the Jace than anything Trane offers at the time.

[jlmus1]

If you are a Trane tech or know someone inside you can call Arkansas Trane and get what is called a Backbox from them. It will pull in all points from a BCU. Im not 100% on whether or not it must be a bmtw or bmtx. The job I did was an x. Yes it does work . I installed one when I worked at Trane a few years ago.
Good luck

[mallron]

If you are a Trane tech or know someone inside you can call Arkansas Trane and get what is called a Backbox from them. It will pull in all points from a BCU. Im not 100% on whether or not it must be a bmtw or bmtx. The job I did was an x. Yes it does work . I installed one when I worked at Trane a few years ago.
Good luck

are you talking about the comm bridge?

[jlmus1]

Its not a comm bridge per se, although I have no programming in it myself, it should be able to execute functions. Its not like the wiresheet isnt there. It intercepts data packets(mines) and creates the points. Here is a screenshot. All I did was set up the IP. The Jene did the rest. It is suppose to do this for everything from Comm2 through Comm5 and all AI/AO BI/BO etc....

[scrooloose]

You can read info straight out of a BCU without creating the I/Os just like jlmus1 said. Just like Tracer ES talks to the BCU magically, you can do the same thing with a Jace. They wrote a program that does it automatically for you. I did it year ago but i had to program the jace to do it. They made it simple and it auto discovers. Essentially the BCU has the native bacnet points in it for everything, its just not discoverable. So long as you know the address of everything internally, you can see it just like Tracer ES or Tracer Summit.

It is a software program that sits on the supervisor and creates the virtual devices. Least that is the one i dealt with was.

From what i hear they were having problems writing to it, but could read everything fine. So maybe they got past that hurdle.

[chadtech]

You can read info straight out of a BCU without creating the I/Os just like jlmus1 said. Just like Tracer ES talks to the BCU magically, you can do the same thing with a Jace. They wrote a program that does it automatically for you. I did it year ago but i had to program the jace to do it. They made it simple and it auto discovers. Essentially the BCU has the native bacnet points in it for everything, its just not discoverable. So long as you know the address of everything internally, you can see it just like Tracer ES or Tracer Summit.

It is a software program that sits on the supervisor and creates the virtual devices. Least that is the one i dealt with was.

From what i hear they were having problems writing to it, but could read everything fine. So maybe they got past that hurdle.

Hmm...could you email me the JACE station that you are referring to that can read Trane BCU points without manually creating the BACnet points in the BCU. Curious how this work?

Thanks

[bsmiller]

Its not a comm bridge per se, although I have no programming in it myself, it should be able to execute functions. Its not like the wiresheet isnt there. It intercepts data packets(mines) and creates the points. Here is a screenshot. All I did was set up the IP. The Jene did the rest. It is suppose to do this for everything from Comm2 through Comm5 and all AI/AO BI/BO etc....

Is there anyway I could get a copy of this station and if you know how to get a hold of this program I would greatly appreciate it. Wow would this make life easier.