Attention all Allerton users!

[big johnson]

I've got 3 jobs out to bid and ATS is under cutting Siemens by quite a bit. I've been "googling" the heck out of the web trying to educate myself. I'm pretty good on the Siemens stuff but have never worked with ATS. I have heard it said more than once that controls are controls and it's the service and support that counts. I realize that but one issue that is bugging me about ATS is that they are not backwards compatable. So you gotta tear it all out to upgrade. Any info, links or comments, would greatly be appreciated.

[ctrlguy]

In my opinion, Siemens is about the most proprietary product in the business. If you love your Siemens branch, no problem. If you don't, bummer. Alerton is a BACnet line. That gives you more options in that BACnet is sort of open and other manufactures can talk to their controllers and vice versa.

Backwards compatible? That only matters if you have old Alerton products, doesn't it?

I'm a LON guy myself. Buy LON and you can never be captive of a single contractor unless there is only one contractor in your area who deals with Lonworks products (unlikely). I think you would be well-served to get a quote on an LNS-based Lonworks system.

[orion242]

If you like Siemens and want to stay with it, as an owner make sure your spec is setup that only Siemens can bid it. I assume you’re required to get competitive bids. Your dealer should be able to supply you with a spec. As for the bids there are many inventive ways to get multiple bids and still get the dealer of choice. Your dealer should be on the ball to prevent this from happening, if that is your intention.

If the price is considerable lower I would be asking your Siemens dealer why, you could be getting raped. Spend some time asking both what they have included and figure out the true reason. You may find ATS missed something and get their bid tossed out, or get Siemens to bring their price in line.

[jayhawker]

Alerton Ibex can't communicate with the newer Alerton Bactalk on the same communication buss. You can use them in a combination but each has to be on a seperate comm. buss and the Bactalk has to go thru a Alerton converter to let the Bactalk work with the Ibex

[contrltech]

I agree with ctrlguy, LON is the way to go. I've had some experience with JCI's controls and liked what I saw but it's not as user friendly as most LON products. Be careful with Alerton, in my area there is only one authorized rep that can provide service and they are very secretive about their stuff.

[alerguy]

Just upgraded a 15+ year old DOS based Alerton IBEX system to the latest BACtalk 2.0 - Did not have to replace any field controllers or wiring.

[sirevren]

Alerton is a great product. You will not be going backwars if you install alerton. As a bacnet product, it is one of the top products. Do not hesitate to use them

Make sure that you get Bacnet product which is called BacTalk. Dont go with their old ibex line.

[nikko]

ATS is aggressive with their pricing, particularly if they think someone is about to take one of their regular client accounts. And as they're the factory installation arm, they have the added advantage of cheap product pricing (sometimes it's free) and a large pool of "extra" labor to pull from.

That, coupled with the fact that they do have good product makes them a force to be reckoned with.

However - as a former competitor to them I found the easiest way to beat them was to go hard after the jobs you know they want to keep and get them to drop their prices and commit to the schedules. No worries , they'll put the blinder on and play hardball, they always do. Do this on several jobs and it'll completely consume their resources. When that happens, they're out of the way for a while and you can then go after the jobs you really wanted in the first place without them bugging you.

And say hi to Lucy for me

Nikko