ALC and ASHRAE

[drafty888]

Well now I guess you finally are starting to understand my position. Go with works best right? Would you rather have a bad or old technological mechanical system or a good modern one? ASHRAE is clearly demonstrating modern solutions.

Why should your fieldbus or automation choice be any different?... if of course you were being objective about things.

I think in the world of bacnet ALC has by far the biggest lead. Nobody can keep up with them. It wouldn't pay to integrate everyone else's inferior product. Does ALC have a Modbus gateway? I wonder what those powerlogic meters communicated?

alc does make a portal to communicate to non bacnet protocols, but our standard router (LGR) has hundreds of drivers that enable comm to third party protocols, modbus included.

[sysint]

That energy setup seems at first glance to be more effective than other "energy suites" I've witnessed.

Let's be honest here though, there isn't any good way that ALC implements this without the products being ALC. I'm also anticipating those powerlogic meters aren't using the Modbus option and are directly wired to the pulse contacts...

EDIT- I know ALC comms to other protocols, and I now how poorly they do some of that also... However, something tells me they try to do better when it's incoming instead of outgoing...

[drafty888]

[QUOTE=sysint;2023642]That energy setup seems at first glance to be more effective than other "energy suites" I've witnessed.

Let's be honest here though, there isn't any good way that ALC implements this without the products being ALC.
QUOTE]

how else would you have it? isn't that the very reason that a customer would select one vendor over another, based on what they offer? guess i'm missing something, or maybe we're saying the same thing.

[sysint]

Actually, yes there are many implementations of multi-vendor without having it top-down one controls line. When sites get large is when this is typically implemented.

However, at this size and the project we are saying the same thing and I give ALC credit for their product. It's very well thought on on the front end.

The purpose of it for me was to demonstrate that bacnet had absolutely nothing to do with this and I think your thoughts are that any interoperability of products would have tarnished the results. Do you agree with this?

[drafty888]

The purpose of it for me was to demonstrate that bacnet had absolutely nothing to do with this

i see. agreed.

and I think your thoughts are that any interoperability of products would have tarnished the results. Do you agree with this?

i think that because interoperability was not the main focus of the project that ASHRAE got a good control system.

says an alc dealer to a loytec employee...

[sysint]

OK. That's fair. I agree with you.

Unless you could have identical variable names and properties, controller operational schemes, and not worry about communication settings you could not get this good of a result. Or, at least not without an inordinate amount of work for the project. It's because this is an ALL-ALC system is the reason for the results as they are.

[NINAX]

OK... so make my statement (for every job)...

Make the efficiency of the BUILDING & MECHANICAL system front and center instead of the interoperability of the CONTROL system.

Seems like controls were born of necessity to make systems more efficient. Somewhere along the line the controls industry jumped a track and has tried to put the focus more upon interoperability than upon the systems that controls control. Choosing between two professionals, one who knows & controls systems well and one who's an ace at interoperable systems, should be a hands down choice for the former. get back to basics... <end rant>

But you almost make it sound like they're mutually exclusive.

I lean more towards the industry got ON track with interoperability. Almost every control's system can control systems. Interoperability would be the next logical step.

I agree that they missed a great opportunity to showcase the lines. Give multiple vendors each a section and show how good and seamless it can be.

[kontrolphreak]

Well now I guess you finally are starting to understand my position. Go with works best right? Would you rather have a bad or old technological mechanical system or a good modern one? ASHRAE is clearly demonstrating modern solutions.

Why should your fieldbus or automation choice be any different?... if of course you were being objective about things.

I think in the world of bacnet ALC has by far the biggest lead. Nobody can keep up with them. It wouldn't pay to integrate everyone else's inferior product. Does ALC have a Modbus gateway? I wonder what those powerlogic meters communicated?

I hope you were joking with that statement. I have worked with 5 different BACnet lines and from my experience ALC is one of the vendors that are really lagging in their implementation of BACnet and interoperability with other product lines.

kontrol out

[sysint]

I can't imagine ASHRAE would use a bacnet vendor that wasn't at the top of their game.