If you have alerton questions

[JohnLoves2ski]

I work with Compass, it doesn't seem that slow. You obviously have an issue, and your dealer should dig in and fix it.
Did you upgrade from Alerton Building Suite? I would call the dealer and tell him it's unsatisfactory, and demand a roll back and refund, because they made the system worse, not better.

[deadheaddave]

Do you think there could be something wrong with the network?
What happens is you plug directly into one of the globals and are disconnected from the rest of the network?
Compass, and for that matter, Envision are not particularly slow.

[Reckles]

Could it be failing computer hardware like hard drives? You could definitely running RAID on that server grade machine, check for hard drive integrity. We are running a very big BMS network on a VLAN, Windows Server 2012 and Envision 3.1, its pretty fast when configured correctly.

[lnewcombe]

Any suggestions for running IBEX with paralllel key on Windows 7. Having trouble seeing the key. If not, do you know where we could get Envision+USB key for and APEX-LT system.

[orion242]

do you know where we could get Envision+USB key for and APEX-LT system.

Check ebay. I see alerton keys on there all the time. There also some shady character that apparently has bypassed the hardware key and is selling the software fairly regularly. Being they have sold a fair wad of copies all with good reviews, either they are their own best customer or they really are delivering. I "acquired" a copy from them, have not had a need to load it up and try it yet.

[Reckles]

Will any RS-485 repeater work with a Alerton BACnet/MSTP trunk We have a long MS/TP trunk that runs near few power lines. There are about 25 VLCs and 3 other non alerton devices on that trunk, devices and data comes through ok but little slow. It takes a long time for a device scan to complete on that trunk after a power failure and takes few minutes to get stable.

[lnewcombe]

Check ebay. I see alerton keys on there all the time. .

Have lots of IBEX keys, but Windows 7 doesn't see it. Parallel port is on a card, not mother board. Will have to try another card. How to reach shady character?...

[orion242]

Have lots of IBEX keys, but Windows 7 doesn't see it. Parallel port is on a card, not mother board. Will have to try another card. How to reach shady character?...

just search for envision alerton

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Alerton-Envi...EAAOSwll1WyCdy

Guy has sold a crapload of copies. No way in hell he has removed all these from sites or is getting these from other legit means. Before he had all the different license limits. Must have not been worth the hassle and is now just the unlimited version.

He seems to switch accounts regularly. Last time he was based in Singapore or some other Asian country. Prob playing wack a mole with him.

[npcannon]

Doing more digging, it's probably our server. It's a 2012 server, we're on a large license, and since it's a virtual machine the assets are split up. So while we have 4 cores available, our IT department is only allocating half of that, which is just inadequate. It's also not able to be updated because it's behind a firewall. I keep getting the runaround from IT on actually changing our allocated CPU power or getting upgrades, but it's slow moving forward. DDC seems to fall in this weird gray area between building facilities and IT. IT wants control of the servers but they don't use them and facilities (me) pay for that disregard. Anyway, we have compass at another facility and I've used it there without issue, so sorry to rant about compass, it should be at our IT department!

[Reckles]

I'm not sure about Compass but Envision for BACTalk runs perfectly even on a 2 core CPU. We have a large license running on a Standard PC and its quite fast. We have tweaked the APDU settings to get communication stable.

[JohnLoves2ski]

It should. Or you can contact your Alerton dealer and buy an Alerton MSTP Repeater from them. There could be other issues on the trunk though. Check it with an oscilloscope to see if there are stray voltages or frequencies on the line, use a packet sniffer (wireshark, etc) to see if you are getting packet storms, etc.

[npcannon]

We were fine while running Envision, then we switched over to compass and things went sideways. It's a bit higher demand, and it also changed out alarms are presented. We were hoping to see changes in compass 1.5, which uses a SQL database for alarms, unfortunately that's when things really went to crap. The new alarm handling, for us, is even worse than before and the software is a real CPU hog (from what I can tell). Compass would go (not responding) a lot before, but since we went to 1.5 I'll have to wait sometimes a minute or more between little functions like logging in, changing delay time on alarms, etc, it's brutal.

Another question, I have a VLCA-1688 that I'm trying to wire up. These need a 24vac power supply to the Hot leads. I'm just trying to turn a light on with BO-0. They also have HOA switches. With the 24vac jumpered to Hot A, and the light wired from BO-0 to the light and then ground, the light is Off in off, but partially on in auto, and fully on in hand. In Auto, it's getting an inactive signal but it looks like ~5 Volts are leaking through somehow and turning the light on very dimly. (I also have a beeper on BO-1 that beeps quietly in auto and fully in "hand".)

The vendor suggested a second power supply, but that didn't work. It did work when I used a computer DC power supply but that doesn't really add up. Right now, I have wired 1500 Ohms between BO-0 and ground and everything works normally. If I go too low the resistors heat up and if I go too high the light still comes on dimly. I've got a call into the vendor, but I'm in Antarctica so time zones are always a handful and we've had some other unrelated PLC issues I've been working on in the power plant. So any help would be really appreciated! These VLCA's are really strange with their wiring, and I have 2 more on the way in more critical applications so I'd like to have my head around them more before that.

[Reckles]

It should. Or you can contact your Alerton dealer and buy an Alerton MSTP Repeater from them.

Would any RS-485 repeater with isolation work or do I have to get one from Alerton?

[Reckles]

I've been told that a repeater with isolation could slightly reduce noise.

[CYM]

Hello All,

I manage a building with an Alerton system, running on Envision for Bactalk 2.6. The system is set up with a BTI-100 global controller, connected to an AT&T fiber modem. Lately, I have been trying to connect from our remote office, and after selecting the site from the connection manager, and clicking login, get the following response: "The following error occurred while initializing Annex J Bacnet/IP: No response from BBMD. Unable to connect to site."

We thought that the modem may be the issue as when we took over the property we had to get a new modem (same as the old), but since doing a little troubleshooting, have less confidence in that assessment. When I disconnect power to the global controller onsite, the system will then be accessible for anywhere from 3 to 7 days, after which the same error response comes back. I reached out to our local Alerton rep, who thinks the issue may be the hardware needing to be replaced. As this is costly, I would like to exhaust any other options before going that route.

Some questions:
Is there a backup battery that may need to be replaced in the BTI-100? Initial research says there are two batteries, a 7.2V backup and a 3.0V coin battery for clock backup. Is this a possibility that they may be interrupting something, and requiring power to be disconnected/reconnected?

Is it possible that it is the modem? I have tried just resetting the modem and not cycling power to the global controller, which does not work.

Any help here would be appreciated. I do apologize for my limited knowledge of this system in comparison to everyone else here. Thank you.

[JohnLoves2ski]

The outputs on Alerton cards are Triacs, and they do leak a bit of current. If you have very low impedance load, you can sometimes see the load trigger partially. Consider putting a smaller resistor in series with your load.
Who is your vendor? Considering your location and application - they should really be helping you with this.

[JohnLoves2ski]

We were fine while running Envision, then we switched over to compass and things went sideways. It's a bit higher demand, and it also changed out alarms are presented. We were hoping to see changes in compass 1.5, which uses a SQL database for alarms, unfortunately that's when things really went to crap. The new alarm handling, for us, is even worse than before and the software is a real CPU hog (from what I can tell). Compass would go (not responding) a lot before, but since we went to 1.5 I'll have to wait sometimes a minute or more between little functions like logging in, changing delay time on alarms, etc, it's brutal.

Another question, I have a VLCA-1688 that I'm trying to wire up. These need a 24vac power supply to the Hot leads. I'm just trying to turn a light on with BO-0. They also have HOA switches. With the 24vac jumpered to Hot A, and the light wired from BO-0 to the light and then ground, the light is Off in off, but partially on in auto, and fully on in hand. In Auto, it's getting an inactive signal but it looks like ~5 Volts are leaking through somehow and turning the light on very dimly. (I also have a beeper on BO-1 that beeps quietly in auto and fully in "hand".)

The vendor suggested a second power supply, but that didn't work. It did work when I used a computer DC power supply but that doesn't really add up. Right now, I have wired 1500 Ohms between BO-0 and ground and everything works normally. If I go too low the resistors heat up and if I go too high the light still comes on dimly. I've got a call into the vendor, but I'm in Antarctica so time zones are always a handful and we've had some other unrelated PLC issues I've been working on in the power plant. So any help would be really appreciated! These VLCA's are really strange with their wiring, and I have 2 more on the way in more critical applications so I'd like to have my head around them more before that.

The outputs on Alerton cards are Triacs, and they do leak a bit of current. If you have very low impedance load, you can sometimes see the load trigger partially. Consider putting a smaller resistor in series with your load.
Who is your vendor? Considering your location and application - they should really be helping you with this.

[JohnLoves2ski]

Hello All,

I manage a building with an Alerton system, running on Envision for Bactalk 2.6. The system is set up with a BTI-100 global controller, connected to an AT&T fiber modem. Lately, I have been trying to connect from our remote office, and after selecting the site from the connection manager, and clicking login, get the following response: "The following error occurred while initializing Annex J Bacnet/IP: No response from BBMD. Unable to connect to site."

We thought that the modem may be the issue as when we took over the property we had to get a new modem (same as the old), but since doing a little troubleshooting, have less confidence in that assessment. When I disconnect power to the global controller onsite, the system will then be accessible for anywhere from 3 to 7 days, after which the same error response comes back. I reached out to our local Alerton rep, who thinks the issue may be the hardware needing to be replaced. As this is costly, I would like to exhaust any other options before going that route.

Some questions:
Is there a backup battery that may need to be replaced in the BTI-100? Initial research says there are two batteries, a 7.2V backup and a 3.0V coin battery for clock backup. Is this a possibility that they may be interrupting something, and requiring power to be disconnected/reconnected?

Is it possible that it is the modem? I have tried just resetting the modem and not cycling power to the global controller, which does not work.

Any help here would be appreciated. I do apologize for my limited knowledge of this system in comparison to everyone else here. Thank you.

Just spit-balling here - It seems odd to me that cycling power to the global controller would make the system respond properly. thoughts:
1) There is a chance that you are getting packet storming on your MSTP Network. If a device goes rogue and starts randomly spamming the network, it can overwhelm the global and it won't respond to things like a BBMD request. Unfortunately a packet sniffer would be required to diagnose that.
If your battery has not been replaced in recent memory, it's likely old enough that it should be replaced, although I can't say if an old battery would produce such behavior.
2) Is there any chance that the BTI-100 or it's ethernet switch has dirty power? That would cause a comm chip to hang up. I have had ot hang a global ona UPS before to keep it alive on sites with frequent power issues.
Good Luck!

[JohnLoves2ski]

Would any RS-485 repeater with isolation work or do I have to get one from Alerton?

Any RS-485 repeater that says it will host MSTP will work.

[otto]