If you have alerton questions

[Juan Madera]

Just started working in a building using Alerton control for 9 Aaon rooftops. Install was in 1997 and the monitor and display look it. CPU is antique beyond believability and no one in he building crew knows anything more than how to change setpoints and clear alarms. I fear eve touching it as it could die from fright. There is no documentation for me to even learn the system. I certainly could use a crash course before the facility goes down, and it is 24/7/365 to boot.

Any helpful techs out there?

[JohnLoves2ski]

Just started working in a building using Alerton control for 9 Aaon rooftops. Install was in 1997 and the monitor and display look it. CPU is antique beyond believability and no one in he building crew knows anything more than how to change setpoints and clear alarms. I fear eve touching it as it could die from fright. There is no documentation for me to even learn the system. I certainly could use a crash course before the facility goes down, and it is 24/7/365 to boot.

Any helpful techs out there?

Installed in 1997 - Unless there have been upgrades, it is an Ibex control system, with some revision of Ibex for Windows as the user interface on the PC. That system is actually quite robust. ENSURE YOU HAVE A BACKUP OF THE PC. If you have a current backup and the PC dies, you can restore it on another PC (will likely require some help from the dealer) in a matter of hours. Systems of this vintage do not require the PC to run the building, so the building will carry on smartly without the PC, you will just be blind to it. Be aware that the license for your software ( no longer available ) is a plug in dongle on the back of the machine. Probably plugged into the parallel port. DO NOT LOSE THIS as Ebay or a dealer installed upgrade is the only fix if you lose that key.
I would suggest that you attend factory training, but I think the system is actually too old - they don't offer it anymore. It might be advantageous to have the dealer send a HIGHLY QUALIFIED SENIOR GUY (don't let them send just any tech, amke 'erm send someone that has installed Ibex systems, and still works with them regularly.) to give your entire crew a refresher training on how to run the system.

Good Luck!

[Juan Madera]

Yup, it is Ibex. Software version is Jan/2000

Thanks for the information. I was fearful that if the winbox died that all the systems would go idle... or worse. Now I feel better about backing it up or even cloning it on a newer cpu. It is running on win95, will it run on any newer winsoft?

Thanks!
j

[kontrolphreak]

Juan,

Climatec is the Alerton rep in Southern Nevada out of Las Vegas. They took over from the previous rep (Long & Associates which acquired the initial Alerton rep in NV) and might be able to help.

http://www.climatec.com/contact/locations/Nevada

kontrol out

[pcampion]

Hi Guys, I was wondering if anyone knows where to purchase old Alerton legacy products, basically the IBEX controllers. I have a building with three Carrier rooftops, with 30-zones. Apparently the main controller has died and now the controls vendor is telling me the IBEX controllers are no longer available. I may have to get the main controller model, and I can post, but I thought I would check to see if there is a known source. Thx

[Juan Madera]

2ski;

Thought the world fell apart on me a week back. Had a wind, rain and lightning event and while I was in one of the controlled areas, I smelled and felt the heat go on. Mind you, we were having 100F plus days at the time. Went to the office and saw that all 9 TUX were reporting NX.... Rebooted computer and Ibex. No avail. Rebooted all 9 TUX and started getting most of them polling again. Had one TUX that would not function properly. It wanted 4 stages of heat! Another unit, although it would work it reported 134F return air...

Had to replace the two TUX with new controller, so I am a bit more skeptical of the robust theory. I did have a chance to meet with a young IBEX guru who found a manual for me and was much more informative than his salesman boss who came out earlier prior to the panic. Great learning experience for me.

[kontrolphreak]

Hi Guys, I was wondering if anyone knows where to purchase old Alerton legacy products, basically the IBEX controllers. I have a building with three Carrier rooftops, with 30-zones. Apparently the main controller has died and now the controls vendor is telling me the IBEX controllers are no longer available. I may have to get the main controller model, and I can post, but I thought I would check to see if there is a known source. Thx

eBay

kontrol out

[ZeroTolerance]

ph33r do you work for Cohesive Automation in Dallas?

I have DDC that is generic sent out to all my AHU's. Once I edit that DDC file can I send it to all my AHU's VLC devices or do I have to send it to each device individually?

[seigfred]

Is there any available EBT device template for XL Web controller? I coundn't find a suitable template other than those standard templates for alerton controllers only. Or how can I map in the EBT graphics the i/o's from XL WEB (LON I/O modules)?

[CraziFuzzy]

Here's a question for you (I think it's actually a bug in the version of EBT we have - 2.6). The Alarm History is stored immediately in the BacTalk.mdb database file. It is also archived out to individual archive files daily. Here's the problem I'm seeing. When an alarm comes in on, say, day 1, it gets an entry in the BacTalk file. If the alarm is acknowledged or clears, the entry is modified to add the ack_time and/or end_time dates. This is fine. however, if an alarm exists during the archive event, the entry is not updated (the original entry gets sent out to the daily archive file, and when the alarm later clears, the BacTalk database has no entry for it to update, so it just does nothing). This causes a gap in the histories. If any alarm lasts past midnight, it will never have an entry saying WHEN it cleared.

So, on to my actual question: Is this something that is fixed in a subsequent version? As i mentioned, we are currently running version 2.6, and this bug is actually affecting us pretty badly right now. We are trying to build some level of alarm management on top of EBT (which really has none built-in), but this missing information causes problems.

[ampho]

Post them here and I will answer them I have been programming IBEX and BACtalk for a while.

I have just installed Envision for bactalk v2.6

I have installed the bactalk ethernet driver to Local area connection

When I start up Envision and select the network tab in general system setup The primary ethernet adaptor entry appears as none

The BACnet driver is enabled (checked) in the network connection properties dialog box

Is there something else i need to check ?

[CraziFuzzy]

I have just installed Envision for bactalk v2.6

I have installed the bactalk ethernet driver to Local area connection

When I start up Envision and select the network tab in general system setup The primary ethernet adaptor entry appears as none

The BACnet driver is enabled (checked) in the network connection properties dialog box

Is there something else i need to check ?

Are you using BacTalk Ethernet, or BacTalk/IP? I believe the driver is only required for Ethernet.

[rwent13]

Hi Guys - Is there anyone out there that would part with 100' of 12.5pf single pair 24 ga. comm. wire? I'm installing an Alerton system and don't want to purchase a whole 500'-1000' roll. A 100' chunk would do the job (small system). Thanks

[PoleJunk]

I help manage a remote system. It runs Alerton 3.0 and has had ServicePack 4 installed. I have a backup of the system.

I have Alerton 3.0 installed on my computer. I've installed ServicePack 4 and I've restore my backed up system to my computer. My computer put is not connected to the live system. I then installed ServicePack 5. I am looking to get the Enhanced Trendlog Viewer working. It does not show up on in the menu: BACtalk -> Tendlog Management -> Enhanced Trendlog Viewer.

Do you have any ideas why Alerton 3.0 does not show the Enhanced Trendlog Viewer menu?

Thanks,
Polejunk

[CraziFuzzy]

I help manage a remote system. It runs Alerton 3.0 and has had ServicePack 4 installed. I have a backup of the system.

I have Alerton 3.0 installed on my computer. I've installed ServicePack 4 and I've restore my backed up system to my computer. My computer put is not connected to the live system. I then installed ServicePack 5. I am looking to get the Enhanced Trendlog Viewer working. It does not show up on in the menu: BACtalk -> Tendlog Management -> Enhanced Trendlog Viewer.

Do you have any ideas why Alerton 3.0 does not show the Enhanced Trendlog Viewer menu?

Thanks,
Polejunk

Any chance it's just a user permission option not ticked? If you restored your backup, I'm wondering if that option did not exist, and therefore, was not checked.

[JohnLoves2ski]

Click on 'Help' 'about' and ensure that it shows that you are at SP5, and the enhanced trendlog viewer shows as an installed app. If not, some component didn't install correctly.
Is it installed and functioning on the server? (Don't think that matters, just curious)
John

[PoleJunk]

I was trying to run the system without a license key. As soon as I installed the license key the Enhanced Trendlog Viewer showed up on the menu. Thanks for your ideas on this.

I was going to use Enhanced Trendlog Viewer as a tool to query data and push that data into a different database. It doesn't work. Do any of you know a good way to query information from the Alerton system. I have about 30 data strings that I want to process and need a pretty automatic way to query, process and move into a monthly report. That Alerton data will need to be combined with 3 other systems data so I need it to be external from the Alerton system.

Any ideas you have would be greatly appreciated.

[CraziFuzzy]

I've been, just recently, working with the trendlog database. Every trendlog is stored in it's own access database file (.mdb) in the TrendLog folder, named for the device and the trendlog number (from the BacTalk -> Trendlog Management -> Trendlogs screen). The data isn't necessarily sorted by timestamp, but a simply database query should be able to sort that. Me, personally, I've been pulling the data into excel and manipulating via VBA.

[PoleJunk]

Ok Thanks.

I'll give that a shot.

[desert guy]

A customer has a Ibex Micro View with a broken/missing button. We found a source for a new in the box one to replace it and wanted to know if there is any programming involved or if the new one needs to be downloaded. I have been searching for an install manual but alas to no avail.
Any help would be appreciated.