Integrating Legacy Systems

[coolh2o]

Is anybody integrating legacy systems such as Andover and Powers with BacNet and Lon? If so, what kind of front end are you using.

[fms2k]

"Legacy" Powers (now Siemens) building automation systems are difficult to work with because, from what I've seen, none of the companies out there that provide integration products have software drivers written for the old System 600 product, if that's what you're refering to by "legacy" Powers. I think that once someone makes those drivers available the integration with BACnet & LonWorks will become "do able". As for "legacy" Andover products, if you're refering to products like the AC8 & AC256, there are drivers out there that can get you to BACnet or Lon. Check out a company by the name of Enflex at http://www.enflex.net - they have a nice assortment of drivers available for their web servers.

[coolh2o]

We have been using Tridium for legacy integration. http://www.tridium.com Works well with all Andover stuff Infinity and AC256.

[davem]

Since Tridium now offers a "Configurable Serial Driver", theoretically a tech with enough patience (and a bit of help from the legacy manufacturer) could "create" a driver for many of the legacy systems out there. With no auto-discovery routines or other tricks to pave the way, I imagine you'd need to know the nuts-and-bolts of how the legacy driver worked - as well as any manufacturer tech support does, anyway.

We've had excellent success using Tridium's Auto-Matrix driver to replace the original front-end with Tridium's - but then again, we know the structure of Auto-Matrix's protocol almost as well as the factory, anyway.

Of course, to hold to the original point of this thread, I'm assuming that everyone knows that Tridium hardware talks LON and BACnet(/IP, that is) right out of the box, and quite easily converts all legacy (or even LON) points to BACnet points.

[ctrussell]

Where did you get the drivers for the Andover Infinity System, I have a large site with Andover Controls in Florida that I need to upgrade

[coolh2o]

Originally posted by ctrussell
Where did you get the drivers for the Andover Infinity System, I have a large site with Andover Controls in Florida that I need to upgrade

Tridum provides the Andover drivers. I have done several Andover/Tridium upgrades almost seamlessly.

[sysint]

Fieldserver makes Bendover drivers.

Tridium finally is getting me interested now that they will start working with Loytec. They were kind of poor with LON before that.

[davem]

Tridium has supported dozens of manufacturers of LON products for the last few years. My latest version of the Tridium software has software models for over 130 manufacturers and hundreds of their controllers and other LON devices. In one instance (Honeywell), the commissioning software for many of their controllers is integrated right into the Tridium software as a programming "wizard". Not LON "poor" at all! Certainly worth a look if you're doing extensive amounts of LON integration.

[sysint]

Want to bet? How many LON devices can you put on a JACE?

I'm not talking about how many profiles you have at all. Big deal. I can install any LON device as well. Without a framework on top of it. That wasn't what I was stating.

EDIT- I'll just explain it to you... Have the Neuron? Sure you do. Well, there's your bottleneck. Now, what is your device restriction again?

[Edited by sysint on 01-12-2005 at 04:54 PM]

[davem]

Well, sysint, in my ignorance I assumed that Loytec was simply one of the hundreds of LON manufacturers out there that you had some affinity for. My apologies. With a tiny amount of digging, I see what Loytec is all about.
Which brings the question, what is Tridium dealing with Loytec on? Certainly Tridium is hampered by the typical 64-node-per-segment (without repeaters and routers) restriction that everyone is, and the theoretical limits of 32,000+ nodes (entirely impractical, of course, even with the best of routers and such), but do Loytec's products assist in terms of bandwidth (another crippling factor in overly large LON installations), or in sheer numbers of nodes? For HVAC control purposes, more than a few hundred nodes on any given network is not very common...but if Loytec can make even a few hundred nodes talk more efficiently, it'd be nice to see the results of their collaboration.

[sysint]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by davem
Which brings the question, what is Tridium dealing with Loytec on? Certainly Tridium is hampered by the typical 64-node-per-segment (without repeaters and routers)[quote]

I do much better with Loytec. Also, from a practical standpoint isn't Tridium JACE closer to 40 in practical applications? That's what I see in my neck of the woods. Loytec has an IP852 NIC, they are very good at jacking up throughput.

For HVAC control purposes, more than a few hundred nodes on any given network is not very common...but if Loytec can make even a few hundred nodes talk more efficiently, it'd be nice to see the results of their collaboration.

How many JACE do you utilize in a 200 node network?
What area are you from?

[sysint]

Dave- get back to me before Monday. Thanks.

[davem]

Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, we typically run JACE's with far less than 100 LON nodes each. Some integrators around here push the limit with well over 100, but suffer horrible throughput times and overall network management problems ("dirty" bindings, etc...). So, we've found that 60-70 nodes (meaning typical VAV controllers and a handful of airhdandlers) is the practical limit. Of course, that also requires the right JACE - a 403 has only 64MB of RAM, while the preferred 512 has 128MB.
On a 200 node project, we'd probably go with 3 or 4 of the 512's - that gives plenty of RAM space for logic and graphical elements.

That's obviously the other thing about laying Tridium over a LON network. I can't think of a single installation by any integrator in our area that utilizes the theoretical "flat" network, where LON nodes deal exclusively with other nodes, with no other supervisory-type of controller. All installations around here use some sort of supervisor, and the Tridium solution works fairly well for that purpose - a nice GUI, SNVT muxing/demuxing, logic, etc...and all that stuff takes quite a bit of RAM that could otherwise be used for managing large numbers of nodes.