r/BuildingAutomation

The BACnet MS/TP specification recommends a maximum practical bus length of 1200m/4000ft (approx) and so does the RS-485 specification (at 38.4kbps). This seems insanely long to me in our building automation environment. Does anyone have any real data on the longest (reliable) installations out there? (Baud vs length (vs devices))

Need some good Graphics templates for my projects as the default one which we have is not good any way to create a good one ?

Hi guys!

I was interning for a BMS company last summer and did some user interview and research, targeting mainly the company's products and platforms but also BMS as a whole. What I learned was that many dashboards are a source of information overload rather than clarity, which kind of defeats the purpose.

I decided to make an AI-based dashboard analysis tool to address this issue. After rounds of trial-and-error, I set on a browser extension which grabs information by html scraping rather than API calls. It beats screenshotting and asking a chatbot by being able to grab the entire dashboard and maintaining context. It can also generate summary reports based on previously analyzed dashboards.

I'm still actively working on bug fixes and new features, but the main issue I'm facing at this point is a lack of other sets of eyes, especially from people who are dealing with BMS all day every day. I was hoping that you guys could potentially give it a try and lmk if it actually improves your workflow, and if there's anything you'd like to see, or if there are any issues.

It is free and publicly available on chrome and edge extension store. Here's the website: seenzi.ai

Thank you so much, and I'm looking forward to your feedbacks!!

TL;DR: built a free browser extension that does AI analysis on BMS dashboards, looking for feedbacks

After two years as a Tech 1, I’ve been promoted to Tech 2.
It happened after I had a conversation with my soon to be employer about what I’m good at, what I genuinely enjoy doing, and the areas I’m still working to get better at. Being honest about both my strengths and areas I need to work on really make them take a liking of me.
I’m young, and by far the youngest guy at both my current and future company, but when they asked if I was ready to step up, I said yes.
You only live once. Excited (and a little nervous) to take on the new responsibilities — wish me luck.

Johnson Controls has indeed officially introduced Node-RED integration in Metasys 16.0, specifically launching the Metasys Node-RED API Nodes 1.0.

Does anybody know any good techs looking for work in San Antonio?

Having to buy all my tools after moving country. Previously my jobs had supplied everything as I was always in house so I’m realising the expense to get everything at once is not super fun. After my last question got the Klein blue strippers they’re great no issues thanks everyone for your replies.

I reckon 11-1 Klein as it’s always served me well never used the impact one not sure if that is a good buy? Won’t be working with anything over 24V, should my precisions be insulated? Trying not to rack up a massive bill right away. I’ve got my mm thinking an adjustable and side cutters should cover my basics?

What will get me through 90% if service calls, what’s your fix most things setup?

Howdy everyone, my company has a small maintenance contract with a building that a few years ago, a controls company implemented a Siemens chiller plant controller. This controller has begun to act up, for some reason it's got priority 1 overrides on the chiller's isolation valves, continues to drop its IP comms unit reset, and I'd like to get into the programming to view this logic and maybe some runtime logs.

Long story short we tried to login to the device, but no credentials, and I thought that if we could get into the controller, we could view programs and see the logic behind it, however that was not the case and after some research we needed ABT Site to view this information.

BUT, now that I've got ABT site, I've found the place controller on the network, I'm stuck as to where to begin in viewing the programming. I've deducted that I would need to (Upload or Download) the configured device into my ABT Site, but I don't want to press the wrong one and send down a blank configuration. I've found a old siemens controller for practice but unfortunately didn't have Its IP to connect.

How would I be able to view the programming in this chiller controller? Do I upload from the device (this terminology sounds very backwards but I believe thats how its used), and then I can see how it was configured? Or do I press download to my computer (ABT Site) and view it.

OR is there an easier way to do this?

Thanks everyone, my first time working with the siemens environment.

I can't seem to enable the foxsPort in 4.15.4. I have some JACEs that are not currently on 4.15 and I need to use 4911 to communicate with them over the Niagara network. I had to unhide the slots associated with the Foxs port in the FoxService on the Supervisor, and it will not let me uncheck the "read only" flag so that I can enable Foxs. Am I missing something here?

ETA: Looks like my station is stuck in "starting" status in the application director, I assume that has something to do with it so I'll be dealing with that issue now instead.

ETA Part 2, Application Director Boogaloo: Our glorious Honeywell overlords did not have all of the components of a jar file that we're not even using in whatever version of Optimizer we copied the Honeywell modules over from, I can't remember if it was the rt, ux, or wb jar file but once I got that in there the station was able to get to "running" and the Foxs port works fine now. Thank you to everyone that answered, mystery solved I guess.

Pros? Cons? Opinions?

This would be used with Jace8000/9000 and N4 servers.

We're going to start start putting these on jobs. Got an introduction into both. Wanted opinions from you guys using them.

The daily posts are inconceivable

Scary

But, they are on Reddit for tech support

This what employers are hiring

Hi all,

We've been asked to integrate around 40 Dahua CCTV cameras via Dahua DSS into a BMS platform.

At the moment, the customer's specification is quite vague, so I'm not entirely clear on what level of integration they're expecting. Are they looking to display live camera feeds within the BMS, or are they simply expecting alarm and status monitoring from the CCTV system?

Personally, displaying live video through the BMS seems like a less-than-ideal approach, as I'd imagine the Dahua DSS software would provide a much better user experience for viewing and managing cameras than anything available within Tridium.

I have a meeting later today which should hopefully clarify the requirements, but in the meantime, has anyone carried out a similar integration with Dahua DSS? If so, what functionality was implemented and how straightforward was it?

The customer has provided some documentation, but to be honest, much of it is difficult to interpret without a clearer understanding of what they're actually trying to achieve.
See link here: Integration With DSS - Zhejiang Dahua Technology Co., Ltd.

Thanks in advance.

Yeah, I’ve started noticing the transition between careers. As a control guy, you’re stuck at the job site all day until your programming and graphics are complete. Then, you have to wait on tabs to fix more issues. Finally, commissioning comes around, and by then, you’re pulling all-nighters. Most controls guys we encounter the day before we start are exhausted. Lately, I’ve noticed that commissioning is much smoother compared to being a controls guy without a life. Siemens seems to be struggling to keep up with the projects they have, and JCI is never the best at having employees on site. TDI keeps trying to contract out control guys, but every single one I encounter is fresh in the industry and doesn’t know a thing. I also notice that they don’t pay control guys what they’re worth. This is a significant problem, and I’ve been saying it for a while. Control guys should be paid at a higher level, and this is a major issue that needs to be addressed. With commissioning, we show up with a list to go over, and most of the time, none of the controls guys are ready, and we either fail the systems or we try to push out what we need to do or can do. I will say commissioning is a way smoother career; however, travel is the only thing I know people don’t like doing. I travel Monday through Thursday, usually home on weekends, and writing up detail reports and basically being a site inspector, that’s pretty much it as a commissioning engineer.