Building Automation Knowledge Base

Issue Integration to CAN bus protocol Environment I/A Series R2 I/A Series G3 Cause There is a need to integrate to devices where the available communications protocol is CAN bus.  Resolution I/A Series does not have a driver for CAN bus protocol. A third party converter / gateway can be used to convert CAN bus to a standard protocol available in I/A Series.  The following company was found after a search on the Internet. They offer solution for CAN bus to various communications protocols. http://www.adfweb.com/home/default.asp http://www.adfweb.com/home/about/about.asp   Note: Please note Schneider Electric do not endorse this product but provide this option as a workable solution. All support issues related to these products should be sent directly to their support centers.

Issue Does the oBIX service in I/A Series R2 require the web services license feature to operate? Environment I/A Series R2, UNC, oBIX Cause Licensing requirements for I/A Series oBIX Resolution The web services and associated license feature (webUi) is not required to run the oBIX service in an I/A Series R2 station.  The feature line in the R2 license must include obix. UNC example ... features=coreRuntime;bacnet;lonworks;obix If the license does not include the obix feature, purchase part number IA-DRV-OBIX for each Enterprise Server / UNC that needs to function as an oBIX server.

Issue The suggested Belkin Bluetooth adapter is obsolete.  Is there a suggested replacement for use with RoamIA? Environment Roam IA BACnet MSTP communications Cause The suggested Belkin adapter is no longer available. Resolution Two alternates have been found to function well with the RoamIA; they are the AZIO BTD-V400 and SMK VP-6495.  Both of these devices are very compact and use Bluetooth v4.0 technology.

Issue How long will it take for a MNB controller to drop to 'Read-Only' mode when the AC power supply voltage drops below 20.4 Vac? Environment MNB controllers Cause Site installation using one AC transformer for multiple controllers.  Site is also suffering brownout conditions. Resolution Factory testing confirms that it takes only one AC cycle of power (i.e. one complete sine wave) of voltage below 20.4 Vac for the controller to drop into 'Read-Only' mode. It is difficult to view with a standard digital multimeter.  A scope may be required to capture the voltage dip.

Issue The jobsite will eventually have 4 RS-485 trunks each communicating Modbus.  Two option cards have been ordered with the Jace (part# TRD-NPB-2X-485). Does each port on the option cards need a separate Modbus driver purchased for each? Environment Niagara G3 Cause Ordering/licensing clarification Resolution Purchasing one Modbus driver (part# ENC-DRV-MOD) will cover all ports used for Modbus on the Jace-6/7.

Issue Continuously repeated errors in Standard Output Window of R2 (Niagara) station,  "Set timer for tag: (an integer) :400" and "Clear timer for tag: (same integer)" . The integer increments by one about every second until it reaches 128, then reverses the count, counting down by one into negative numbers. Environment I/A Series R2 UNC with the GCM driver Network 8000 GCM Cause The cause of the problem was resolved with the gcm-2.304.530b.v1.jar. Resolution This is considered a nuisance error, and was corrected in the gcm-2.304.530b.v1.jar.

Issue The Enterprise Server’s archives are not updating and the following message is displayed in the Standard Output Window:      ERROR: LogService.archive: SQL Exception: Container 1,342,197,790,972 not found.      ERROR: LogService.archive: Force close of Connection!      WARNING: Closed Pooled connection [ConnectionPool]      ERROR: XSCH1: Container 1,342,197,790,972 not found.   Environment Niagara R2 Enterprise Server – all versions Cause The “SQL Exception” error and “Closed pooled connection” warning appears to indicate a corruption within the Cloudscape SQL database. Resolution In this instance, the app folder became corrupt when copied between builds during an upgrade.  The original app folder was simply recopied. The second copy of the app folder copied without errors.   The following would apply in instances were the original app folder is corrupt:  First, try and recover the Cloudscape database and repair the corruption using the console and the dbadmin command.  After stopping the station, open the console and run the command at the prompt:            dbadmin >  recover  The software will search through the Cloudscape SQL database and attempt to clear the errors and recover the database.  If this is unsuccessful, you may have to remove the APP folder from the station and start over.    To remove the Enterprise Server’s app folder: Stop the server’s database and delete its app folder.  A new app folder will be created when the server is restarted.    Note: All archived information will be lost when the app folder is deleted.          

Issue Is there a replacement RJ-11 to BACnet MSTP cable for I/A Series Roam IA? Environment Roam IA, MNB-ROAM-IA Cause Need to replace cable. Resolution The part number for the replacement RJ-11 to BACnet MSTP cable for Roam IA is MNB-ROAM-CBL.

Issue I/A Series R2 station fails to send BACnet alarm to a third-party system.  The error indicates tridiumx.bacnet.BACnetException E_BACNET_UNRESOLVED_DEVICE_ADDRESS. Environment I/A Series R2, BACnet Cause A notification class and BACnet recipient have been configured with a BACnet device instance however an error is generated for each alarm attempt.  The error log indicates that there is an unresolved device address. tridiumx.bacnet.BACnetException E_BACNET_UNRESOLVED_DEVICE_ADDRESS   at tridiumx.bacnet.services.BACnetTransport.sendConfirmedRequestSimple (bytecode 21)   at tridiumx.bacnet.notification.BACnetNotification.sendRequest (bytecode 9)   at tridiumx.bacnet.notification.AsyncEventNotificationRequest.execute (bytecode 15)   at tridium.services.helpers.AsynchronousRequestHelper.processMsg (bytecode 4)   at tridium.services.helpers.MessageQueueHelper.run (bytecode 23)   at java.lang.Thread.run (line 5) Resolution For the alarm to work, the station must contain the associated BACnet device object for the target device.  This provides the information required to properly route the alarm (e.g. IP address, device instance, etc.).  In addition, the target device must be online and able to receive and process BACnet alarms.  Use the BACnet service BACnetUtility and learnNetwork command to create the BACnet device objects for the target devices. Additional details can be found in the I/A Series R2 BACnet Integration Reference Guide (Configuring for BACnet Alarm Generation) included with the R2 documentation.  These requirements and restrictions apply to Niagara BACnet alarm generation: Only Niagara objects that are exposed as BACnet objects can generate BACnet alarms. This means only alarms from Niagara AIs, AOs, BIs, BOs, MSIs, and MSOs can be routed to BACnet devices (Calendar and Schedule objects are not alarmable). This draws from the BACnet requirement that every alarm message must contain the BACnet object ID of its source. Only local objects in a station can generate BACnet alarms. Therefore, a Enterprise Server station cannot generate a BACnet alarm on behalf of an object in a subordinate station. If a subordinate station needs to generate a BACnet alarm, it must be configured with the BACnet service and the appropriate recipient(s). A separate BACnetRecipient must be created for each remote device to which BACnet alarms must be routed (one-to-one BACnetRecipient to device). Alarms are not regenerated. If a BACnet device is down when the Niagara system sends an alarm, the alarm is not saved for retransmission later. The Niagara system, of course, still maintains a record of the alarm in its buffer. The Niagara system does not support setting up a third-party BACnet system to receive BACnet alarms, configure its notification classes, and so forth. All alarm configuration and setup must be done using the system’s native tools.

Issue The message “Unsupported Unconfirmed service” is displayed in the Standard output Window of an UNC-520. Environment Niagara G3, R2, UNC-520, ENC-520 Cause Some manufactures’ BACnet controllers use unconfirmed service which the UNC/ENC does not handle so they are ignored by the UNC/ENC. Resolution These are nuisance messages which cause no issues. The messages can be ignored.

Issue Using Vykon Alarm Services no sound is played on alarm popup, sound is enabled in both server and clients. Default sound is enabled and valid (operates in Windows when tested) and same for object level alarm sound. Have entered object level alarming parameters with pipe symbol, sc and tag in alarm text but even the default global sound doesn't work Environment Niagara R2 Vykon Alarm Client Cause The Vykon Alrm Client only supports wav files in standard PCM format, wav files that use compression codecs (e.g. mpeg3, etc.) do not work. Resolution Right click on the sound files and view the properties. The summary tab typically indicates the audio format. (for information on audio formats see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_file_format)  There are free utilities such as Moo0 Audio Converter that can be used to convert audio file formats

Issue Getting Error: Class ID error when starting WorkPlace Tech. Environment WorkPlace Tech installation Cause The error indicates WorkPlace Tech is having problems working with RTMonitor. Resolution Remove the newest LDV driver first then the older ones and then uninstall and reinstall WPT. During the install WPT will load the LDV driver it requires.  

Issue A MSC-MPC MicroSmart controller (revision 10) was replaced with the only available MSC-MPC on-site.  The replacement is a revision 11 controller.  Will a backup copy of the database from the revision 10 controller work in the revision 11 controller? Environment DMS MicroSmart MSC-MPC MSC-MPC-001 Cause No available revision 10 controllers Resolution Yes, the revision 10 database will work in the revision 11 controller.  OPRIF (the DMS-MicroSmart) programming tool) will prompt the user with a warning that the database file is not for the revision 11 controller.  Go ahead and continue with the download. Once complete, the unit displays in the MicroSmart controller may show up blank in OPRIF but the points are there and working.  Use the Point Configuration screen to scroll through all the points.  The only way to correct this display issue is to re-create each point from scratch which is time-consuming.  All the MicroSmart points linked to the DMS will restore properly.  So, from the DMS level, all the points will work normally and display normally.

Issue After upgrading a station to version 3.7,  saving and backing up the station fails every time. Any changes made in the station are erased once Workbench is closed Environment Niagara G3 version 3.7 Cause This is a new bug in 3.7, and should be fixed with next major release (3.8).  Control points copied from inside the BacnetNetwork to outside the BacnetNetwork causes the issue.   Resolution Control points with BBacnetProxyExt who are descendants of any Bacnet Network should be fine. You need to look for places you copied a control point from inside the BacnetNetwork to outside the BacnetNetwork.  There is a workaround: 1. In the station, go to Config > Services > ProgramService. Click the "Find Objects" button 2. In the Bql Query Builder window click the "Of type" drop-down, and select (Custom Type) 3. In the middle drop-down, select bacnet. In the right-most drop-down, select BacnetProxyExt. Click OK. A list of BACnet objects will appear 4. If any BacnetProxyExts show up outside the bacnet network, then their parent control point needs to be deleted, or replaced with a regular control point without a BBacnetProxyExt Proxy Extension  

Issue Job site has a Niagara G3 station integrated with several Xenta 301 controllers.  Can the Menta programming tool be used via LON tunneling through the station to re-program the Xenta controllers on an as-needed basis? Environment Niagara G3 Xenta controllers Cause Field request for ease of programming Resolution Tunneling via a Niagara G3 station to Xenta controllers is not possible.  A direct-connection is required.

Issue A 3rd party BACnet/MSTP controller was added to an existing ENC-520 running version 3.5.25.  All points from the controller were added to the ENC station successfully.  When adding these new points to the server, most of the points added except for two.  An 'invalid facets' error gets generated for the two points.  The points that were added successfully were pressure, temperature, and speed points.  The two points that did not add were flow points.  The server is running version 3.3.22. Environment Niagara G3 3.3.22 and 3.5.25 Cause The default engineering units changed between versions 3.3 and 3.5. Resolution Replace the units.xml file (lib folder) in the 3.3.22 server with the units.xml file from a 3.5 server.  Restart the station.  The points should now add successfully.

Issue A MN-Sx sensor is installed more than 200 feet away (the maximum specified) from a MNL controller. The dynamic temperature value drops in and out at the controller.  Is there a repeater that can be installed to improve communications? Environment MNL MN-Sx Cause Cable run extends beyond the specified 200 feet. Resolution There is no repeater available that can be used for the MN-Sx cable run.

Issue UNC stops communicating with LonWorks devices. The following messages are seen in the UNC's standard output. Opened lon / LON1 >>> Lon Driver opened!   ERROR: readProperty() failed for property tridiumx.lonworks.LonException E_LON_INVALID_MSG_CODE Opened lon / LON1 >>> Lon Driver opened! Opened lon / LON >>> Lon Driver opened! Opened lon / LON1 >>> Lon Driver opened! Environment I/A Series UNC-520 LonWorks communications Cause The standard output of the UNC shows that the UNC LON port and LON driver were successfully opened and indicates no error. The cause of the problem is unknown at this time.  Resolution Current workaround is as follows: In the UNC station, go to Services > LonWorksService > LonDeviceManager. Select the LocalLonDevice and Commission it. 

Issue New pc hardware was supplied for the server.  A new IP address was configured in Windows.  Tried adding it to the Network Settings tab in Admin Tool.  The numbers added to the fields are not retained. Environment Niagara R2 Cause new  pc hardware Resolution The IP address entered into Windows is sufficient.  Adding the same information to the Network tab in Admin Tool is NOT required. Treat the Network tab for a server station as 'read-only'.

Issue Can I edit the "covIncrement" of a BACnet point in a BACnet controller from the ENC? Environment G3 ENC's Cause This may be necessary to increase the covIncrement of a BACnet point if it is triggering excessive "cov notifications" to the ENC. Resolution In revision 3.2 and newer under the Device object a new selection called “Virtual” was added. BACnet virtual points are transient and are created and subscribed only when accessed. Expand Virtual and all the BACnet objects in the device are listed. Right click the object of interest and all of its properties are displayed, including covIncrement. Expand covIncrement and its value can be changed. When the Save is done the value is written to the controller.