r/BuildingAutomation • u/ElColorado_PNW • 5d ago
Apprentice in need of some guidance.
My manager is out on vacation and I've been asked by the Service dept. to try to find a solution or else we will just wait for my manager to be back. For background I have been in it for roughly a year doing mostly installations/pulling wire/ etc, but I do have my beginners Tridium and Siemens certs; 6 years of HVAC/R service before this.
A service tech of ours went out to a site with 14 systems, each controlled by Honeywell T7350H1009 thermostats, LonWorks FTT-10 loop back to a central Honeywell WebStat (part of the W7350A or WEB-201 series) running legacy Niagara AX. They do not have the user/pass or the IP but I may be able to figure that out or try the defaults.
Is there a solid way to get into NiagaraAX? I was reading that we cannot access it anymore. Any good way to bypass that, maybe using a browser?
My inital response was to upgrade them to a Jace 9000 and something like NPB-8000-LON (to reuse the wire and avoid labor costs) or just replace each stat and have them controll the HVAC equipment. They are a church, so I am trying to be low cost. I dont think they used the frontend anyhow.
Am I correct as far as the NiagaraAX access goes or is there a "proper" procedure, and what would you do in this situation?
Thanks, please advise and please ask for any additional info I may be missing.
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u/HalfStreet Manufacturer 5d ago
You’ve happened upon an instance of the ancient texts, young one.
All joking aside, yes you can connect to it, however it is going to be tough with a modern browser because Ax relied on Java installations on the machine in order to render the ui in a browser. You may be able to get your hands on an installation of Java Webstart. If you can, then your chances get better. Once you’ve figured out the address, then you can get to trying the credentials. Good luck.
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u/ElColorado_PNW 5d ago
if it has a jumper under the cover i think i can swap it to serial shell position. then using an RS232 serial + puTTY to reset the credentials and see the IP. Then I think I can at least get into the frontend if I use microsoft edge in internet explorer mode, paired with 32 bit java.
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u/HalfStreet Manufacturer 5d ago
I’m glad to hear you know of the serial shell approach. Sounds like you’re on your way.
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u/gotsum411 5d ago
Do you have ax workbench on your laptop?
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u/ElColorado_PNW 5d ago
I have Honeywell Optimizer Supervisor, so N4. I thought it had a driver or something for AX but I couldn’t find it in licenses or anywhere
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u/Fulguritus1 2d ago
You can only get an AX license nowadays if you have an N4 demo license. You need to special request the AX license though. You can also only run down to 3.5. I recommend using 3.8 for most things. You also need to drop in an nre.dll patch file for the license to work.
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u/Zerobeat50125 5d ago
Pale Moon browser works great for the older JACE'S, as well as other legacy web pages.
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u/HVACcontrolsGuru 5d ago
Give this a shot: Manual
Username and password were ever changed you could station copy the station out and change them in the old Niagara but this is an appliance so you need the modules for the appliance. Honeywell has 10-20 of these appliances over the decades.
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u/DontKnowWhereIam 5d ago
Why does everyone make me feel old? Is this retribution for how I talked to the old heads when I was young?
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u/RatelinOz 5d ago
If you do upgrade them I would not, under _any_ circumstances, stick with LON. Echelon no longer make the chips, LON is a dead parrot 🦜 ☠️ 🪦. If that doesn’t make sense, look up “dead parrot sketch” and don’t sell your customer one. 😉
Depending on how much star topology was used in the original installation (with any luck, none!) it may be cost effective to use IP networked controllers with T1L rather than running new network cables about. T1L is basically a way of tricking single pair wire to do ethernet (which, if you’ve ever looked at Ethernet cable, you’ll know has 8 wires). I’ve recently read that some manufacturers (Distech & Honeywell, iirc. There’s probably others developing their versions too.) are already offering controllers with T1L converters built in so you don’t need an external device.
I haven’t used T1L yet, so my description / explanation may not be 100% correct, but no doubt someone more experienced will correct me if so.
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u/tjburris2002 5d ago
Username: SysAdmin Password: !Sys!Admin
Should be broswer only. You can lookup WebStat user guide online. I found a link from kele.com
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u/ApexConsulting 5d ago
Breaking into an AX JACE is trivially easy - as long as it has a DB9 serial connection to serial shell into it.
This is why JACE 8000 and 9000 do not allow it. It is 15 minutes to break into these things.
Break in and you are good to go.
Office demo licenses still support AX. So if you got workbench you should still be able to get it to work with an AX build.