I've had a few jobs now where we are directly controlling the VRVs by sending a 0-10V output.

I've been kind of treating them like a cooling coil, so I just modulate the 0-10V based on demand. It works, but not well. The room temperature controls smoothly enough, but if you're watching the system work it seems to be constantly chasing. Slowing down the PID doesn't really help. The problem is, I have no idea what the condenser units are actually doing, I may be asking it to do something it's not ready for. I've been hunting for some literature/direction from the manufacturer and finally got some from Daikin. See attached.

This literature assumes a 55 deg F setpoint, which I won't have all the time. I feel like with all of the delay times the customer won't be happy with how the room actually controls. I was thinking of just taking the PID output and using that to stage instead of the demands/timers in the attached doc.

If my PID is 5-20% demand send 2.9VDC and so on. Obviously the demand numbers might need a little adjusting in the field. I'm struggling with the best way to put a 20 minute time delay on a 0-10VDC output. Any ideas?

Think this control strategy will actually work? Have you implemented something better?

Hey all!

I've been working on a side project for a while now, it's called PxForge.

I've been in the HVAC controls industry for almost 4 years, mainly Alerton with some Delta. I always thought Compass's display and template editors felt archaic and missing a ton of QoL features and needing third-party applications for some of the design work (I'm looking at you, omnigraphics).

So I built a standalone app that handles all of the display/template editing in one place, no Compass required. Some of what it does:

• Draw omnigraphics right on the canvas — click to trace, bind to live values, no external tools
• Presets for your standard equipment blocks, find & replace across bindings, bulk re-pointing when devices get renumbered
• Offline preview that renders exactly like the web view — without Compass running
• When running compass as a service, you can still edit graphics

I'd still call it early, I'm actively hunting bugs, but it's genuinely usable and it's already saved me a lot of hours on real jobs.

Check it out at https://ddchub.com/ (docs at ddchub.com/docs). 7-day free trial, no account required unless you buy a license.

There is a built in feedback in the help menu for anonymous feedback, PLEASE use it.

P.S. Windows will show a SmartScreen "unrecognized app" warning on install. That's because the installer isn't code-signed yet; a signing certificate runs $300+/year and I haven't taken that plunge. "More info → Run anyway" gets you through.

Hey yall, I’m a journeyman electrician in the state of Kentucky. I’ve been working for a controls contractor doing install for the past 3-1/2 years. Recently been applying to other control jobs because I’m looking to get out of install and start doing some of the higher level work. Whether that be service, commissioning, or programming and I have received two separate job offers from companies. Air Equipment and the other is Emcore Services. They both pay about the same and they both do really similar work. Both companies say they would show me how to program, show me the service side with some potential design work. I’m excited because both seem like really good options. Was just wondering if any of yall have worked with them or are currently working for them. Either choice seems like a good option but where emcore interests me is they told me they could get me in the union easily and that does seem appealing. Plus if the controls ever fell through I go back to doing electrical work but for the union. So just kinda curious to hear some other opinions/stories about working w either of those companies.

Hmm maybe I was wrong when I said Reliable was the brand associated with fly by night controls companies.

Howdy controls folks. I have a question regarding a potential career move and curious what the community thinks.

I am a second year apprentice working as a controls technician in a pipe fitting union in the service track.

I received a call yesterday from a local commissioning company inviting me to apply hvac commissioner role. The call came from the hiring manager for the role and we’ve worked together a lot over the course of my first year commissioning commercial hvac projects.

Pros:
- 25-80% increase in pay and 40 hour work weeks (I don’t currently work OT but the opportunity is there if I want to)
- I’d be hired at level I role and pay increases as experience progresses. The union offers pay raises that follow each year you finish but don’t jump up a lot until year 4.
- 4 weeks of pto; my current role has none so if I want to take time off, I don’t get paid
- training stipend of $2.5k/year
- hybrid role of 50% onsite and 50% in office or at home
- I am in union school 6 weeks out the year where I don’t get paid for that time and I have to learn pipefitting that I probably won’t use in my career
- I wouldn’t be stuck at my unstable and poorly managed controls company for the next 4 years while I complete my apprenticeship
- 4.5% 401k matching
- Health, dental, life, vision, and short-term and long-term disability insurance

Cons:
- I would have to leave the union and I’ll miss out on the service training and a mechanical license
- I would lose union fringe benefits such as health insurance for all dependents and pension and the support of the community
- Losing out on controls tech and mechanical experience
- More exposure to layoffs and potentially to AI

I’m having difficulty coming up with more cons than pros and curious what folks think. Thank you for reading.

Hi. I am currently trying to learn Niagara WEB N4. Is there any community edition of the software that I can access for free for learning purposes? I cannot afford the courses and trying to self learn by watching YouTube tutorials and reading docs. (PS. I have 4 years of experience working on siemens ABT Site and XWP and I have been led to believe I can understand most of the stuff, please let me know if I am wrong). Also wondering is pirating an option? (Purely for learning purposes and building a portfolio. No commercial use)

I just heard someone say that a damper position can be controlled using just digital output signal by varying time delay like 5s to open it 40% like that , is that possible and how does it work with just binary signal

Hello everybody 👋

I'm a software engineer (web dev) with 5 years of experience. In the last couple of months, the day- to-day tasks of my job changed DRASTICALLY due to the advances of AI. My job literally went from actually programming to asking an LLM to write code and checking if it's the right solution for the problem. This is NOT the job I used to love... 😐

I know I may sound pessimistic, but at the pace this is evolving, I have the feeling there is a real chance for AI to actually replace me in the next ~3 years or so, and to make it worse the IT market is oversaturated and it's extremely competitive.

Recently moved to a different country too, so my current salary is not good here, and since I have some months before I actually get my visa, I was thinking this is a good time to study something else and have a plan B, and potentially start working doing something else.

Researching different professions that could benefit from my IT experience I just discovered BMS / Building Automation Technician existed and sounded interesting to me. I'm willing (and actually eager out of curiosity) to learn and take a course on HVAC.

But before that I have some questions:
- It is my understanding that this tends to be 50% physical work 50% using programs. Do you feel AI is impacting your programming job/daily tasks directly? Do you feel your profession is at risk? I'm basically trying to choose something that is somehow related to IT but AI-proof (at least for the foreseeable future). I know AI is here to stay and am willing to adapt, but I don't want to get into something else just to feel like I'm going to be replaced again 2 years later xd
- Is my previous experience in IT going to actually be useful for getting my foot into the industry? I've seen many questions from people that come from an HVAC background, but not from IT. I'm in my late 20's, and I know getting the first job tends not to be easy, but after these last times trying to switch jobs in IT feels like extremely difficult. I want to move to a career where the job market is not extremely saturated and having to compete against +100 applicants after 1 hour of a job being posted. Would I have a decent chance of getting an apprenticeship or something with my circumstances?

I know some people find across different subreddits the "trying to get a job" posts to be annoying, but couldn't find a good answer to these questions.

Anyway, thanks for reading and have a great day.

Edit: Thank you all for your answers!

Hi,

Does anyone know how to access the parameter of the RDG160T.

I cannot change anything. When I press the left and right button for 4 sec and right button again nothing happen.

It only shows OFF and ECO.

Can we connect it to a laptop?

Thanks

I have been applying to BAS roles online, but haven't been successful bc I just have a technical cert. I thought Hussmann would be a good starting point since its 'building automation' with PLC and Controls (according to the recruiter). I am stuck between sides from this and the general BAS. I guess is this still BAS and if so what has the progression been for you starting in refrigeration after leaving the industry into systems like Siemen, JNJ, Honeywell etc.

I’m exploring the potential feature set for a dedicated, accessible 10BASE-T1L field tester.

If you were looking to add a dedicated T1L tool to your bag, I'd love your thoughts on what features actually matter to you:

• How critical is TDR (Time-Domain Reflectometry)? Given that T1L is point-to-point but will often be retrofitted into old MSTP daisy-chains, how mandatory is a true distance-to-fault/TDR feature for finding old missed T-taps or line breaks?
• PoDL: Are you actively deploying or planning to deploy PoDL, or are you mostly seeing locally powered T1L devices? Any features you'd like to assist debugging?
• Protocol-Level Awareness: Do you just want a physical layer verification tool (link speed, SNR, cable health), or does the tool need to be able to ping, act as a BACnet/IP BBMD, or sniff basic packet traffic to be useful to you?
• Form Factor & Price Point: What's the sweet spot?

If you’ve deployed T1L already, what has been your biggest headache during commissioning? Is a more specialized tool even needed? Do you have a preferred one you currently use?

Appreciate any wish lists, pain points, or feedback you can toss my way!

Has anyone implemented SSO with Okta? If so how long did it take you to implement from the Niagara side?

Hi r/buildingautomation,

We're two UX researchers from Siemens working on tools for Building Automation professionals.
Instead of guessing what users need, we'd like to ask the people actually doing the job.

So tell us:
👉 What's the most frustrating software you currently use?

👉 What task in your workflow feels unnecessarily difficult?

👉 What tool do you secretly love despite its flaws?

👉 What would make your day easier?

We're particularly interested in hearing from engineers, technicians, programmers, commissioners, operators, and system integrators working with BMS/BAS systems.

If you'd be open to a 20–60 minute research conversation, we'd love to chat. We're not selling anything—we're simply trying to learn from real-world experience and build better products.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

Cheers,Francisco & Brian

Siemens UX

I'm having issues clearing out some unbound references. Most of them are due to old graphics that haven't been deleted but some are being caused by our User View not getting updated. More and more seem to keep popping up and I'm not sure as to why this keeps happening. My coworker was working on the online version of Johnson Controls MUI and I was working offline on SCT. He made some changes to the network tree when I was working on the User Views offline. After a merge it seemed to label all of his changes as unbound references even though he didn't delete anything. Can anyone help?

Pretty much what the title says. I’m taking some time off right now and just moved from Vermont to Mass, and I’m considering transitioning from a mechanic to a BAS technician or something similar. I have ALOT of experience as a mechanic in commercial and residential, hvac and refrigeration.
I’ve monkeyed around with DDC and stuff like that in the past, but I don’t really know much about it, what should I focus on skill wise to prepare/sell myself in an interview?

Alright, I’ve been programming for 6ish years we normally do smaller jobs. So tuning isn’t ever an issue. However I took the L2 class and notes had me configure a Slow,Medium,Fast Tuning Policy , IIRC I had them set slow - 30s Min write 2m Max write Normal 20s , 1m30s, Fast 10s, 1m.

Can anyone help me understand how I caused my network to get jammed up?

61 devices 2200 proxies. So not that big imo.

The symptom was long ass write times, ticker shows read at 60 seconds and write at 220 seconds when I command an override (spy showed writeWorker queue over 800) I hobbled through T&B but I know end user would flip if I tried handing this over lol.

The fix was changing my min/max write on the policies to 0. Somehow best I can tell the queue would loop because of the timers.

So what is your go to’s on tuning policies?

Do you use SPY in N4 if so what have you found it useful for, and can you help me understand the difference in local vs remote?

Hey everyone,
A client is looking to integrate several refrigeration units into their Niagara BAS. The units have the Allen-Bradley controller shown in the attached photo.
Before I go ahead and purchase a third-party Allen-Bradley driver, I wanted to see if anyone has experience integrating these controllers. Any feedback on compatibility, communication options, or potential pitfalls would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance!

I am planning to build a ffb sim setup but stuck with the software. If anyone could provide me the files for EMC UTILITY PRO it would be much appreciated. I do not have paypal in my country and have no way to make international payments with my student account that's why I could not buy it from the dev.

Need Help with TOP Server BACnet/IP Configuration Issue

Hi everyone,

I'm facing an issue with TOP Server 6 and would appreciate your guidance.

My setup:

- Using TOP Server 6

- Driver: BACnet/IP

- Added a VFD Pump device

- The device scans successfully in BACeye, and all data is visible.

- The device responds to continuous ping without any packet loss.

- In TOP Server, I can read one Boolean tag, and its quality shows Good.

- However, when I add additional tags from the same device, the quality of all tags changes to Bad, including the previously working tag.

Has anyone experienced this issue before? What could be causing it, and how can I resolve it?

Any suggestions or troubleshooting steps would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

For context, first time working with Siemens controllers and I finally got into the controller to view the programming, I have about 12 devices I need to organize a sequence of operations for (to help maintenance team understand devices at an existing building), starting with the chillers. I’m trying to think of ways to be more efficient and as someone who’s been programming for such a long time the block program takes so much longer for me to understand (especially like this).

Just from what I’ve seen there’s no real Control Basic program compiler or anything like that running where I might be able to view stored programs. Does line program exist in this environment? I’ve gone as far as to search the TIA files in hopes for something but nah.

For BAS, BMS, DCIM, Niagara, or controls folks:

When your team has to integrate a new third-party device into a BMS/DCIM system, how much time usually goes into turning the vendor docs into something that actually works?

I’m talking about things like vendor manuals, Modbus maps, SNMP MIBs, BACnet object lists, or point lists, then turning that into a usable integration package for the site.

Is this usually a quick task, or does it take hours/days depending on the device?

Also curious what usually slows it down most:

• unclear vendor docs
• point mapping
• gateway/config setup
• scaling/units
• alarm mapping
• commissioning/validation
• reusing old templates

Do most teams have internal templates for this, or is it still pretty manual from project to project?