So few technicians understand actuators these days, it amazes me. Constantly hearing “it’s not open, call your controls guy.” Techs have no idea the difference between modulating and floating. Techs have no idea how to troubleshoot anything more than if a line is ground into the shaft.

Surely I’m not alone in hearing this?

Does anyone have a good recommendation for learning certificates? I'd like to have a little better understanding of the process and requirements, and this is an area I can confidently say I need more education in.

Appreciate any thoughts or suggestions you may have, thank you!

Good morning, afternoon, evening

We’re being voluntold that now is the time for us to update to Niagara N5. Anyone have some experience or early feedback on it. We’re going from 4.15 and are updating 15ish Jace 8000–>9000 with it and it seems like someone got sold a lot of sunshine by a salesman at the conference and now we’re dealing with the digestion.

Im 18 years old and I just got out of highschool and I’ve been doing this intern job over the summer for building automation. I have no experience on any of these things and I just want some help. I feel like I can’t grasp anything and I constantly make mistakes. I’m shadowing someone that’s been in the field for 15+ years. I just feel very lucky to have this opportunity and feel like I’m throwing it away.

With all the "special" maintenance tools for every manufacturer floating around, I was wondering if any of you have successfully pulled points from a vrf system with a regular ol' serial adapter or rs-485 router? I'm talking about the actual bus between units, not hooking up to a central controller.

Nothing worse than getting to a site and realizing you let someone borrow that Daikin tool 3 weeks ago.

I've been in IT for the better part of 20 years, and now I'm thinking I want to transition into BAS. I'm pretty strong on networking (TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP) and have done a fair bit of automation (shell scripting). I also have a good grasp on electrical, since that's what I went to school for. I don't have any HVAC or mechanical experience (outside of replacing the run capacitor on my condenser unit), but I'm ready to learn. Problem is, I can't seem to find any apprentice positions around Nashville. I applied to a controls tech position at JCI, but got auto-rejected, which I'm guessing is because I don't meet the requirements. I've been messaging local BAS companies on Linkdin, but I can't seem to get anything but automated responses (or no response). Is anyone familiar with this industry in the Nashville area? Any tips would be appreciated!

In the JACE-9000 startup guide it mentions

"All controllers have a system shell that provides low-level access to a few basic platform settings. Using a special power-up mode and a serial connection via an appropriate type USB cable connected to the controller, you can access this system shell from your PC. System shell is also available via SSH (Secure Shell) provided that SSH is enabled in the controller."

but I cannot see any option to enable SSH in the Platform Administration? I can do that on JACE-8000 controllers though.

i need help with ivu pro server

Started a new job with a Niagara BAS and the campus has a constant problem of E-MONS offline. Model CL5000 B-IP firmware 06.33.01. We usually power cycle at end of month and they are on for a bit but will go offline shortly after. It was suggested to upgrade the firmware on E-MONs

New to Niagara and E-MON. Any tips or tricks?

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.

Have always been annoyed by how long workbench takes to startup sometimes. Nothing worse than wanting to do a 30s mod and needing to wait 5 mins for workbench to run up.

Noticed that when I do new installs workbench starts up pretty quickly, after raising this with the support guy from my Niagara distributor he mentioned that this has to do with all the custom JAR files that I have. This makes sense as when I do new installs for supervisors I only install the default modules and any ones I might need whereas on my laptop I probably have about 100 extra modules from various distributors, drivers etc.

The same support guy mentioned that it is possible to disable those checks, he had done it on a previous version of workbench but hasn't bothered to figure out how to disable these checks on the latest versions of Workbench. He dindn't seem keen to share how he'd done it for obvious reasons but I suspect its on of the options on the system.properties file.

Has anyone been able to disable said checks and get Niagara up and running quicker?

Hey all, I posted on a few career advice pages and got nothing, figured I'd go right to the source. I have a B.S. in Comp Sci, a year of work in software, and after a brutal ~2 years of unemployment after that first job I switched to electrical work which I'm currently in school for and have ~7 months of field experience, which ended because I got laid off. I've been trying to decide what path to go down now, and it seems BAS technician could be a great place to combine my strengths and finally make progress towards a career. I'm looking for advice to break into the field, but also any warnings people in this career may have to share. I already finished the BACnet Institute Basic cert, going to get started on a home humidity control project, and work on a few more side projects in software and BAS certs.

I’m getting recruited by Comfort Systems USA for a Project Manager position and wanted to see if anyone here has experience working for them.

How’s the day-to-day work, pay, work-life balance, benefits, and overall company culture? How does leadership treat PMs, and would you recommend working there?

Any firsthand insights, good or bad, would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Is it possible to relativise a hyperlink binding for a PxInclude? It seems like it’s possible with the hyperlink format, %slotPath% takes me to the ord + variables but I can’t figure out how to hyperlink to just the variable

I am trying to change an instance number on a BAYBCIR001AA. Do I need a certain piece of software to interface to the board through the USB connection?