ATS requested a custom Integration Boot Camp, which was held June 12-13, 2014 in Ogden, Utah. The company sent 3 attendees: Jared Miller, a 12 year veteran of BAS integrations, Brandon Chesnut, who has 5 years’ industry experience with the technology, and Kim Beaudry, with his 20+ years of combined experience with JCI and ATS, who led the team. Prior to attending the camp, the group communicated that they wanted to learn more about the integration process with S4 technology, how to troubleshoot issues, template creation, and general confidence when handling the technology: “We learned what we came to learn and more” was the general consensus at the end of the session.
The information covered and the hands on lab time enabled the attendees to leave feeling comfortable with the format and applications of the N2 Open technology, in the context of how they will apply it in their own building automation retrofits and upgrades. Especially enlightening was S4’s ability to handle the custom programmed DX-9100 devices in very much the same way that N2 Open devices are handled through the use of a resource file conversion utility that comes as part of the S4 Open product bundle.
Because this was a custom ATS boot camp, attendees came to the camp with Alerton Envision software loaded on their laptops, along with a pre-configured panel containing the Alerton global controllers and a sample of field controllers representative of configurations that they would use in real life integration situations. The combination of the S4 lab devices and the ATS hardware made the training more meaningful, especially on topics such as how to apply best practices, tune the system for optimal performance, and troubleshoot legacy installations. They even left with a ComBus Quick Tester after seeing its usefulness as a diagnostic tool.
At the conclusion of the training Kim responded: “Thank you for being so flexible with the time we wanted to spend with the system. I used this system on an integration job about 4 years ago and I am amazed with how your enhancements have made this so easy. Reviewing the tabs in the management console was a good exercise. With all the changes the update process is so much easier. All of the integrators in the industry need to know how easy your product is to configure and install.
Building owners need to know that they are no longer tied to their huge N2 investment. Now they can leverage their investment and build on it.”
Steve Jones, managing partner of The S4 Group commented. “Because the ATS team came to the Boot Camp totally prepared, we were able to hit all of the concepts that we do in a standard Boot Camp very quickly and thoroughly, and then move on to more advanced topics. I saw the ATS team’s eyes light up when they found out that by utilizing our Smart Data Points feature they could make legacy N2 devices emulate Alerton devices enabling them to utilize standard Envision graphics and provide a unified user experience for their customers.”
For more information about boot camps please contact Stephanie at Stephanie@thes4group.net