All S4 customers and partners with current Software Assurance subscriptions are eligible to receive firmware update 1.18 and associated Management Console update at no charge.
Over the last year there have been multiple incremental releases introducing new features including
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The publishing of each N2 device as a BACnet IP device under a virtual BACnet network hosted on the BACnet-N2 Router
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Support for Engineering Units for Analog points
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On Text and Off Text for Boolean points
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Support for MSI, MSO, and MSV data objects
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Custom enumerations for Multistate points
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Smart Data Points (virtual points and scripting) were introduced to add support for mapping Metasys® multistate points to BACnet Multistate points.
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Advanced application of Smart Data Points enables the integrator to simulate other manufacturer’s field devices during the integration process.
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BACnet BBMD Support
System-91specific enhancements include
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Mapping System-91 data objects to the appropriate BACnet data types
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Emulation for N2 Open style point Override and Release operations
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Enhanced the configuration file conversion utility to handle more point types
Other enhancements were introduced in the system operations, monitoring, and maintenance area.
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BACnet Instance numbers are now statically assigned through device type templates instead of being calculated. Integrator partners still have the ability to edit the instance number to meet their needs but with this enhancement the instance numbers will never change once assigned. This significantly lowers labor costs associated with maintenance of an integration.
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The Watchdog timer accuracy and granularity has been enhanced to detect many more failure situations and bring the system back to normal operation. We have also eliminated eliminate some false firings of the watchdog.
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Performance probes have been added to monitor BACnet traffic and are available as a new set of statistics on the Ethernet properties page giving the operator more insight into the performance of the system.
Other enhancements were driven by the our Integration Partners undertaking much larger integration projects than they have in the past and they are using the BACnet-N2 Router in non-traditional applications.
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We improved the system’s ability to perform under extremely heavy BACnet loads. This condition can simply be an unusually large, complex, BACnet installation with aggressive polling rates. It could also be triggered by N2 field devices not being available (powered off or failed for some reason) - resulting in cascading retries of BACnet transactions generating high traffic volumes.
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The BACnet transaction queue in the BACnet-N2 Router is now more aggressively monitored and BACnet transactions will be rejected according to the BACnet standard if the queue becomes too full.
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The BACnet-N2 Router more aggressively handles BACnet client transaction abort requests to keep the BACnet client and the BACnet N2 Router better synchronized.
There have been numerous small bug fixes and enhancements included that were identified by close collaboration with our Integration Partners and Distributors to meet the ever changing requirements of their projects. Additional input was identified by participation in the HVAC-Talk forum, LinkedIn, and automatedbuildings.com discussions.
Please contact your Integration Partner or Distributor, or S4 directly, to confirm that your installation is covered by a Software Assurance subscription and make arrangements to install this important S4 Open: BACnet-N2 Router maintenance release.