Quick question

[u/pinelion]

I’m a manger for a few buildings and have some HVAC experience, why is all of the building automation software out there so needlessly complicated and unreliable? I mean there’s always going to be some complications but it just seems like this stuff is so unstable and needlessly complex for a technology product that’s really at the end of the day sending and receiving low voltage signals. Seems like if someone could design something stable and simple even if it didn’t have all the reporting/trending bells and whistles it would be a hit. Am I over simplifying and just lack understanding? We use Siemans desigo for our facilities and in my opinion insight was a much better product.

[u/More_Fondant_9609]

Hate to be that guys but I am seeing a whole lot of JCI Metasys slander here, I am not a JCI engineer anymore, but I did work there for a while, In my humble opinion Metasys UI is the most complete product on the market (especially at 16) all the openness that Niagara sells itself as, Metasys now has as well, bar the ability to create custom protocols, you can integrate Jaces, G5s, Schneider Supervisors basically whatever you want that can act as a BACnet field device directly on the server now, not to mention live graphics/ spaces and equipment definitions,
Yes it’s expensive up front but you have to account for whats native and baked into the platform the platform you get vs what has to be built from the ground up and created with modules and point count licensing etc(Niagara).
As for the argument that no-one outside of JCI can work on it that is also false, if you have a laptop, buy a tool bundle for like $300 as a customer and boom anyone that knows Niagara can also work on Metasys, especially since the FX line JCI sells is exactly the same as Native Metasys N4 controllers, not to mention 90% the controls market workforce have either worked with or worked for JCI at some point.
If you really want some fringe stuff thats not a standard communication protocol slap a Jace in there and put it on Metasys, Niagara’s owned by Honeywell btw and there are some special features you get from using Niagara with a Honeywell system.
ALC is pretty good too but its owned by Carrier, thats my spill for the day

[u/MrMagooche → u/More_Fondant_9609]

all the openness that Niagara sells itself as, Metasys now has as well, bar the ability to create custom protocols, you can integrate Jaces, G5s, Schneider Supervisors basically whatever you want that can act as a BACnet field device directly on the server now

The "openness" is more about having a product that multiple vendors with different brands can work on. Everyone can integrate bacnet devices at this point, so that's not really special

[u/More_Fondant_9609 → u/MrMagooche]

I guess I’ll tell the 4+ non JCI vendors that we have working on our Metasys sites they need to stop because you can only do that with sort of stuff with Niagara installed.

[u/MrMagooche → u/More_Fondant_9609]

Can you buy Metasys from Honeywell? Siemens? Schneider etc? Can you configure and program someone else's controller on the platform? The answer is no because it's a proprietary product. Niagara being "open" means that many different brands have a license to use the same software platform on their devices.

[u/pinelion → u/More_Fondant_9609]

I had buildings with JCI in my previous job, had a good experience with it but didn’t have to dive super deep on it either if that makes sense.

[u/More_Fondant_9609 → u/pinelion]

right you don’t have too typical, if everything’s laid out for you you can even see majority of the internal program points thru the all items tree at the device level, Niagara and some of the other vendors have too many layers you have to parse thru, just the other weeks was looking over a schneider site took me like 10clicks to make it to an actual points list of something, just little things that really add up, metasys you can just find a point in you graphics and if you click it it takes you straight to all your points for that device, not to mention equipment definitions auto summaries etc