The Gateway

Ogden, UT January 29, 2008

Welcome, New Subscribers

We welcome you to our family of customers and partners and hope that you find this, and every, issue informative and useful.

You'll find us providing the products and associated services for two markets.

• The S4 Open product line addresses Building Automation integration to open environments, and

• The Obermeier Software SNMP OPC Gateway products address integration of Industrial Automation, and Process Control (generically non-IT) systems into enterprise environments.

Welcome to The Gateway, a newsletter highlighting products, services, customers, and partners of The S4 Group, Inc.

I would like to invite you to send us any questions about the products and how they can extend and enhance your Johnson Controls Metasys^® building automation environment. If you haven't already done so, you might want to download the S4 Open Appliance white paper from our web site. It provides background information on the products and discusses the concepts behind them. If you would like more details about the S4 open appliances download the S4 Open Appliance Quick Start Guide or browse our web site.

If you have a specific project in mind please contact us with a summary of the current Metasys^® configuration and describe the goals for the project. There are several scenarios on the S4 web site showing typical configurations that may provide a starting point for discussions. We would be happy to help you architect a solution that preserves your investment in Metasys field gear and moves you into an open environment.

The S4 Open Management Console

All Systems and Appliances within the S4 Open family of products will be managed by this single Management Console. Being familiar with one S4 Open Product means you are automatically familiar with all other S4 Open Products. The Management Console uses Microsoft Windows' Look & Feel which is the de facto state of the art in the User Interface Technology.

This capability allows you to either centrally manage all appliances in your network or distribute the management responsibility as appropriate within your organization. Each S4 Open Appliance is identified by a name and can include further optional administrative information such as a description, location and contact person. After you assign a name to the Appliance this name will be used in the S4 Open Management Console for easy reference.

Any S4 Appliance can be secured against unauthorized access. This security system integrates tightly into the well proven Microsoft Windows NT C2 Security technology. This allows you to run a common security policy in your enterprise based on this technology. Before a user can communicate with the System they have to present their security credentials. The system then checks whether the user is authorized to perform the desired operation. This process can either be handled directly by the device or delegated to your existing Domain Server.

The S4 Open Management Console release candidate is currently being prepared. As part of this process the user interface is being audited against the Microsoft style guide and all changes necessary to certify for the "designed for XP" or "designed for Vista" logo are being incorporated.

When you purchase and license any S4 Group, Inc. product you may install the Management Console on as many Windows desktop systems as you need to monitor and manage your enterprise.

All Systems and Appliances within the S4 Open family of products will be managed by this single Management Console.

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The S4 Open: N2 Switch

The S4 Open: N2 Switch extends and enhances your existing Metasys^® environment. A typical application of the N2 Switch is  to  migrate multiple legacy NCU, Facilitator, or Companion based Metasys^®  installations into a current technology  Metasys^®  installation utilizing current generation Metasys^®  supervisory controllers.

With the S4 Open: N2 Switch you can:

• Join two or more legacy N2 networks into a single Virtual N2 Network^© for cost effective system migrations to newer Johnson Controls supervisory controller technology.
• Dramatically increase the number of N2 devices reachable by a single Metasys^® supervisory controller.
• Easily include N2 devices located on different floors, or even different buildings, into a single Virtual N2 Network^© managed by a single Metasys^® supervisory controller.
• Leverage your investment in IT networking technology by extending the N2 bus over LAN, WAN, or in the future, Wireless connections.

The N2 Switch utilizes commercially available Ethernet Serial Servers to transport N2 sessions over customer Ethernet networks. Products from Advantech, B&B Electronics, and Sealevel Systems have been tested. Other products will be tested as our customers and technology partners need support for them.

The S4 Open: OPC-N2 Router

The S4 Open: OPC-N2 Router provides all of the functionality of the N2 Switch, plus information in the Building Control Network is published to an upstream OPC interface. All current OPC DA standards are supported so you are free to choose the OPC client that best fits your project requirements.

The S4 Open: OPC-N2 Router allows you to simultaneously support an upstream N2 interface and an upstream OPC interface. This allows you the flexibility to keep your existing Metasys supervisory controller in place while adding functionality through your OPC client(s). In cases where the Metasys field devices were installed without a supervisory controller the S4 Open appliance will act as the N2 bus master.

We are in the process of performing validation tests with all major OPC clients used in the building automation marketplace. Please let us know if you have a specific OPC client that you would like us to test.

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Feedback From Our Field Test Site

About 1 ½ years ago, we began a beta testing program with the S4 group.  Utilizing the Metasys system in our own facility we were able to ferret out many of the N2 bus idiosyncrasies’.  This testing has been invaluable not only to improve the product but we have learned a great deal along the way.  S4 has been very responsive to our feedback and has taken what we have discovered very serious.  They know just how important it is to keep a facility running during the critical integration process.  Unfortunately, over the years we have felt our customer’s pain as a result of down time and control sequence failures.  This alone was a critical factor in why we felt it was important to support S4’s efforts.

In our opinion the S4 Open: OPC-N2 Router is one of the safest ways to migrate a Metasys system to open standards.  There are several other products on the market that allow integration of a Metasys system, but they typically leave the NAE, NCM or Metasys front end in place.  Tridium makes a driver for the N2 bus but that’s only available to JCI dealers, what does everyone else do?  Also, with the Tridium N2 solution you must replace the JCI network controller on the fly.  This can be difficult if you are not well versed in the inner workings of GPL and Metasys.  The S4 router allows the JCI network controller to be removed but it can do it in parallel with your integration deployment.  After installing the S4 Open appliance between the network controller and the N2 the router exposes all of the N2 data up to OPC without any interruption to the Metasys system.   This parallel deployment feature is especially nice because you can leave the JCI network controller running while you develop new programming to replace JCI’s.  Once the programming replication is done and you’re sure the new system is working, simply turn off the JCI network controller and you're done. 

--- John Greenwell, Continental Electrical Construction Company

CEPORT BSP is a patent pending platform and technology agnostic Building Services Portal developed by Continental Electrical Construction Company.

In our opinion the S4 Open: OPC-N2 Router is one of the safest ways to migrate a Metasys system to open standards. 

The S4 Open product family Roadmap

After the release of the S4 Open: N2 Switch and the S4 Open: OPC-N2 Router you'll be receive an announcement about availability of the S4 Open: BACnet-N2 Router . We also anticipate providing SNMP and XML interfaces in the near future.

This rapid roll out of products is facilitated by building the product family on the Obermeier Software Automation.Net software framework. Each product becomes a building block for every other product that we offer. This Lego^®-like building block strategy extends across the Obermeier Software SNMP OPC Gateway line of products significantly increasing the availability of new protocols and interfaces available to both product lines.

Contact Open Systems Technology For S4 Open Solutions

 The S4 Open product line is available to customers in the U.S. Midwest through OST. Currently, this includes the S4 Open: N2 Switch and the S4 Open: OPC-N2 Router . In the near future the S4 Open: BACnet-N2 Router will be available.

For inquiries about product pricing, or purchases, in the Midwest please contact Mario Mussatti of Open System Technologies at (262) 997-0508 or visit their web site at http://www.opnsystech.com/.

S4 Group Distributor and Integrator Network

 The S4 Group is in the process of building our network of channel and integration partners. If you would like to initiate discussions about partnering with The S4 Group contact us immediately.

Watch the Gateway newsletter and the S4 Group web site for announcements about new products, channel partners, and integration partners as agreements are signed.

For other regions, or enquiries about becoming a distributor or reseller, please contact Steve Jones at (801) 621 1970, sejones@thes4group.com;  or visit our web site at http:/www.thes4group.com/

N2 Bus Diagnostic Tool

We recently saw an announcement in the B&B Electronics newsletter about their ComBus Quick Tester.  I scheduled a call with them to discuss how this product complements our S4 Open product line. B&B immediately saw the synergies and were extremely interested in working with us, and our channel partners. We agreed to get back together for more detailed discussions at the time that we have a release candidate ready to go. The time is now and those discussions were productive.

The reason this is so exciting is the condition that we found the N2 bus in at our first field test site. It was a disaster! The first trip we took to the site we found that the bus was so dirty electrically that we could barely read it and had significant problems with error handling. This caused us to have to rewrite the serial device drivers for the S4 Open appliances to work at the hardware level to be able to do proper error handling. This added considerably to the expense of developing our products and to the painful delays in the product release dates.

The up-side of this experience is that the field test was productive and we ultimately were able to deliver a better product for our customers.   Before we made the last trip to the site the controls contractor's team invested a significant amount of time repairing the N2 buses in the buildings. What they found was cable damage from construction and renovation projects, broken N2 cables, cables chewed and shorted by rodents (they found a few nests made from insulation), failed N2 field devices causing problems, etc.

We didn't know about B&B's ComBus Quick Tester at the time but in hindsight we see this N2 bus and MSTP test device as a way that our channel and integration partners can minimize your risks going into an S4 Open Appliance installation in several ways.

• You could require that the owner deliver a properly working N2 bus before they attempt to install the N2 Router .

• You can pick up incremental revenue doing any necessary repair work as part of the project. The ComBus Quick Tester gives you a quick and reliable way to document the need.

In either event, this tester provides an accurate, and measurable, way of determining the status of the N2 bus. Once the inspection and repair work are completed, and the N2 bus is working to manufacturer specifications, the chances of a N2 Router installation going in on schedule and without problems or issues are greatly improved. The end result is a happy customer and more revenue for our channel partners.

Here's a link to the manual on the B&B Electronics web site if you are in need of more details about the product http://www.bb-elec.com/bb-elec/literature/manuals/MS-CQT485-0_0405m.pdf. The ComBus Quick Tester is available as B&B part number MS-CQT485-0.

Test an Entire System with One Click - In as Little as 80 Seconds! The ComBus Quick Tester quickly tests your entire system. It checks bus voltages indicating Pass/Fail, counts all devices on the bus and identifies each for display. It works as a Master Controller to check the entire system or portions.

Click here to order the ComBus Quick Tester from B&B Electronics.

About The Gateway

The Gateway will be distributed on a monthly basis, or less frequently, as required to inform our customer base and partners of important developments. You can view previous issues, news items and press releases at S4 Group News. Send any suggestions for future articles to sejones@thes4group.com.

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