The S4 Group, Inc.

This tester provides an accurate, 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 an 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.

Minimize your risks and increase revenues going into an S4 Open Appliance installation:

• Test and verify an N2 bus before installing an S4 Open appliance. The ComBus Quick Tester quickly:
  • Tests bus voltages indicating Pass/Fail
  • Counts all devices on the bus and identifies each for display
  • Works as a Master Controller to check the entire system or segments of the network.
• Require that the facility owner deliver a properly working N2 bus before attempting to install the N2 Router.
• 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!

We immediately saw the synergies between this product and installation projects for our S4 Open appliances. 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. With careful bidding practices you can turn conditions like this into more revenue from your projects.