Customer

The customer site is a hospital in a Montana community of approx. 10,000 people. The customer made a rather large investment in Metasys® equipment over the past 15 years and wanted to maintain the functionality of the equipment, but still enhance the system. The project goals were to update the current and future controls to a BACnet platform, update the operator interface to a new point-and-click Windows® based graphical interface, and maintain existing investments.

About The Project

The hospital had operator workstations, a Metasys supervisory controller, 12 fully-programmable N2 controllers, and around 100 unitary N2 controllers. Mechanical and electrical systems with DDC controls needed to stay on line during retrofit. The project plan started with installing a new BACnet Operator Workstation and a new BACnet global controller. In addition, all of the fully programmable N2 devices were replaced with new BACnet programmable devices and the unitary N2 devices were salvaged by using the BACnet-N2 router.

Project Success

Retrofit went extremely well on this project. The legacy Metasys® supervisory controller and operator workstation co-existed with the new Operator Workstation and the BACnet global controller. It remained online until customer confidence reached the point that they deemed co-existence no longer necessary. Performance and reliability of the completed project was at least as good as the original installation. It was business as usual for the Metasys operator and building occupants during the transition period, while new graphics and added functionality were being developed in the replacement system. The final solution delivered an updated OWS, a new BACnet global controller, 3rd party BACnet integration and the continued support of the existing N2 devices.

The integrator’s organization brought a lot to the project. The integrator had employees with Metasys experience, good networking skills and extensive mechanical systems knowledge. Building a team before the project has a definite impact on the total time and success of the project. A solid team accompanied with the enabling technology of the S4 Open: BACnet-N2 router created a successful project for the customer.

Enabling technology

The S4 Open: BACnet-N2 router has always provided the enabling technology to cost effectively migrate legacy Metasys N2 systems to BACnet. The latest major enhancements have focused on publishing each N2 device as a virtual BACnet device under a virtual BACnet network, further streamlining the integration process and saving time and money for the integrator and building owner. By using the configure wizard feature the integrator was able to complete the integration task and be in a co-existence mode with the replacement BACnet environment within 4 hours.