I've been in this industry for a few years now, in the HVAC side. I actually just stumbled into it after college out of sheer luck (or misfortune). I have a background in electronics and embedded systems configuration, networking, and computer science. So, I ended up mostly working on Tridium database and front-end builds.

Anyway, I don't know if this is just an issue with my office, but I really feel like my office's controls engineers' time is not respected. In a typical day, I'm pulled aside for at least one service department issue, called by at least one GC or commissioning / T&B guy to take a look at something, called by a service tech or project tech to help out with something or basically get yapped at about the status of a project for 30 minutes, and then I'm supposed to also create front-end / database builds with basically a quarter of the time that should have been alloted to engineering and programming.

I feel like my work consistently takes ages to do because there's no "protected" engineering focus time. Our culture is completely reactive, and then we act shocked when projects inevitably don't get finished in time or take entirely too many hours to complete due to constant interruptions.

Is my office just disorganized as shit or is this just how this industry is?

Our company is looking to hire experienced controls techs. We are a Schneider Electric partner in Montana. We are a local company to Montana and have a few offices across the state. Depending on experience and which part of Montana you choose to live in, our pay is $80-120k. We have a decent benefits package including PTO and paid Health Insurance for your entire family. Vehicle is provided along with all tools needed to do the job (Yes, we run Milwaukee). I have been at this company for close to a decade and started as a low level tech with no experience. I have worked my way through the company and an now a Project Manager. We usually have around 30-50 active projects across the state at any given time. Any one interested would have to have a valid DL and be able to pass federal background checks as quite a few of our jobs are either in government facilities or schools. Please ask any questions! We may be able to help with relocation as well. Our page link is below.

https://facility-improvement.com/index.php/careers/

So I have my first controls interview this next week. I have experience in hvac (been doing installs for about 4 months) so still kinda new. And I've been studying cyber security online and working towards my A+ cert. I know nothing about controls and really don't see much online about it. Any advice? Apparently the company focuses on Siemens or something like that commercial of course. I've heard a little about BACnet and things like that. I can do a Lil programming in python. Just worried they are not gonna move forward with me. I've heard allot of people say companies rather train you new because you can learn how they do things easier. Thank anyone for giving some advice.

Our existing BAS graphic set is old and bulky. It was designed in a time when screen space limitations were solved by just splitting up the graphic some more. The modern, energy-efficient systems we contend with require a full picture, unified graphic. I believe High Performance HMI is a good starting point to address this, but it seems that it hasn't fully caught on yet in BAS. I haven't been able to find industry leaders or OEMs that produce these types of graphics, so we've been developing a hybrid (some might say 'bastardized') version in-house. Since we're essentially flying solo, I'm concerned that we're coming up with solutions that won't scale well, or spinning our wheels trying to develop solutions that already exist.

Issues... or Opportunities for Improvement

Datapoints. There are lots of good symbol packages out there, like the German DIN standard, but they don't accommodate datapoints. The datapoints end up being an afterthought, they overlap pipes, and get jammed in they can fit. The symbol is the easy part, displaying the associated data is the real challenge. For example, chillers have a great symbol, but often have a lot of associated data. What data needs to be displayed on the graphic? What data should be displayed separately, and how?

Pumps. Our pump symbol is big, and new graphics have 20+ pumps. Our hydronic layouts are heavily impacted by the pump space requirements, meaning we end up choosing a worse layout to accommodate them. We need to combine it into a compact package or come up with a better way to display them.

Pipe colours. HP HMI advocates for less colourful graphics, but when we began this endeavor we felt this was too big of a pivot from traditional hot water red, cold water blue, glycol green etc. For anyone in a similar situation, perhaps there is a different approach to make colour more usable -- like opacity adjustment, thinner line size, and so on.

Floorplans and room level control. An upcoming building has something like 20 AHUs. Our approach is a different floorplan overlay colour for each AHU. It's tough to come up with that many unique, easily decipherable colours. Old method uses solid overlay colours like red, blue, green, yellow, but that's completely against HP HMI standards. Do we need overlays, or is there a better way?

Secondly, we have a hard time shoe horning in the room level controls. What should be displayed on the floorplan? What data should be shown in a separate popup?

Example Graphics

Conclusion... help me

Over the past few years I've come to learn that solo development of a HMI standard is a bad idea. This needs to be a collaborative process, where we brainstorm ideas, realize those ideas are terrible, and eventually come up with something that works. That's where you come in, dear reader. If you happen to be in this niche space and want to bounce around ideas I want to hear from you. Reply here, or shoot me a DM.

If there is interest in this I will be happy to create a Discord channel or similar.

Anyone know how to get into high paying data center or travel control service gigs?

I assume they pay pay pay like twice of normal rates and wages …. ?

I think this is what I have heard word of mouth…

And sometimes I see recruiters looking for controls service traveling tech … yeah sure $200k sign me up :-)

Seems like traveling ones are the hot ticket and I assume they pay pay pay else these recruiters can pound sand.

I have a spyder 6438 and a SIO 6042. The devices are 4 devices from eol. When I download the program both thermostats (tr42) and inputs and outputs do not work on the sio. I have 18v on the sylk buss but the thermostats always say please load. I have no errors on the Jace. We did have bacnet communication issues but we replaced the bacnet wire and communication seems to be fixed.
What would cause the sio to not follow the commands or inputs? I replaced the sylk buss wire thinking it may be an issue. So far I have not found the issue.

I've got a dead i-Vu server, all the downstream equipment is coming through BACnet via i-Vu Open Link (CIV-OL). None of the devices are named, is there anyway for me to extract the device names from the original application or does that all live in the i-Vu server?

I really don't want to chase everything down one by one

We're looking for a couple of ALC-experienced programmers/engineers in California right now. Ideally, you'd be located either in the Los Angeles or Santa Barbara region(s). If you happen to have additional experience with Tridium, it's an added bonus. Compensation in the $90K-$130K range, depending on experience and capabilities. Might be some upside to those numbers for deep(er) experience. If you're interested, reach out here on Chat and I can tell you more there, on email or phone.

Honeywell is a lead controls tech for construction.

The other 2 are for service.

Some may wish to participate.... I did.

How to get a 10k type III sensor to work with the PCG 2611 controller? It wont allow me to modify the signal as there are no checkmarks for the TYPE3. Thanks

I swapped the wires on a vav controller last week and whoever installed it had taken the time to use ferrule crimps, it made my life much easier in the ceiling and was neat and tidy. I’m considering doing this moving forward but each tool adds more weight to the bag and wasted money if I never end up using them. Anyone swear by them or tried it and wasn’t worth your time?

I am currently in Las Vegas. I was looking to get into the software side of business. I install , run wire and terminate devices for an electrical company. Different control companies hire us to do this. Ive always wanted to learn the software side of things. Is there a path to do this ? Thanks for any help.

My colleagues and I are employed by a large University. We design, deploy, upgrade and maintain our own BAS systems. We all have over 20+ years of experience working for a variety of controls companies before switching to the owner side.

We experience first-hand the massive labor and experience shortage in our industry. Our employer allows us to do consulting work on the side, as long as it does not violate a conflict of interest.

If any building owners, project managers, engineers, programmers, system integrators, etc., are shorthanded and interested in on-demand resources, we are here to assist. With our combined experience, we are experts in the following areas: Tridium, Siemens, Distech, Automated Logic, BACnet, BACnet SC, Modbus. We can also help building owners and facility managers develop a BAS System specification and advise them on getting the best value from their controls vendors.

Curious if anyone in this industry has taken off 2-3 months for a personal endeavor and kept their job, or if that's an unrealistic expectation in this field.

Hi all! We are BAS engineers who have mostly worked on Pharma and regulated industries, the stock tridium eisgnature module has been very buggy and not enough for us, so we have developed a custom e-signature module to fully meet the regulatory requirements, it's much better than stock e-siganture as per our internal testing, if anyone else is looking for an alternate E-signature module for their Niagara deployments dm me, we can work something out

When a job spec calls for Modbus on VRF/split systems, which route do you take — a gateway per indoor unit (Intesis 1-unit interfaces, Airzone Aidoo, Daikin RTD-style) or a single centralized gateway on the manufacturer's bus (CoolMaster, or OEM boxes like Daikin EKMBDXB, Toshiba, Gree ME30, Midea GW-MOD)?

Trying to get a feel for what the field actually reaches for. What drove your choice, and is there anything you've learned to avoid? Real project notes welcome — hotels, offices, mixed-brand estates, whatever you've got.

I'm on the PLC/SCADA side of things and my company recently enrolled me in the ASP apprenticeship program. I believe it is more common with building automation guys so I wanted to see if any of you have been through it.

I'm not sure how different their controls course is from their building automation one, but I gotta say I'm insulted to say the least. All the course material is completely AI generated from end to end. Ai scripts with ai voiceovers reading ai slides filled with ai images. Is there any actual valuable content here? Because it seems to be that absolutely zero effort was put into developing this program and apparently my company spent thousands to license it.

Hi everyone,

I’m working on a Niagara 4 project with more than 40 JACEs. Each JACE controls multiple rooms and valves.

The normal occupancy schedule for every room is:

• 7:00 AM–7:00 PM: Occupied
• 7:00 PM–7:00 AM: Unoccupied

Operators should manage everything from a central workstation rather than opening each JACE separately.

I also need to handle two different after-hours situations:

1. Temporary same-day override

For example, after 7:00 PM, someone on Level 2 wants to continue using one or two rooms.

The operator should be able to select those individual rooms from the HMI and temporarily change them to Occupied mode. The override should automatically reset at 7:00 AM the next day, allowing the normal schedule to take control again.

2. Advance room booking

Sometimes someone may book one or more rooms for several evenings or for a few consecutive days.

For example:

• Room 201 requires Occupied mode until 10:00 PM for three days.
• Room 202 requires 24-hour Occupied mode for a weekend.
• Only the selected rooms should be affected.

What is the recommended Niagara architecture for this?

Do I need to create a separate schedule for every room, or can all rooms use a shared master schedule with individual room overrides and special events?

The occupancy command currently uses:

• 1 = Occupied
• 2 = Unoccupied

I would appreciate advice on the best components or method to use, such as WeeklySchedule, Special Events, ScheduleSelector, TriggerSchedule or custom booking logic.

Any example wire sheets, screenshots or videos would be greatly appreciated.

Good afternoon everyone. I have installed a few new Vykon jaces lately and am having the same issue with every single application. Here is what is happening:

I commission my new vykon Jace with 4.15 u3 or 4. Once commissioned i add the .dist file with the new unified facilities "service pack" and install the "full file that downloads all the correct files and modules to Jace. I then go in and add my wizard service, license the wizard service, and authorize my rest service. Everything is great. I add my BCP bacnet network, set up my mstp port and IP port and discover my mstp and IP distech controllers (ecbs and ecy). Devices discover and with the mstp devices, they launch wizard connect in GFX and everything's great, my problem comes when i launch any of the ECY controllers, I launch wizard and gfx opens, it says enter password for user "admin" or whatever login name im logged into my station with. I put that password in, and it refuses to connect. It keeps saying authentication failed. I can connect direct to the ECY just fine, webpage, launch gfx thru webserver, xpress utility and open gfx connect to server, REST and put credentials in. Why is it causing this when I'm launching in niagara??? I am using my station password that I'm signed in as. My rest service shows all devices and they ping. Ive had this problem on every jace i commission with 4.14 or higher. All my Jace 9000s with 4.13 launching gfx on ecy devices works perfectly fine. Has anyone else been having this issue? Any help would be appreciated.

If you have Niagara Level III, decent expierence - what or where are the job opportunities paying the best for this? And what salary range? Thank you