Proof of Concept using SoftPac to talk to a Chiller

PAC Project
1

Hi All:
I’m looking to do a quick proof of concept showing Opto22 hardware communicating to a building chiller system via BACNET. I’d like to do this using the lowest cost option and was wondering if I could use the SoftPac to talk directly to the chiller via BACNet. From looking at the docs it does not look like I can talk BACNet serial directly from the PC so I may need to use one of the BACNet protocol routers to convert protocols to Ethernet and then hook my PC directly to the router via Ethernet and then from the router to the chiller controls via RS485 BACNET.

Am I on the right track? Is there a better way to accomplish this?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Regards,
James

2

The BACnet kit only supports BACnet MS/TP over RS-485, no ethernet. Unfortunately, SoftPAC doesn’t support RS-485. So to talk BACnet from an Opto device, you would need an S2, maybe an S1 (I’ve only used the former).

3

If the chiller only has a serial port, then you can not use SoftPac as Philip pointed out…
But, if the chiller can do BACnet/IP, then this might help; http://www.opto22.com/community/showthread.php?t=296