York Chillers - communicating process information to OPC server

[SKahle89]

HVAC engineers; I'm a chemical engineer and I'm doing a project that involves installing a York YCIV MRU for process cooling. These things are most common in HVAC, so I figure this is the best place to ask.

I want to have some way to monitor the process conditions/alarm status of the MRU remotely. My sales rep started talking about a BAS gateway. I'm pretty sure he talking about a hardware device that allows communication with some type of HMI/control system. Ideally, I'd like to hook the MRU up to a desktop computer, and read data into an OPC server. I can then write a C# application to do what I want, but first I to know if there is some way to extract the MRU controllers data into an OPC server. Does anyone have any experience with someone like this, has seen it before, have any recommendations, or knows where I can find more information?

Thanks!
-Seth

 

[DRWeig]

Seth,

The York chillers can be ordered with lots of different protocols -- including Modbus, BACnet, and a bunch of others. Modbus integrates really easily into OPC. Get with your York sales guy in your area, he'll have all the scoop on it.

Good on ya,

Goober Dave

 

[SKahle89]

Dave,

Thanks for the direction. I think my sales guy is relatively new and doesn't know a whole lot about comm protocols. I don't really blame him, I don't either! I was thinking Modbus could be a solution. I've heard that the York control system is pretty proprietary, how would I go about setting up the OPC tags? Will York provide the addresses for alarm bits or process info values? Are there OPC servers out there that can scan the control system and automatically grab the tags over Modbus?

-SK

 

[DRWeig]

They probably do have some proprietary values that can't be directly addressed through Modbus...

You might want to contact a local systems integrator for some help -- your Johnson Controls dealer will have all the info (they own York) and they should be familiar with making the interface work with all sorts of different stuff.

Another option is Tridium, I believe they probably have built a shadow object for the York machines that can translate the York database into almost anything you need, including OPC.

Let us know how it works out!

Goober Dave