Echelon Street Light Bridge ReadMe
Release 1.00, March
2011
Copyright © 2010,
2011 Echelon® Corporation
All Rights Reserved
This document describes Street Light Bridge Release 1.00.
Additional information and updates, including service packs and critical updates, may be available at www.echelon.com/slb. The latest service packs and updates may not be included with your SmartServer. See Echelon’s Knowledge Base at www.echelon.com/support for answers to frequently asked questions.
5 Upgrading to SmartServer Release 4.05. 2
7 Known Problems and Workarounds. 3
7.1 System Design Best Practice for Commissioning Street Light Networks. 4
7.2 Predictive Discovery Untested for Large Networks. 5
7.3 Six-Byte Authentication Key Could Break the Device Authentication Key. 5
This document applies to Street Light Bridge Release 1.00 running with the SmartServer 2.1 software. Contact Echelon Support (mailto:LonSupport@echelon.com?subject=SmartServer%202.1%20for%20Street%20Light%20Bridge) to obtain the SmartServer 2.1 software for Street Light Bridge applications. See the SmartServer 2.1 ReadMe document for information about how to verify that you have this release on your computer.
A street lighting network uses an Echelon SmartServer as the Segment Controller. The SmartServer Segment Controller needs a copy of the resource files for each device type (luminaire and Street Light Bridge module) in the street lighting network:
You can update a SmartServer 2.0 (Release 4.03 or Release 4.04) to SmartServer 2.1 (Release 4.05) by installing the SmartServer 2.1 firmware on a SmartServer 2.0 SR2. Contact Echelon Support to obtain the SmartServer 2.1 firmware. See the SmartServer 2.1 ReadMe document for more information.
To prepare the SmartServer so that it can manage and control the Street Lighting network, perform the following steps:
i. Expand the Net network, and then click the LON channel to display the Lon Channel Property page.
ii. From
the Setup tab, select the PL-20C, PL-20N, or other appropriate
channel type from the Channel Type dropdown
listbox.
Important: The channel type that you select must
match the channel type required by local regulations for the area of device
deployment. The channel type must also match the channel settings for all
devices that will participate in power line communications with the Segment
Controller.
Important: A model 76520R Street Light
Bridge module uses the CENELEC media access protocol by default. To change
the media access protocol used by the Street Light Bridge module, modify the
nciMediaAccess data point. See Appendix A, “Interoperable Interface
for the Street Light Bridge”, in the Street Light Bridge Integrator’s
Guide, for a description of this data point.
iii. Select
the Repeating checkbox to enable repeating on the channel.
i. Open an FTP connection to the Segment Controller. See the i.LON SmartServer User’s Guide for more information about using FTP with the Segment Controller.
ii. For the Street Light Bridge files, unzip the downloaded file to the Segment Controller’s root folder. The files should unzip to the correct subfolders.
iii. For luminaire files, copy the files from the downloaded (or otherwise provided) resource files to the folder defined by the manufacturer, typically within the Segment Controller /lonworks/Import or /lonworks/types folders.
See the Street Light Bridge Integrator’s Guide for additional setup information for the Segment Controller. This manual is available from the www.echelon.com/slb Web page.
For large street lighting networks, install and commission devices within a single segment before installing and commissioning subsequent segments. The SmartServer Segment Controller can automatically discover and commission any uncommissioned device within the network, but does not discover devices that are already commissioned. Any devices within the street lighting network intended for another Segment Controller should be already commissioned by that Segment Controller; that is, the only devices that should be discoverable (in the uncommissioned state) by a particular SmartServer Segment Controller should be those devices intended to be controlled by that Segment Controller.
This section describes known problems and their workarounds for this release. Numbers in parentheses at the end of the descriptions are Echelon's internal problem tracking IDs.
For a power line communications network, it is important to design the system for the available network bandwidth. Because Street Light Bridge modules allow deployment of large numbers of devices, it is important to manage the device commissioning process so that you do not oversaturate the network bandwidth.
The default method for adding a device to the SmartServer Segment Controller is to use the device’s interface (XIF) file. In this case, the SmartServer Segment Controller automatically defines a 600 second polling interval for each data point defined by the XIF file. Thus, as you add devices and commission them, the total network traffic load increases because of this data point polling. The polling traffic then competes with the traffic associated with device commissioning, so that commissioning each device can take a long time to complete.
Workaround: The SmartServer provides a more robust mechanism for defining devices than using the XIF file: device templates. You can create a device template that defines the polling and heartbeat rates for each data point associated with a device. See Chapter 4 of the i.LON SmartServer 2.0 User’s Guide for more information about creating and using device templates.
Add devices to the Segment Controller using a device template rather than the XIF file:
You could also add functionality to your streetlight management system that sets polling and heartbeat rates after the device commissioning process is complete. When the system is ready for operation, the streetlight management system would set the polling and heartbeats to values that are appropriate for the available channel bandwidth.
(57520, 57708)
The SmartServer 2.1 interface includes an option to perform automatic discovery and commissioning of devices within the network. See chapter 3 of the Street Light Bridge Integrator’s Guide for more information. This feature has been tested in small Street Lighting networks, but has not been tested for large networks.
Workaround: Manually install and commission devices within the network. See chapter 5 of the Street Light Bridge Integrator’s Guide for more information. (57520, 57708)
Assigning a six-byte authentication key (for example, using the NodeUtil Node Utility tool) for a SmartServer Segment Controller can break the unused part of the device key, which could lead to a missing the device key. If the device key is missing, the Segment Controller could be locked.
Workaround: Use only 12-byte authentication keys when using authentication on the Segment Controller. (57993)
Echelon, LON, LonWorks, i.LON, LNS, and LonMaker are registered trademarks of Echelon Corporation in the U.S. and other countries.