Looking for a solution for a embedded interface to Lonworks devices

R

Thread Starter

rejoicewang

I am in Beijing Polytecnic University of China.I am going to design a embedded gateway to map the Lonworks to BACnet I am looking for a embeded interface for my application. I know the MIP of echelon is a choice. But I know the MIP has some shortcomings, such as bottleneck and little address table entries. Moreover, It is difficult to use. I had the cold fire Mcf5272 from Motorola as the hardware platform of host CPU. Who can tell me what a cheap and good solution can be chose.

Thanks and best regards
 
F
There is no simple answer. The appropriate answer depends on a number of factors. Having the Neuron along with the MIP is certainly one solution and probably the quickest and easiest to implement and get to market. It does have some drawbacks but not that many.

One other possible solution is to port the LonTalk protocol to your hardware platform and run it natively. Obviously, this has a much higher initial cost but once the port is done you own the software and are not paying ongoing MIP royalties. If you choose not to port the protocol yourself, there are several companies who have experience at this and can help you -
Loytec (in Europe somewhere, I don't remember where), and Adept (located in Florida USA). Both companies have products and services that can help you.

Before you decide which route to take, I suggest you look at the market and decide what your volumes are. Using the MIP is probably more appropriate if you need to get to market quickly and your volumes for the gateway are fairly low (which they usually are for gateway devices). If your volumes are higher, then you can recoup your protocol porting costs and should go that route.

Regards,

Fred Graham
Graham Controls Consulting
Specializing in LonWorks technology
www.grahamcontrols.com
[email protected]
 
Thank you for help.
Quoted "Using the MIP is probably more appropriate if you need to get to market quickly and your volumes for the gateway are fairly low (which they usually are for gateway devices). "
I do not know why using the MIP is more quickly and easily. Using MIP will need me to do something by myself. So, I think using MIP is most difficult than using other companies products based on MIP like IEC( "www.ieclon.com":http://www.ieclon.com ). In fact,I think the peak component from IEC is fit for my application other than the OS (do not support linux).
 
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