As a part of our services, Computrols offers 24/7 phone support to all of our customers. If you have ever taken advantage of this offering, you have likely spoken to our Technical Support Manager, George Hingle. George has been employed by Computrols for over 15 years and is one of our most knowledgeable team members when it comes to troubleshooting in CBAS. As a means of building on our already robust FAQ page, George has agreed to share some common challenges he sees in our newsletter each month.

Scheduled Email Alarms

Did you know that in CBAS 17 you can now configure Email Alarms to be sent only during specific times? In order to set this up, first start with adding a Software Binary Output point for each schedule that you wish to use to control Email Alarms. These points can be added to the DPU on the Hardware View screen:

Next, add a Schedule to the point to command it to ENABLE during the time period of the work shift and DISABL when you don’t want the Email Contact to receive Alarm Emails.

Finally, go to System; Email Alarms then Contacts. You can now select the Lockout point that you just created:

For additional help with programming email alarms, please refer to Chapter 5, Section 6 of the CBAS Manual.

Creating Programming Templates

If you Position Points in Text View before creating a Template, those points will be added to Text View in the same order when a new controller is added using that Template. For example, let’s say that you have a 16X programmed in CBAS with all of the needed points and programming for a particular AHU type and you’d like to duplicate that controller.
First, go to Database, Position Points and put the points in the order that you would like to see them in Text View. Then go back to Hardware View and locate the Controller and click the “Save Controller Database as a Template” button and follow the directions. When you add another Controller from that Template, the process allows you to change the point names. Positioning Points from a Template should work with all X-line, LX, UNI-B and VAV-B (if they are on a BASNet channel) controllers. Most 3rd party controllers such as OPTO and BACnet will use Export/Import Database instead of Templates.
For additional help with positioning points, please refer to Chapter 5, Section 1 of the CBAS Manual. Additional help with Templates can be found in Chapter 3, Section 3.
If you have any questions for George or any of our experts, please send them to info@computrols.com, and you may see them answered in our next newsletter.