Landmark to Netlinx Transition

sonny

Greetings All...

We were successful in getting a couple of Landmark clients to convert to Netlinx. I have a pretty good handle on a transition plan but have a couple of questions for anyone that has gone through this.

- I will probably move devices over for testing then put them back online with Landmark until the full system cutover is ready...any issues with this? It seems that if the correct Landmark program is loaded it will find the devices.

- One system has MLC lighting, there is a Netlinx module for it so I don't expect it to be a problem, anyone have experience or tidbits that are helpful?

Thanks...Sonny

DHawthorne

Landmark learns the node ID from the device itself, so as long as it is installed in the same location, yes, it will remember it fine. You can't substitute devices of the same type, or change what room they control without re-addressing them in Landmark.

I've done several Landmark -> NetLinx upgrades, and have never had a problem. You can't re-use cards (relay, IO, IR) from the Landmark cardframe as near as I can tell (at least I never had any luck, but the ports on the NetLinx device make up for that), but you can use the cardframe itself as a DMS keypad hub, or AS8/16/AMP hub. Just yank the MCU card (good backup for the systems you have not upgraded yet). All those devices work fine in NetLinx as well.

I can't help you with the MLC though, never touched one . I would imagine it works similarly to the DMS keypads.

Reese Jacobs

Landmark to Netlinx Transition

The only issue I can see with moving devices back and forth between the systems is that the device IDs your Landmark devices have will almost assuredly not be the same ones you would program your Netlinx system to reference. The only way to achieve this would be to move the devices from Landmark to Netlinx, see what device IDs you have, and then modify your Netlinx program to reference those device IDs. This would enable you to maintain the same device IDs as you move them back and forth between the systems.

What is far more common practice is to program your Netlinx system following the conventions for device IDs and then addressing the Netlinx devices accordingly (whether the devices come from another Netlinx or Landmark system or from AMX as new products). If you take this common approach, when you address the devices you have moved from the Landmark system, this will cause a problem when you move them back to Landmark since Landmark has made an association between a software object and a hardware object (the latter being the device ID) when you did device association in Landmark. Landmark does not offer a way to change the device ID of a device so you would have to do one of two things in this case:

- Unassign the software object and associate it with the device based on its new device ID (the one assigned in Netlinx)

- Remember your Landmark device IDs (mark them on the devices so you can remember them) and set them back to the same device IDs using Netlinx Studio before you move them from Netlinx back to Landmark

Dave will correct me if this is inaccurate -- I do not think device location has any bearing on device IDs in Landmark. Landmark may assign device IDs behind the scenes (in the case of conflicts) but in my experience, it leaves the device ID set to the ID as delivered from the factory. It is your association of a software object in the design layout to the physical device ID that is important. If a device is placed back on the Landmark bus that does not have a device ID that matches one of the pre-existing software/hardware object associations, that device will show up as new hardware to be assigned. This would be the case if you changed a device ID in Netlinx to one not recognized in the Landmark database when that device is moved from Netlinx to Landmark.

Reese

DHawthorne

There are no device ID's per se in Landmark. All you do is associate the node ID (think MAC address) to a specific program object. So if I say I want the keypad I jus installed to be the family room keypad, when I plug it in and it appears on the device tree, I associate it with the program object for the family room keypad. I can unplug it and move it around anywhere in the house, it will still be the family room keypad, unless I explicitly unassign and reassign it.

When you assign a Landmark device to a NetLinx system, you are changing nothing in the physical device. All you are doing is telling the NetLinx master that the node ID you are learning in is now associated with that NetLinx device number. At this point, you can move it back and forth between the NetLinx system and the Landmark system as much as you like. Both programs have an internal database in which they have learned the node ID's and assciated them with program objects. Neither actually changes the node ID - it's a MAC address, for all practical purposes.