NICS

The Niagara Interoperability Conformance Statement (NICS) is a guide that device makers use to ensure their products can work within the Niagara system. When a device starts up, it checks a license file that contains NICS information to know how to interact with other Niagara devices – possibly from many different manufacturers.

For example, if you take a look at the MAC36PRO license, the NICS are shown under the brand section like in the picture below

To fully understand NICS, let’s break it down into its basic components.

• brandId – Each licensed station and tool has a unique Brand Identifier (BrandID) chosen by the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM). For example, iSMA CONTROLLI products have a iSM brandId
• accept.station.in=’*’ – This field lists the brands a local station can receive Niagara data from. * means that MAC36 can accept station data from any Niagara brand (Honeywell, Vykon, Tridium etc.)
• accept.station.out=’*’ – This field specifies the brands that the local station can share Niagara data with. * means that MAC36 can share date with any Niagara brand.
• accept.wb.out=’*’ – This field lists the brands that the tool that you use can connect to and engineer. Essentially, it’s a list of brands the tool can work with.
• accept.wb.in=’*’ – This field is a list of brands that this station will allow to be connected to it for engineering of its application. Simply stated – “This is the list of brands that can engineer me”.

To sum it up, our MAC36 controllers as well as our iC Workbench tool have totally open NICS. So, no matter what brand of workbench you use you will be able to commision MAC36, and no matter what brand of Niagara controller you use – you will be able to exchange station data with MAC36.

To give you an idea of more restricted system you can take a look at the table below. In this example station can still interact with any brand but can only be engineered by workbench from a specific brand – XYZ in this case.