Tridium Announces Release of Niagara 4.6

Email boxes buzzed first thing this morning with news from Tridium on their release of Niagara 4.6, which they’re heralding as “a significant advancement in our open framework.” With this release, Tridium is expanding tools for new developing applications within the framework to “drive building automation systems forward and help businesses take full advantage of the IoT.”

Niagara 4, itself a huge leap forward from Niagara AX, was released in August 2015 and has been steadily advancing ever since. With this sixth update in just three years, Tridium is showing its ability to keep up with the pace of internet technologies and respond to community needs.

Tridium outlines the benefits of Niagara 4.6 like this:

• Access to a System DB spanning the entire Niagara system
• Visualization enhancements, such as mobile refresh for PX views now with dynamic response
• Tools including bulk tagging and templating that reduce repetitive integration tasks and simplify consistent taxonomy in conformance with Brick, Haystack and other industry standards
• Encryption that meets the FIPS 140-2 federal standard, which can be helpful for users going after government contracts.

In their email, Tridium also notes they’ve updated image OPC UA 1.0.103 to now feature customer-reported defect fixes and other performance improvements. More detail on that can be found in the release notes.

For our part, this update underscores the need for all building automation professionals to get Niagara 4 certified. Adoption was slow at first, as people wondered in an AX switch was really necessary. But the pace has picked up exponential and Niagara 4 classes are filling up across the country. Our next certification class is coming up August 27-31 and there are still a few spots left.

One final note, we’ve just been informed by Kodaro, one of the companies we distribute, that they’re almost set to release the Niagara 4.6 upgrade for their Niagara 4 Port for the Dell Edge Gateway. Expected to drop August 1, this crucial update will keep all Dell Edge Gateways compatible with the latest version of Niagara 4. If you’re thinking of purchasing a Dell Edge Gateway with Niagara 4 port, now is a great time to do it.