Alerton Compass 2

Compass 2 is the operator workstation software for Alerton BACtalk and Ascent building automation estates, sold under Honeywell. Alerton is a Honeywell product brand and no evidence was found of the brand being divested or renamed. It is genuinely software rather than a controller: the Alerton controller line, including the Ascent Control Module and its option cards and the BACtalk controllers, is separate hardware, and VisualLogic, the programming tool, is bundled as a tool inside Compass.

The decisive fact is lifecycle. Honeywell own US page for Compass 2 Software, and both the US and UK Compass Softwares pages, state that this product has been discontinued and that Honeywell will provide product support until a stated date. That date did not render in the fetched page text, so no end-of-support date is published here, and no successor product is named anywhere on Honeywell pages that were opened. Associated Honeywell Compass Operator training is also marked discontinued. The brief for this directory is explicit that a retired product must not be presented as a current purchasing option, so Compass is recorded here for search and migration value: it is a maintenance platform, not a new-build choice.

What it does, on the capability it was built for, is solid operator work for BACnet estates. The web user interface supports multiple concurrent web users each in their own language and number format, with LDAP authentication. Graphics include an isometric graphics library and, usefully for legacy sites, HTML5 conversion of legacy Alerton bitmap graphics. Operations features include an interactive alarm table with sorting, filtering, categorising and commenting, trend logs viewable as graphs or text with multiple points per log, interactive data tables that allow bulk editing of many point values in one operation, and a configurable navigation tree.

Demand management is the area where Compass is more capable than its market position suggests. It shows hourly or daily energy use and demand in text form, and provides flexible demand metering across media with priority-based load shedding and restoration of binary and analogue loads with real-time results, alongside time-of-day and seasonal strategies, optimum start, zones and EASE scheduling. VisualLogic covers control programming.

The information gaps are significant and should be stated plainly. Honeywell publishes no open datasheet, no SKU list and no price for Compass; the documents tab on both pages prompts a sign-in, and a SKUs tab did not render. On protocol breadth, nothing beyond BACnet is named on Honeywell own pages. A distributor listing claims Modbus, SNMP and KNX drivers and tiered device-count licensing in small, medium, large and extra-large variants, but none of that appears on a Honeywell page that was opened, so it is not recorded as fact. No cloud deployment option is described, and no third-party integration claim beyond BACnet could be verified.

Who it fits. Existing Alerton BACtalk and Ascent sites that need an operator front end today and a migration plan tomorrow. If you are coming off Alerton Building Suite or Envision for BACtalk, Compass is the purpose-built target: it converts legacy Alerton bitmap graphics to HTML5 and preserves the BACtalk estate. Sites with active demand-management requirements also get real value from the priority-based load shed and restore features.

Who it does not fit. Any new project. It is marked discontinued on Honeywell own pages with no successor identified, no readable end-of-support date, no public documentation and no published price, which makes it impossible to recommend as a purchase. Mixed-protocol estates should also look elsewhere, since nothing beyond BACnet is documented by Honeywell, and anyone needing cloud or portfolio-scale management will not find it described.

Typical use. Legacy Alerton estate operation and maintenance through Alerton and Honeywell authorised dealers, with VisualLogic for programming, pending a documented migration path that Honeywell has not published.