Lon is a data standard used largely by ETC Architectural products to carry data and power to architetural outstations such as button stations, occupancy sensors and daylight sensors.
Lon is assigned different names depending on the system it is being used with.
With ETC's Unison Legacy systems, it is known as Unison LinkPower
With ETC Paradigm systems, it is known as LinkConnect
With ETC Smartlink systems, it is known as Smartlink
It is important to note that although the cabling and physical layer (voltage, topology, etc.) are the same for all of these systems, the data carried is not the same - for example, connecting a Smartlink station to a Paradigm processor will not work!
Cabling
Lon is a topology free cabling system, meaning that the cable can be split, starred, daisy chained or any combination of these. The only restriction is that the total length of cabling must not exceed 1640' (500m) without use of a repeater.
ETC recommends the use of Belden 8471 cable for Lon systems. It is very important to note that DMX cable, Cat5 cable and other types will not work.
Knowledge Base: