Intelligent Buildings
BACnet Device Integration
ROLE: Contract Development
Intelligent Buildings
BACnet – A Data Communication Protocol for Building Automation and Control Networks
Our client built an industry leading intelligent Building Management System. The existing platform operated with Zigbee, Zwave, and LoRa IOT devices. We were tasked with adding support for BACnet devices into the mix via software enhancements to the client’s proprietary IOT gateway and to their API server.
The major project complexity lies in the fact that all levels of the existing software stack model devices as discrete entities; a thermostat is a thermostat is a thermostat but in BACnet not so much! In many BACnet controllers a device such as a thermostat is not a discrete device, it’s just a loose collection of BACnet objects contained within the controller. Square peg round hole, that was addressed in the software by coalescing associated BACnet objects into a virtual thermostat; virtual round peg! Another BACnet related complexity is variability in the BACnet implementation across different manufacturers. This was solved via further abstraction in the software design of the virtual devices, resulting in successful integrations with BACnet controllers from Daikin, Fujitsu, LG, Mitsubishi, Samsung and others. This same design approach has been used for integrating other device types such as multi-purpose sensors as well.
