Overview of BACnet

BACnet is the term commonly used to refer to the ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 135, adopted and supported by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the American Society of Heating Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE). BACnet stands for Building Automation and Control network. It is a non-proprietary open protocol communication standard designed to handle data exchange in Building Automation Systems (BAS).

• The BACnet protocol defines a number of data link / physical layers, including ARCNET, Ethernet, BACnet/IP, Point-To-Point over RS-232, Master-Slave/Token-Passing over RS-485, and LonTalk.
• A BACnet network contains one or more devices. A device will often correspond to a physical piece of equipment.
• Each device contains one or more objects. The available objects are defined by the BACnet standard.
• There can be one or more instances of an object in a device.
• A device must always contain at least one instance of the Device object.
• Each object contains one or more properties. The available properties are defined by the BACnet standard.

 PcVue has been validated as a BACnet Advanced Workstation (B-AWS).

The BACnet driver supports only BACnet/IP using the host PC's network interface card. See the BACnet PICS for detailed information about BACnet support.

The BACnet convention is to specify functionality by describing the following interoperability areas.

• Network and Device management
• Data sharing
• Alarm and Event notification
• Trending and Event logging
• Scheduling

This book covers these interoperability areas and in particular, what is required when configuring BACnet connections, network, and devices, data sharing, and the use of the BACnet automation objects specifically the Alarm Notification Class, Trend Logs, Trend Log Multiple, Event Logs, Schedules and Calendars.

BACnet configuration is accessed using the Application Explorer.

Interoperability area	Description	Primary help topics
Network and device management	Connection management and device control including: The ability to expose PcVue BACnet device to other BACnet physical devices Device and object discovery on a BACnet network	Adding a BACnet network Adding devices to a BACnet network BACnet device management tasks
Data sharing	The base monitoring and control features, keeping real time values up-to-date, handling commands and command priorities.	The BACnet Mapping dialog How to configure data sharing
Alarm and event notification	Features related to alarm notification and acknowledgement, including the handling of Notification Class objects.	Using BACnet Notification Class objects How to configure PcVue to receive alarm and event notifications
Trending and event logging	Features related to trend and event logging, trend and logged events retrieval, including the handling of Trend Log, Trend Log Multiple and Event Log objects.	Using BACnet Trend Log objects How to configure PcVue to retrieve BACnet trend records
Scheduling	Features related to Scheduling, including the handling of Schedule and Calendar objects.	Using BACnet Schedule and Calendar objects How to configure PcVue to use a BACnet Schedule How to configure PcVue to use a BACnet Calendar