The ASHRAE Standing Standard Project Committee (SSPC) 135 (popularly known as ‘BACnet Committee’) is responsible for the continuous maintenance and evolution of the BACnet protocol. SSPC 135 is sub-divided into “Working Groups.” Each working group is intended to address a particular issue of concern to the committee. Working groups evolve with the issues at hand. Here is an overview of our current and ongoing working groups:
Active Working Groups:
- Data Modeling (DM-WG)
- Elevator (EL-WG)
- Information Technology (IT-WG)
- Lighting Applications (LA-WG)
- Life Safety and Security (LSS-WG)
- Network Security (NS-WG)
- Objects and Services (OS-WG)
- Protocol Stack (PS-WG)
- Semantic Interoperability (SI-WG)
- Smart Grid (SG-WG)
- Testing and Interoperability (TI-WG)
Past Working Groups (Inactive):
The working groups in this section are inactive because their activity has been merged into an active group or they have completed their work.
- Applications (AP-WG) > transferred to Semantic Interoperability (SI-WG)
This group was tasked with investigating the development of semantic information concepts and vocabularies suitable for building data of various application areas.
All its tasks have been transferred to the Semantic Interoperability Working Group.
- Internet Protocol (IP-WG) > transferred to Protocol Stack (PS-WG)
This group was tasked with refinements to the BACnet/IP functionality of BACnet defined in Annex J of the standard and was focused on developing the BACnet/IPv6 specification. It was working on extending BACnet/IP capabilities to deal with developments in the IP world, including NAT firewalls and IPv6.
All its tasks have been transferred to the new Protocol Stack working group (PS-WG)formed in April 2017.
- Master-Slave/Token-Passing (MS/TP-WG) > transferred to Protocol Stack (PS-WG)
This group was working on enhancements and issues relating to BACnet MS/TP LANs and PTP communications. it was tasked with considering refinements to the Master-Slave/Token-Passing specification of BACnet defined in Clause 9 of the standard along with the Point-to-Point protocol defined in Clause 10.
All its tasks have been transferred to the new Protocol Stack Working Group formed in April 2017.
- XML Applications (XML-WG) > Transferred to Data Modeling (DM-WG)
This group was tasked with applications of “eXtensible Markup Language” (XML) technology in relation to BACnet systems. This group’s work has been transferred to Data Modeling Working Group.
- Wireless Networking (WN-WG)
This group was tasked with the use of BACnet with wireless communication technologies such as ZigBee, the 802 series of wireless Ethernet, and others. This WG is currently inactive, having worked for several years to develop Annex O – BACnet over ZigBee as a Data Link Layer. The group can be expected to resume its activities if and when there is interest in pursuing additional wireless capabilities for BACnet.