Here you will find the latest BACnet news, the status of SSPC 135 activities, a comprehensive bibliography of BACnet publications - many of which are available on-line - along with a wealth of other information. In keeping with ASHRAE's long-standing tradition and policy of non-commercialism, this site contains no advertising. However, BACnet's success depends on the implementation of BACnet in commercial products. Thus, we are pleased to offer links to the Websites of manufacturers who are supporting BACnet through their product offerings.

The SSPC welcomes your comments and suggestions concerning this site!
 

• Facilities Decisions offers BACnet Track (7/10) Marietta, GA. Facility Decisions is a free 2-day conference and trade show for all facility professionals with free facilities management courses, exhibit hall and networking. It will take place this year on October 5-6 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. It is jointly sponsored by the Trade Press Media Group, publishers of Building Operating Management, and BACnet International. The BACnet track is described here.
   
• "BACnet Forum Shanghai" to take place on October 20, 2010 (7/10) Shanghai, China.
  The first "BACnet Forum Shanghai" will take place at Expo 2010 Shanghai China on October 20th. The Forum is being presented by the BACnet Interest Group China (BIG-CN) and is endorsed by BACnet International (BI), the BACnet Interest Group Europe (BIG-EU), the Chinese National Standard Committee on Digital Technique of Intelligent Building and Residence Community and the Instrumentation Technology & Economy Institute (ITEI). The first BACnet Forum China was held in Beijing in October 2009 with 180 participants. At the same time the BACnet Interest Group China (BIG-CN) was formed. These two events are said to have had a great effect on building automation in China. Some media reported that the Forum was "one of the most important events for the intelligent building industry in China in 2009".

  During the BACnet Forum Shanghai, advanced BACnet technology and products from America, Europe and Asia will be introduced to one of the most important economic centers of the Chinese market. Investors, specifiers, system integrators, operators and users will learn about:

  • The benefits of BACnet and the immediate future of independent building system integration
  • BACnet basics and specifying building management systems
  • Success stories from China and abroad

  If you would like to attend the forum as either a visitor or a sponsor, you can download all the details here!

• BACnet International Journal Debuts! (7/10) Marietta, GA. BACnet International has just announced the availability of the inaugural edition of the BACnet International Journal. The journal was produced by the BI Marketing Committee in close collaboration with MarDirect, publisher of regional BACnet journals for China, Europe, France, Italy and the Middle East. The articles in this first 28-page edition are in five categories: Solutions, BACnet Insight, Products, BACnet around the World and BACnet International. You can download your own copy of the Journal here!
   
• BI Announces 2010 PlugFest (7/10) Atlanta, GA. This year's BTL PlugFest will be held November 16-18 in Atlanta at the Westin Atlanta Perimeter North. This is the eleventh annual BACnet Interoperability Workshop and is hosted this year by BACnet International. The PlugFest permits vendors to test their BACnet products in a neutral and friendly environment with BACnet devices from other vendors. Last year more than 98 BACnet engineers representing 35 companies attended the workshop and improved their BACnet implementations and testing methods. The event will begin on Tuesday afternoon to allow for arrival on Monday and setup Tuesday morning. The testing starts at 12:30 pm and continues through Thursday afternoon. For complete details, click here.
   
• SSPC and WG Meetings Conclude in Germantown (5/10) Germantown, MD. For the 8th time, Montgomery College was the host for the BACnet committee spring meetings. In addition to a day-and-a-half plenary, 13 working groups also deliberated. These included: AP, EL, IP, IT, LA, LSS, MSTP, OS, OS(AS), SG, TI, WN and XML. More details on the results soon!
   
• BACnet Highlighted at MCE 2010 in Milan! (3/10) Milan, Italy. With an attendance of more than 150,000 professionals, Mostra Covengo Expocomfort 2010 was the perfect occasion for the Italian BACnet community to present the capabilities of BACnet to the Italian market for the first time. The MCE show, held in Milan every two years, features HVAC, renewable energy and water treatment technologies. The themes of this year's show were innovation, comfort, efficiency and power saving - technologies dedicated to improving the quality of life. The Associazione BACnet Italia, working in close cooperation with BIG-EU, set up a common booth featuring information from all of the prominent BACnet suppliers who do business in Italy: ABB, Belimo, Carel, Carlo Gavazzi, Delta Controls, ESAC, Johnson Controls, Micromedia, Saia Burgess, Siemens, and Wago. It was a perfect opportunity to show the market the virtues of BACnet, the BACnet products and solutions available in Italy, and the multiple benefits that true interoperability can provide!
   
• XML Addendum Approved for Publication! (1/10) Orlando, FL. Arguably one of the most significant addenda in some time, Addendum 135-2008t was approved for publication at the ASHRAE Winter Meeting in Orlando. The addendum specifies a standard way of representing data in XML that will give BACnet new capabilities for communications between a wide range of applications. The eXtensible Markup Language (XML) is a popular technology in the data processing and communications worlds due to its capability to model complex data and its flexibility to be transformed and extended. "With this new IT-friendly way of representing building data, BACnet will open up new ways to communicate. XML can be used for exchanging files between systems, communicating with the Smart Grid, and expanding enterprise integration with richer Web services," said Dave Robin, chair of the BACnet committee. The new XML syntax is intended to be the core data representation for a variety of uses:
   
  • Powerful new Web services that are capable of efficient exchange of complex structured data.
  • An electronic version of a BACnet Protocol Implementation Conformance Statement (PICS) document, consumable by workstations and other tools, to describe the capabilities of a device.
  • An "as built" description of a deployed device, distributed either as a separate file or as a BACnet File object resident in the device itself.
  • Descriptions of proprietary objects, properties and data types, which may be simple, for basic data sharing purposes, or extremely rich, providing complete descriptions of the meaning and usage of the data in multiple human languages.
  • An export/import format for tools and workstations to publish their knowledge of a complete system of devices and networks.
  • An XML version of an "Electronic PICS" (EPICS), including the complete test database and other test-oriented data.

  Seven other addenda were also approved for publication. Addendum h has added an important new capability for human languages. When the Unicode character set was created many years ago, it was constructed to be universal set of characters to support most of the world's languages. However, its original 2-byte encoding caused trouble for a lot of existing systems that were designed to process only the 1-byte characters common in western character sets. The "UTF-8" encoding was created to solve this problem and has become a popular method of conveying international text on the Web. BACnet has now embraced this standard and uses it in a way that takes full advantage of its compatibility with the ubiquitous ANSI/ASCII character set.

  BACnet has also added support for more data types. A set of new "Value" objects rounds out BACnet's ability to represent different data types in a uniform and standard way. Added to the original Analog, Binary and Multi-state Value objects are new Value objects for every primitive datatype that BACnet supports, including support for character strings and large numerics.

  All the new addenda will be available both here and on ASHRAE's website in the near future!

• "BACnet Forum 2009 Beijing" Attendees Enthusiastic! (10/09) Beijing, China. A crowd of some 160 enthusiastic participants filled the ballroom of the China People's Palace in Beijing to take part in the first BACnet Forum in China. The day was filled with 18 presentations from speakers from North America, Europe and Asia (see program) along with a product exhibition of BACnet equipment from 8 suppliers, all of whom were members of the newly-formed BIG-CN, formed the previous afternoon. These included ABB, Contemporary Controls, Delta, JCI, K&P, Reliable, Sauter, and Siemens.
  

  
  H. Michael Newman, Cornell University, the first chairman of the ASHRAE BACnet committee, greeted the attendees and gave a keynote talk on the "Success Story of the BACnet Protocol" (you can download the presentation (in PPS format) here). The Forum was hosted by the Intelligent Building Development Centre of Science and Technology Committee of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of the P.R.C., BACnet International and BIG-EU. The organizers in Beijing were MarDirect and the Instrumentation Technology and Economy Institute of China (ITEI) in cooperation with the Intelligent Building Branch of the China Construction Industry Association, Technical Committee 124 on Industry Process Measurement and Control of the Standardization Administration of China (SAC/TC 124) and the Intelligent Building and Building Automation Committee of the China Automation Association. This broad participation was certainly one of the keys to the Forum's success!

  At the conclusion of the Forum, the organizers sponsored a quiet dinner in the hotel for some of the travelers. Here, from left to right, Ding Lu (ITEI), Ivy Pan (MarDirect-China), Li Yumin and Wang Chunxi (both of ITEI) celebrate a toast to a job well done! The next forum in China is expected to take place in Shanghai in 2010.

  
   
• New BIG Forms in China! (10/09) Beijing, China. The long-awaited formation of a BACnet Interest Group in China has now come to pass! BIG-CN held its initial meeting on October 19, 2009 at the China People's Palace Hotel in Beijing. The principal order of business was the election of officers. The photo shows Ivy Pan of MarDirect-China and Douglas Chan of Delta Control's Beijing office, getting ready to tabulate the ballots. The top four vote-getters were selected as the initial officers and the remaining nominees agreed to serve on an Advisory Board, similar to the organization of BIG-EU. The elected officers were: Richard Yu, Reliable Controls; Wang Jiejun, Thermokon; Jacky Xu, Honeywell/Alerton; and Mu Yanping, ABB. The Advisory Board will be initially comprised of: Douglas Chan, Delta; Ma Duan Ning, Johnson Controls; Henry Zhang, Sauter; and Hans Symanczik, Kieback & Peter. Additional organizations that participated in the kick-off meeting were: Automated Logic, Contemporary Controls, the Instrumentation Technology and Economy Institute, SAIA, Siemens and TridonicAtco. MarDirect-China, which was instrumental is arranging for the formation of BIG-CN, has agreed to serve as the BIG's secretariat. Congratulations to all who helped make the launch of BIG-CN a reality!
   
• BI PlugFest 2009 Draws 38 Companies! (10/09) Atlanta, GA. "PlugFest 2009," the tenth annual BACnet Interoperability Workshop, took place this year at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia on October 13-15 and was sponsored by BACnet International. More than 86 BACnet engineers (of which 9 were first-time attendees) represented 46 teams and 38 different companies. This year's participants were: A.O. Smith, ABB, Inc., Aircuity, American Auto-Matrix, Automated Logic Corporation, Blue Ridge Technologies/Lumisys, Carrier Corporation, Chipkin Automation Systems Inc., Contemporary Controls, Cylon Controls Ltd., Delta Controls, Distech Controls, Eagle Technology, Inc., Ebtron, Inc., FieldServer Technologies, Fr. Sauter AG, Honeywell Analytics, Honeywell International, Honeywell Life Safety-Notifier, Honeywell/Alerton, ITT Corp, Johnson Controls, Inc., KMC Controls, LOYTEC electronics GmbH, Lutron Electronics, Phoenix Controls, PolarSoft, Inc., Red Lion Controls, Reliable Controls Corporation, Siemens, Schneider Electric, Touch-Plate Lighting Controls, Trane, Tridium, TSI Incorporated, Viconics Electronics Inc. and WattStopper.
   
• Facilities Decision Conference & Expo Features BACnet Track (9/09) Las Vegas, NV. BACnet International and Trade Press Media, publishers of Building Operating Management, partnered to produce the 2009 Facility Decisions Conference and Expo at the Las Vegas Convention Center from September 22-23. The event attracted some 1,300 building automation professionals and top-level facility decision-makers as well as nearly 200 leading industry suppliers. The conference offered general presentations, targeted learning sessions and workshops, a "Solutions Exchange" session, and an exhibit hall. You can download the event brochure here. In addition, BACnet International presented awards to four outstanding BACnet volunteers:
   
  
  • Steve Bushby, NIST, received the "Distinguished Service" award. Steve has been involved with BACnet since 1987, more or less continuously. He served as secretary of the BACnet committee for 8 1/2 years, during the time of its drafting, as it grew to its initial 512-page length. He then served as vice-chair for five years and then as chair for five years. He has been chairing BACnet International's steering committee since the beginning. He has also served, and is still serving, as the convener of ISO/TC 205/WG 3, the ISO working group that is responsible for the international standardization of BACnet (ISO 16484-5 and -6).
  
   
  
  • Ben Dorsey, KMC Controls, received the "Cornerstone" award. Ben, a member of the Marketing Committee, leads the publications sub-committee. This group is presently focused on the new BACnet International Journal. This quarterly publication is slated to have its first issue in January 2010, in time for the AHR Expo.
  
   
  
  • Kent Gorrie, Reliable Controls, received the "Scarlet Pimpernel" award in appreciation of his tireless efforts and outstanding contributions to the BACnet International website and community. This award title seemed to fit Kent as the phrase "The Scarlet Pimpernel" is typically used to describe someone who is everywhere, often when you least expect them. This definitely describes Kent's level of engagement and contribution to the BACnet International community.
  
   
  
  • Roy Kolasa, Honeywell, received the 2009 "Volunteer of the Year" award. Roy has been an active and engaged member of the marketing committee since its inception and recently accepted the position as BACnet International's Education Committee Chair. Roy has been instrumental in content for presentations at conferences as well as a driving force in overall marketing committee activities.
  
  
• BTL Seeks New Manager! (8/09) Atlanta, GA. BACnet International is seeking someone to take on the job of managing the BACnet Testing Laboratories (BTL). The BTL is responsible for the testing and listing of BACnet products worldwide. Lori Tribble has served admirably for several years but has recently decided to move on. Thanks, Lorrie, for your hard work! Among the required qualifications are: a strong understanding of the BACnet standard and the test process; good interpersonal, inter-corporate communication skills; strong management and organizational skills; ability to respond to customer emails immediately and follow-up when necessary; and being a self-starter that can handle doing multiple types of tasks at the same time. Further information can be found here.
   

• October 5-6, 2010. Facilities Decisions, Las Vegas, NV.
• October 20, 2010. BACnet Forum Shanghai, Shanghai, China.
• November 16-18, 2010. BI PlugFest, Atlanta, GA.