New BACnet Standard Published

From a new standard to activities taking place internationally, BACnet continues to seek improvement in tying together building equipment and systems manufactured by different companies.

ASHRAE recently published the newest version of Standard 135-2008, BACnet^® - A Data Communication Protocol for Building Automation and Control Networks. This new publication includes seven addenda that add BACnet/Web services and new objects for Event Log, Trend Log Multiple, Load Control, and Access Door.

Moving forward, the committee has 11 addenda in process for the 2008 version. In addition, addendum q for ASHRAE 135-2008 has been approved for publication and is available in the standards section of ASHRAE.org. Made in cooperation with members of the ZigBee Alliance, the new datalink specification allows mains-powered BACnet devices to communicate over the ZigBee wireless mesh network, opening up new installation options and furthering BACnet’s reach into all areas of facility monitoring and control, according to Dave Robin, BACnet chair.

Robin says the committee is expecting a busy spring public review period, with 11 addenda proposed for standard 135 and four for standard 135.1. After an extended period to allow for some actual implementations to be prototyped, the BACnet Network Security architecture will go out for its fourth public review as addendum g, bringing state-of-the-art digital signatures and encryption to BACnet, enabling security-critical applications to use a standard protocol.

For more information, visit www.ashrae.org.