BACnet, LON in Full Force

By Staff February 1, 2006

Backers of open building systems were in full force at AHR preaching the gospel of open systems. The folks from the Lon-Mark Americas Assn. conducted a day-long seminar on open systems including truly open specifications.

Ron Bernstein, vice chairman of the group, presented a session on the “Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” on specification practices where he laid out 10 questions every specifier should ask when selecting products and building automation systems. In particular, he warned specifiers to make sure system front-end tools are not only open, but also owned by the client.

Visit the “resources” community of www.lonmarkamericas.org for the list, as well as a number of sample specifications, including specs from NASA and the New York school system.

The BACnet camp was also active, having just formalized the creation of BACnet International, the merger of the BACnet Manufacturers Assn. and the BACnet Interest Group. News from that group, according to former BMA chairman Jim Lee, is that the new version of web services was approved at the ASHRAE Winter Meeting. The community has also released SSPC 135, a security standard that will go out for its first review this spring. Going out for a second review is a real-time load-control pricing object, a tool that will help communicate pricing and load shedding via BACnet. On the wireless front, Lee said, BACnet International has reached an agreement with the Zigbee Alliance to place BACnet objects on top of Zigbee definitions.