In this Newsletter:

• AHR Expo Education Sessions now on The BACnet Institute (TBI)
• Welcoming New Board Members
• Take a tour of The BACnet Institute (TBI)
• Cybersecurity Acceleration Program Updates
• PlugFest 2024
• SSPC 135 Committee Updates

Welcome to the newest edition of the Cornerstones newsletter from BACnet International. The BACnet International community benefits from information and education shared through Cornerstones, the organization's monthly electronic publication. This publication is distributed to members of the BACnet International community, connecting corporate, integrator, site, student and individual users to BACnet news and updates.Cornerstones is a unique publication because it speaks not only to the engineer and contractor communities, but also to facility professionals, building managers and owners, and other personnel.

This is where you come in. We need you to connect! If you have company news, product news, BACnet Case Study or a best practice you want to share, please send them to us using the form below. And don't leave out the photos! Read past Cornerstones and Case Studies.

This AHR Expo education session, moderated by

BACnet International Andy McMillan is now available

on The BACnet Institute (TBI).

The latest BACnet Community Global Outlook is now available on The BACnet Institute (TBI)! Moderated by BACnet International President and Managing Director, Andy McMillan, this presentation gives a overview on the landscape and growth trajectory of the BACnet protocol.

Panelists include Hans Symanczik (BACnet Interest Group Europe (BIG-EU)), Sakhee Chandrayan (INBAC), Jeremy Towler (BSRIA), and Michael Osborne (BTL Technical Advisor/SSPC).

This session gives attendees an understanding of the dynamic growth of the BACnet community, including market adoption statistics and anecdotal information from around the world. It covers recent market research data, market insights and observations about the direction of BACnet certification and standard enhancements.

This AHR Expo education session, presented by Ken Gilbert, Automated Logic, is now available on

The BACnet Institute.

This session, presented by Ken Gilbert, Automated Logic, at the 2024 AHR Expo, discusses the evolution of the BACnet protocol and how BACnet/SC provides a Cloud Native Capability to support connecting to the cloud.

This AHR Expo education session, presented by

Grant Wichenko, Appin Associates, is now available on

The BACnet Institute.

BACnet International's Guide Spec, released in 2022, has been updated with information on how to specify BACnet-based lighting systems. The GuideSpec was updated with a contribution from Grant Wichenko, Appin Associates.

It covers how standard BACnet objects and services can be used the Lighting System Equipment Supplier to provide information to the Building Automation System (BAS) on the status and energy consumption of the lights in a building.

The GuideSpec gives guidance to the BAS Designer and the Electrical Designer of Record on how to add BACnet spec language into the Division 25 specification and the Division 26 lighting specification.

It is a valuable resource for BAS Designers and Specifiers as it will save time, make it easier to develop project documents, and, ultimately, provide the two authors with a better finished product.

This AHR Expo education session, presented by

Dave Robin, BSC Softworks, and Nate Benes,

University of Nebraska-Lincoln, is now available on

The BACnet Institute.

Presented by Dave Robin, BSC Softworks, and Nate Benes, Director of Operational Technology at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, this session gives insight in how to use BACnet/SC in smart buildings. This session is geared towards manufacturers and building owners. BACnet Secure Connect is a new interoperable addition to the BACnet standard that lets you bring building automation to more places in less time. This interactive session features a Q&A with BACnet committee members with hands-on experience building and operating BACnet/SC networks.

This AHR Expo education session, presented by

Coleman Brumley, Passive Logic and Chair of the

SSPC 135 Committee, is now available on

The BACnet Institute.

This session, presented at the 2024 AHR Expo by SSPC 135 Committee Chair Coleman Brumley, covers what web services are and why they matter in the technological sphere and within the BACnet standard. The BACnet standard has published what is termed “BACnet Web Services” or “BACnet/WS” as part of ANSI/ASHRAE 135-2020.

This AHR Expo education session, presented by

Michael R. Wilson, Nlyte Software, and Enzo Greco, Nlyte Software, is now available on The BACnet Institute.

Presented by Enzo Greco, President at Nlyte Software, and Michael Wilson, Director of Marketing at Nlyte Software, this education session focuses on the future trajectory of data centers and how companies can navigate new standards for a greener future.

This AHR Expo education session, presented by

Edward Tom, Yaskawa America, is now available on

The BACnet Institute.

Presented by Edward Tom, Product Manager, Drives, at Yaskawa America, Incs, this one hour education session gives a comprehensive overview of the BACnet protocol. BACnet is a highly used open building automation protocol that continues to grow. This session will teach you about the basic building blocks and design philosophy that have made, and continue to make, BACnet so popular. Learn how BACnet can help you now and into the future as the Building Internet of Things (B-IoT) continues to grow."

 The BACnet Institute (TBI) is an online learning environment that serves as a central source for globally relevant information and education related to Building Automation System implementation. It offers a wide breadth of FREE courses and resources in different languages and levels of expertise for key professionals within the buildings industry. These resources not only cover the basics of a BACnet-base system, but topics such as interoperability, devices, specifying, networking, and security. While registration to TBI is required, it is FREE.



Sign up now at thebacnetinstitute.org. 

Salvatore Cataldi, Belimo, newly appointed to the board; Michael R. Wilson, Nlyte Software, and Paul L. Bartunek, III, Mechanical Sales, reelected.

BACnet International is proud to announce the results of its most recent board of directors election. Salvatore Cataldi, Senior Product Lead for Belimo, will serve his first term beginning this year. Cataldi has led an extensive career in building automation systems with a focus on BACnet integration.

“I am honored to join the BACnet International Board of Directors and look forward to contributing to the organization’s efforts to promote the BACnet standard and enhance building automation and control systems worldwide,” said Salvatore Cataldi. “This role presents an exciting opportunity to further the integration of modern digital paradigms within the building automation sector, fostering greater connectivity, efficiency, and sustainability in systems.”

Since 2018, Cataldi has led several initiatives within Belimo including the conceptualization of the Belimo Digital Ecosystem. Within the building automation community, he has served in leadership positions in various digital standardization committees and consistently exhibits dedication in advancing the industry.

Michael R. Wilson, Director of Marketing for Nlyte Software, and Paul L. Bartunek, III, Chief Development and Marketing Officer for Mechanical Sales, Inc., were reelected to the board and will begin new terms this year.

Wilson is responsible for marketing strategy and execution to ensure that Nlyte Software retains its market leadership position for data centers. He orchestrates Nlyte Software’s global market messaging, plans and executes SEO/SEM, administers lead generation, conducts product launches, and manages Nlyte Software’s social media presence. Wilson has worked in the building automation and controls industry for nearly two decades and has previously served as the Marketing Committee chair from 2008 – 2013 and currently chairs the committee.

Paul L. Bartunek, III is the Chief Development and Marketing Officer for Mechanical Sales, Inc. With over 25 years of experience in the electronic manufacturing industry and a demonstrated history of successful relationship building, Bartunek is a skilled development professional. As Vice President of HVAC Sales and Marketing for ABB Drives USA, Bartunek led the sales and marketing initiatives for the commercial family of variable frequency drive products. He also had impact with mergers and acquisitions, new product development, team building, and creating energy efficient solutions for customers.

The following individuals will continue to serve on the 2024 BACnet International Board of Directors:

Andy McMillan, BACnet International President & Managing Director

James Burke, Johnson Controls

Brad Hill, Honeywell International

Erica Johnson, QA Café

Todd Lash, Siemens

Raymond Rae, CopperTree Analytics

Dennis Swoboda, Blue Ridge Technologies

Come test the interoperability of your BACnet products in a friendly and vendor neutral environment.

What is PlugFest?

PlugFest is an interoperability workshop where manufacturers can bring their BACnet products and test them with BACnet devices from other manufacturers. It is a friendly and neutral environment and the goal is to improve the overall quality of BACnet products in the market. The workshop includes multiple testing sessions with both one-on-one and round table testing, and networking events to build industry relationships.

Who is this workshop for?

PlugFest welcomes all developers, at any stage of their product engineering. Many industry veterans attend and are willing to help newer engineers understand the esoteric history of the standard. We are all aligned to the same purpose of getting the products to interoperate.

Who, specifically, from each company should attend?

Companies should send engineering and product development staff. This could include hardware, firmware, and software developers as well as technical product managers. 

Why should companies participate in PlugFest?

PlugFest provides an unequaled opportunity to test product functionality with other manufacturers to ensure the core purpose of BACnet: interoperable networks. It is an open and friendly environment dedicated to mutual success. Attendees will have the opportunity to learn lessons from experts that may shorten their product development learning curve. They may also be exposed to tools that could make their jobs easier. Further, this type of interoperability testing is a great way to lower the cost of BTL testing and Certification by finding and fixing errors earlier in the development cycle.

What if companies have intellectual property they don’t want to share?

Companies are only required to share information necessary to interoperate with other products and diagnose any issues that arise. To protect sensitive information all attendees are required to sign a non-disclosure agreement designed to ensure information shared at PlugFest remains confidential. 

Why do you offer both one-on-one and round table testing?

In one-on-one testing, or pairing, companies can test in-depth with a specific manufacturer. In round table testing attendees arrange their equipment on a larger Local Area Network (LAN) and test with multiple manufacturers simultaneously. This provides a more robust simulation of the interoperability environment that products will encounter in the field.

Member Rate: $750.00 USD

Member Rate with Volunteer Discount: $700.00 USD

Non-Member Rate: $1,200.00 USD

Non-Member Rate with Volunteer Discount: $1,150.00 USD

Coleman Brumley, Chair ASNI/ASHRAE SSPC 135, announces that ASHRAE Standard 223p is available for it’s first 45-day Publication Public Review at https://osr.ashrae.org. From ASHRAE: “The purpose of Standard 223-202x is to define formal knowledge concepts and a methodology to apply them to create interoperable, machine-readable semantic frameworks for representing building automation and control data and other building system information.”

Join the Cybersecurity Acceleration Program to take advantage of this industry standard tool.

BACnet International is proud to announce the alpha release of BACCARI – The BACnet Certificate Authority Reference Implementation Tool, now available to all registered participants of the Cybersecurity Acceleration Program. This project is an example implementation of a Certificate Authority for BACnet. It builds and processes files using the CARI file format, as proposed in 135-2020 Addendum cs, out for public review. The zip file format conveys BACnet/SC CSRs to a certificate authority and returns the signed operating certificates. This tool will become the industry’s standard for certificate authority implementation.

Currently, this project is at the ALPHA stage. The user-interface is not in the final style, but is functional. The beta version will be scheduled for later in the year.

There are several ways to use this for testing its features and workflows. As of today, it has a single mode of operation where all features are available, limited only by the user’s login as “Administrator” or “User”. Future builds will have a standalone offline “Builder” mode that is just used to build CSR zip files and concepts like “Download” from a list, will be changed to “Save” a single file.

The tool is capable of operating in several different scenarios listed below from simplest to most advanced.

• Scenario 1: User is both Installer *and* Administrator
• Scenario 2: Installer builds CARI file to submit by email
• Scenario 3: Administrator receives a CARI file by email
• Scenario 4: Administrator sets up web server for manual approval
• Scenario 5: Administrator sets up web server for auto-approval
• Scenario 6: Installer’s proprietary tool creates the CARI file itself

These companies and educational institutions have already joined the Cybersecurity Acceleration Program. For more information, see below or contact David Nardone, Membership and Education Manager, at david@bacnetinternational.org.

This month's featured TBI resource is "Exploring Integration Opportunities with Airflow Measurement Stations," by Darryl DeAngelis, Director of Business Development, EBTRON. DeAngelis discusses how Airflow Measurement Stations' seamless integration with BACnet presents opportunities to revolutionize how building environments are managed. Data from various airflow measurement stations can be provided through BACnet to many different platforms used to improve building operations.

The BACnet Institute (TBI) is an online portal for BACnet-focused learning and knowledge sharing. It provides an easy path to BACnet information and learning for everyone involved with BACnet systems. The portal includes three on-demand FREE courses and over 160 resources including white papers, articles, presentations and a community forum. TBI Resources are free, but registration for an account is required. Courses are eligible for CEUs and PDHs.

Each year TBI continues to grow. Since its launch in January 2017, over 10,000 registered users across more than 80 countries have accessed its resources. TBI’s simple search function allows users to get quick access to anything they need.

For BACnet International Corporate Members, if you have any news concerning one of your BTL listed products, case studies or company news stories, let us know and we will be glad to include it in Cornerstones! All submissions should be sent to Mary Catherine Heard, BACnet International's Communications Manager, at marycatherine@bacnetinternational.org.

Please ensure that we are included in your distribution lists for product and company news release as well.

BASview3 is a stand-alone, embedded, web-based graphical interface for building automation and process automation systems. It can be accessed from any web browser—providing supervisory functionality to a BACnet/IP or Modbus TCP system. By using Contemporary Controls BASrouter or BASgateway products, additional protocols, such as BACnet MS/TP and Modbus RTU, are supported.

With the BASview3, current and historical values can be displayed on a user-defined screen as graphics or dashboards. Supervisory features include animated graphic screens, scheduling, historical trending, runtime accumulation, and email alarms. BASview3 will automatically toggle outputs and change setpoints on schedule, collect runtime and trend data, and monitor alarm conditions.

BASview3 supports multiple logins with different user permission levels that allow you to create dashboards and/or graphics for various end users, such as the service personnel who maintain the HVAC equipment and occupants who are interested in comfort parameters and state of operation. These different permission levels can permit some users to log in and modify (write) parameters, while others can only view (read) them.

ODIN gives operations managers more power over the properties in their portfolio, centralizing access to BMS systems, control over building devices, and insights into historical data. It’s easy to use, too — no complex training or technical skills are needed. Plus, the latest software update, ODIN 2.0, is designed to enhance user and building data security, protecting your facility from trouble-makers.



The latest iteration of ODIN has enhanced cybersecurity from multiple angles. 

• Net Core Framework: Proven itself as safe and versatile for building managers, this framework avoids the slowdowns common of older .Net Frameworks while maintaining the security advantages.

• BACnet Secure Connect (SC): We’ve also integrated new capabilities to address the recent introduction of BACnet Secure Connect (SC). SC introduces new protocols to your systems to authenticate communication and encrypt data for BACnet devices using Transport Layer Security. With ODIN 2.0, you can expect our software to work within the SC parameters, protecting the data collected from the devices, so it’s both more difficult to intercept and unintelligible should it be successfully stolen.

• Multi-factor Authentication: ODIN now offers multi-factor authentication as an optional security step for Site Admins. A one-time passcode can be sent to the staff member’s email, so there’s another obstacle for bad actors to overcome. We highly recommend implementing it, even if it does take an extra few seconds to authenticate the user.

Delta, a leading global provider of IoT-based Smart Green Solutions, announced its participation in the NVIDIAGTC AI conference to demonstrate its innovative digital twin platform, developed on NVIDIA Omniverse, aimed at enhancing its smart manufacturing capabilities. The showcase also included Delta’s ORV3 AI server infrastructure solution, featuring power supplies with efficiency up to 97.5%, and a broad portfolio of cutting-edge DC/DC converters, power chokes, and 3D Vapor Chambers designed to support GPU operations.

Armstrong Fluid Technology has announced the launch of Fire Manager, a cloud-based service that enables Active Performance Management in its industry-leading Design Envelope Fire Pumps.

The innovative new service proactively tracks and manages pump performance and provides early diagnostic warnings and timely automated reports that help customers make informed decisions and take immediate action to deliver the most efficient and safest fire safety system performance.

More specifically, Fire Manager:

• Records data points on municipal supply pressure
• Makes digital recordings of pump operation and related data
• Provides pump analytics and insights to support condition-based maintenance
• Provides timely notifications and alerts for any impending issues in pump performance
• Increased reliability and safety supported by real-time and historic test and performance data

“When combined with Armstrong’s self-regulating, variable speed fire pumps, Fire Manger helps deliver several unique points of value to fire-safety professionals, “ said Steven Baird, Marketing Manager, Fire Products, Building Systems Solutions. This includes:

• Cost savings from reduced need for PRVs (up to $1,500 per sprinkler branch)
• No drain requirements for any of the PRVs not required
• Space savings in the mechanical room
• Simpler, faster installation
• Elimination of safety factors for supply pressure variation
• Ability to predict and report potential equipment failure that could result in expensive damage and/or loss of life
• Reduction of the number of zones in a sprinkler system and the potential elimination of storage tanks
• Help with fire systems having large differentials between static and residual pressures
• Increased design flexibility

In addition to providing important new safety benefits, Armstrong’s Design Envelope Fire Pumps hold the distinction of being the first self-regulating variable-speed fire pump to meet NFPA-20 (2019 Edition), Section 4.8 standards.

“Through Active Performance Management and Armstrong 360 Service and Support solutions, customers will get the best possible performance and value from fire safety systems at every phase in the lifecycle of a building” Baird concludes.

Additional information about the new Design Envelope Fire Pumps with Fire Pump Manager is available at www.armstrongfluidtechnology.com

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OptiFlex™ BACnet Building Controller (BTL-31132) 

Device Profile: BACnet Building Controller (B-BC)

Device Profile: BACnet Router (B-RTR)

BACnet Broadcast Management Device (B-BBMD) 

https://www.bacnetinternational.net/btl/index.php?m=11 

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