RIP BACnet

- Is the future of BACnet bigger than its past?

This thought piece is inspired by something I wrote in response to a post on Linkedin that stated:

Is the future of BACnet as a device to device communication protocol bigger than its past? Do I think that BACnet will rest in peace? No, I don't. Considering the increase in the number of devices and data points, and the need for structured data, I think that BACnet will be more active in the future than ever before.

"I've seen much of the rest of the world. It is brutal and cruel and dark; BACnet is the light."

Everywhere I look these days I see some doomsday propaganda. Climate change. Trade wars. Immigration challenges, often because of a lack of integration. People and companies that are power hungry and a rising fear about just about anything that has to do with change. And this sometimes makes me worried.

But then I change perspective. I take a deep breath. And I am thinking about all the amazing developments I see in every industry imaginable. Everything is moving faster than ever, and we see that it is easier today than ever before to go global. I could probably find a person to talk to in every country in the world if I give it a week. The topic? Easy.

How we together can make the world a better place.

And isn't that where we should start with buildings as well? What are the steps that we need to take in order to better contribute to a better world in a faster way than we've done it before? Without the silos, without the lock-in effects and without making it complicated? The guide from Switch Automation definitely helps, but are we focusing enough on the end user experience?

That's what's been driving me to dig deeper and deeper and to expand my understanding into the horizontal real estate industry. To really find out how we together can create better buildings. And in this huge puzzle of different actors and technologies, I believe I have found an important piece.

As a wise man once wrote, "The people and their communities have staying power, the technology does not." That's why the first rule of BACnet is that you shouldn't talk about BACnet. When I drive a car, I don't really care about the engine inside. I get to know if it is a fast or slow car by driving it. And I see that's much more how the world thinks about anything. It's a fear that a lot of people are feeling these days that no one really gets how technology really works and that's one of the major reasons why Raspberry Pi was created. No one would really use the flimsy boards for anything but hobby ideas. But the industrial grade computer boards, with some industrial hardware design, provides an open way of creating industrial gateways not tied to any of the big vendors. Calvin has written some great tutorials on the openness of the future, down to the hardware level. There are definite ways of removing technology altogether from the equation and purely focusing on the benefits by collaborating with industry professionals that have an open mind. Some technologies won't make the cut with legal ramifications en masse, but some will.

I'm glad there are automotive experts out there, responsible for the fine-tuning of the engine. And they seem to be doing it with iPads today, utilizing diagnostics, and the car is telling them what to fix before it gets broken down. And the parts are being ordered beforehand so that it's there in stock once the car makes it to the garage.

But I, as a driver, don't care whatsoever. I only care about that it's working. Some people might hate me for that, as well as the idea that the tenants don't matter. And of course, that's a mindset that is changing more and more. I am not saying that we shouldn't care about technology and how it works, not at all. This piece about Nanotechnology for sensing looks really interesting, and I have already reached out to get our hands on it. But the question might be, where does the largest pull for smarter buildings come from? Where is the speed?

Buildings - an arena for silo-thinking or a global possibility for innovation and inclusion

The must haves of data, as well as better buildings, are not necessarily the system integrators, nor the real estate owners. It's getting there, but it's a slow process. Meanwhile, tenants get headaches, and CO2 levels are spiking off the charts, climate change is here to stay, and mass urbanization means that we need better buildings.

But how to get there? How to create better buildings as fast as possible?

Figure 1. Enabling cities for mass innovation

Well, right now in Sweden we are working with a couple of customers that have a lot of potentials. One has to do with the residential side, 30 000 apartments in the balance. And the other one is a mix of commercial and residential. We are working closely with a technical asset manager who's got almost free reign when it comes to the digitization of their assets. One of their core assets is in the pipeline of getting sold, and they want to maximise the amount of money they can get. And the way to get there? Get it digitized as much as possible and incorporate "IoT" within a Facility IT approach.

A modern take on traditional retrofitting, where the true north is the experiences people have in the building empowered by a software stack where there is no software limit to the amount of sensors/meters in the network

Scanning all the areas of the mall and putting the information in a digital twin/BIM modelling and mashing it up with real sensor data from mesh sensors and existing BMS systems

Capturing data via plug and play wireless sensors at set intervals, automatically sending data to a gateway-> to the cloud, without manual configuration, preserving local control

Connecting elevators, energy meters, existing equipment and pooling it together for others to take advantage of in a standardized way through a standardized Web Service/API

Sucking data out of their existing business tools, and combining it with portfolio data to improve and automate tenant communication and fault reporting

Reduce software programming, API integrations and field commissioning

Enabling an interface where others can empty the building for information and ensure faster time to value creation through standardized data and analytics

Planning a hackathon for their building in the fall once data has been standardized and exposed via a secure and standardized interface

Creating a building that will harmonize with the energy grid, requiring real-time sensoring to anticipate supply and demand peaks, focusing on future capabilities with existing technology

Collaborating with Consultant companies in making sense of the data through advanced analytics and dashboarding, utilizing our automatic sensor to Azure data collection pump

Starting up collaborations with partners in making the whole mall an attractive place to visit, incorporating Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality for improved shopping experiences

Some of the benefits of the digital twin are that ultra-scalable sensors, like #BACnetMesh, via our partner company Conectric, can be geo-located with extreme precise location. And it means that the integrators, or just electricians, will know exactly where to put the sensors when they install them.

Figure 2. Building Information Modeling - Digital Twin Creation with IoT ingestion utilizing BIMeye

It's all about pace layering really, figuring out what data is missing from where, and how often you want to get the data. Depending on that, as well as bi directionality for the future, you just go in and choose the sensors of your liking. Everything will be BACnet objects from the building interface anyway, automatically. And both Iceland, where Go-IoT is based in, as well as Sweden, we are very much in favour of equal rights and equal opportunities.

"We believe in equality in that everything that is within the building will be seen as BACnet objects, no matter the vendor, technology, or origin. Everyone is welcome."

That's also why we don't care if sensors talk to different protocols, languages, or frequencies. All are welcome underneath the BACnet umbrella, which harmonizes the past with the present, and allows for a foundation for the future.

The customer might not even know, nor care about making everything into BACnet objects. They just want to get energy costs down while keeping tenant satisfaction up. But for the ones working with existing equipment, saying goodbye to manually configure settings and getting the chance to deploy sensors that become BACnet objects automatically? That means a lot! After all,

"A smart building is not smart unless the occupants know how to utilize its features," correctly put by James McHale.

The overall goal is to reduce energy costs, get maintenance costs down by collaborating easier with the digital twin, as well as enabling real time-sensor data, making sure all SLAs are upheld by the service companies. Also, connecting all the building-related information to the company's way of working, minimizing excel dependency.

Our customer is very much in tune with the new value concepts in addition to that of energy savings. We see that they focus on the wellness, productivity and operational efficiency aspect, as well as metrics regarding business efficiency, customer experience and employee recruitment and retention, as previously stated by Joseph Aamidor and Scott Cochrane, as well as myself in an article written last year.

One of the key factors is also that added transparency and automation will reduce admin work for the technical asset manager by as much as 20%. This will free up time to work on the things that really matter, and they can do much more with fewer people. Something that will resonate well with the skills shortage gap we see here as well. The combination of monitoring and control, as well as for analytics with infused AI/ML technology and the shift towards a platform economy, is what it's all about.

From monitoring to control - to automated buildings on the edge

The only reason this customer knows about BACnet is that I told him. I've said it before, and I keep on saying it, but BACnet is nowhere to be seen in Sweden on the application level. It's there lurking in the background of systems and technologies, but it's not really used to the full extent, or any extent really. Not in the Nordics as much, and that has been cumbersome, but not anymore. The ones in the business think it's the same as Modbus, which has been mildly infuriating, to say the least. But lately, I've been interacting more and more with asset managers, FM companies and real estate owners. And they absolutely love BACnet.