BACnet device

BACnet devices are defined by services and objects. All BACnet devices contain one BACnet Device Object, which represents the device itself. Additional BACnet objects, for different purposes, can be added by clicking on the New button on the toolbar. BACnet devices that are top-level, meaning they are not under a virtual gateway, will also contain a Gateways item in the Navigation tree.

Selecting a BACnet device in the navigation tree will display its details to the left of the tree.

If the BACnet device is part of the active setup (the setup that is, or will be running on the DINGO device), it will have a green triangle in the right upper corner.

Database ID: This is the identifier that the BACnet device has been automatically assigned by the database on the DINGO device. It can be useful in advanced troubleshooting situations. If the identifier is negative, it means that the BACnet device has not yet been saved to the DINGO device.

Device identifier: This is the unique BACnet device identifier. The user has to be careful to avoid conflicts, by choosing an identifier, that is not currently used on the network.

Created: When the BACnet device is saved to the DINGO device, it will automatically get a timestamp for its creation.

Max TL disk-write delay: This determines the maximum database/file commit timeout in seconds. This timeout is set to minimize disk-writes of fast changing data, like rapid logging in Trend Log objects. The longer this timeout is, the more data can be lost if the device crashes, for example by loosing power.

Enabled: This determines if the BACnet device should be enabled. This will have no effect if the BACnet device is not attached to the active controller. When changing this property a dialog will also ask if dependant trend-logs and peripheral dependencies should be enabled/disabled. This means that trend-logs that are trending from this BACnet-device, will also be enabled/disabled. However trend-logs on remote devices will not be effected. Peripheral devices used by this BACnet-device will also be enabled/disabled. Any configuration of the LoRaWAN server or other services will not be effected.

Template: This determines if the BACnet device is a template. This property is not used on top-level devices. This property is used on the devices under gateways, designed for templates. The templates are then used in various automatic configurations.

Peripheral setup: This is the name of the attached controller. To choose a controller click the ... button to the left of the field. A window with a list of controllers appears. Make sure to select the active controller (the controller with a green triangle in front of it).

This property is visible on devices under gateways.

BACnet gateways are bound to a bus within the peripheral setup. The virtual BACnet devices under the gateway, have BACnet objects and properties that are bound to peripheral ports within the peripheral bus.

Selecting a virtual BACnet device, will display the peripheral device, that the before-mentioned peripheral ports belong to. The user can change the peripheral device to another of the same type. This will automatically bind the BACnet properties to the peripheral ports of the new peripheral device.

The BACnet objects grid displays the same BACnet objects as in the navigation tree. There is however a limitation of 40 objects in the navigation tree, so the BACnet objects grid is better when working with large numbers of objects.

The objects in the grid can be grouped, sorted and filtered, depending on the needs.

There are also various actions that can be performed on the objects.

  • Click the New button, to create a new BACnet object. Choose a BACnet object type during this process.
  • Click the Delete button, to delete the selected BACnet objects.

  • Click the Last 20 button, to read the last 20 records from the selected trend-log.

  • Click the Record viewer button, to customize a search for records in the selected trend-log.

    If there is an indication that the BACnet device, from which we are trend-logging, is slow or buffer-limited, then look at "Device max active requests" as a possible solution.

    The boolean values of log-status in the records, stand for:

    • LOG_DISABLED: This flag is changed whenever the collection of log records by the trend-log object is enabled or disabled.
    • BUFFER_PURGED: This flag is set to true whenever the buffer is cleared by writing zero to the record-count property or by a change to the log-device-object-property property.
    • LOG_INTERRUPTED: This flag indicates that the collection of log records by the trend-log object was interrupted by a power failure, device reset, object reconfiguration or other such disruption, such that samples prior to this log record might have been missed.

    The boolean values of status-flags in the records, stand for:

    • IN_ALARM: False if the event-state property has a value of normal, otherwise true.
    • FAULT: True if the reliability property is present and does not have a value of no-fault-detected, otherwise false.
    • OVERRIDDEN: True if the point has been overridden by some mechanism local to the BACnet device. In this context "overridden" is taken to mean that the present-value and reliability properties are no longer tracking changes to the physical input. Otherwise, the value is false.
    • OUT_OF_SERVICE: True if the out-of-service property has a value of true, otherwise false.

  • Click the Reset trendlogs button, to reset the selected trend-logs.

    Note:

    All data in the selected trend-logs will be deleted.

The Generate... button becomes enabled, when selecting a trend-log in the objects-grid. The selected trend-log will be used as a template, when generating new trend-logs. More information here.

These buttons will enable or disable the selected objects.

When changing the enable-property of the selected objects, a dialog will ask if you would want to enable/disable dependant trend-logs and peripheral dependencies. This means that trend-logs that are trending from enabled/disabled BACnet-object, will also be enabled/disabled. However trend-logs on remote devices will not be effected. Peripheral ports that are used by the selected BACnet-objects will also be enabled/disabled. Any configuration of the LoRaWAN server or other services will not be effected.

  • Click the Refresh button, to reload the selected BACnet objects.
  • Click the Copy button, to copy the selected BACnet objects to the clipboard.
  • Click the Paste button, to paste BACnet objects from the clipboard, into the currently selected device.

  • Click the Export button, to export the selected BACnet objects to JSON.

  • Click the Present value button, to read the present-value from the selected BACnet objects. The read will fail if the selected BACnet object does not have the present-value property or is not enabled.

  • Click the Column setup... button, to load extra object-properties into the grid.

  • Click the Edit values... button, to edit the values of the extra object-properties for the selected objects.

  • Click the Remove properties... button, to remove the extra object-properties from the selected objects.