BACnet Fall Public Reviews are underway

The review started a couple of weeks earlier than I expected (my most recent calendar for these is 2-1/2 years old), but I was notified this morning that the autumn public review of proposed BACnet addenda is now underway.

For those readers unfamiliar with the process of changing or adding to the BACnet standard, the Publication Public Review (PPR) is possibly the last hurdle to clear before the proposed changes become part of the standard. One or more proposed changes, which have been discussed at length and individually approved by the BACnet committee, are incorporated into a "public review addendum" which the voting membership then recommends for PPR. ("Publication Public Review" is the process whereby, if the proposed addendum passes pubic review, it goes automatically to publication and becomes part of the standard.) During PPR the general public is invited to download, review and comment on the proposed addenda. It's a bit of a cumbersome process, but helps ensure that the work of committee is acceptable to the industry and public in general – a point of paramount interest to ASHRAE.

The BACnet addenda will be in 45-day public review, from Sept. 11 to Oct. 26. They can be downloaded from, and comments left at, http://osr.ashrae.org. You do not have to be an ASHRAE member to do this.

So, here's what's up for review this autumn:

Addendum 135.1-2007d: Two new tests (for the Testing Standard 135.1) to test aspects of Change-Of-Value (COV) notification capabilities.

Addendum 135-2008t: Third public review of XML formats for building data for use in: electronic PICS documents, XML EPICS, "as-built" descriptions of a deployed device, descriptions of proprietary objects, properties and datatypes, export formats for workstations and other tools, and web services exchanging complex or constructed data.

Addendum 135-2008u: Second public review of changes related to the use of RejectPDUS, and usage and specification of Abort and Error codes.

Addendum 135-2008w: Second public review of a proposal to add "primitive value" objects (similar to Analog, Binary and Multistate Value objects but representing other datatypes including ChaaracterString).

Addendum 135-2008x: First public review. Fix the criteria for Load Control object's COV notifications, and clarify: Trend Log timestamps, ReadRange use on lists, and the result of using ALL, REQUIRED and OPTIONAL property identifiers.

Addendum 135-2008y: First public review. MS/TP "deployment" wiring. This will hopefully be THE definitive answer on the proper ways to wire an MS/TP network.

Addendum 135-2008z: First public review. A collection of miscellaneous unrelated changes: add Event_Message_Texts property, add UnconfirmedEventNotification to Automate Trend Retrieval BIBBs, modify the MS/TP Receive Node State Machine, add (yet more) Engineering Units, and add duplicate segment detection to the Clause 5 state machines.

Remember, you have until October 26th to review and comment on these.