Explaining PICS and BIBBs

A few days I was in a meeting to discuss new procedures for developing and maintaining PICS (Protocol Implementation Conformance Statement) statements for BACnet devices. Once upon a time, when Alerton was a small company with a single small development team, it was easy to produce and update these as needed. This is no longer the case, and often the applications and underlying concepts have to be explained over and over -- as I did in that meeting. The usual warning is when I hear "PICS and BIBBs" used as if they are separate documents.

I vaguely recall having given a "Brown Bag" (in-house lunchtime teaching session) on the topic many years ago, so I went looking for the powerpoint. Instead I found my speaking notes dated 2/01/2002 -- over 7-1/2 years ago! Of course, some of those folks have moved on and many folks have joined since then, including most of those in this meeting.

So I took a couple of BACnet class powerpoints, excised the specification and testing sections and produced a PDF to explain this to our team.

I wonder how many other BACneteers have had to go through the same exercise?