Gotta learn to keep my mouth shut

I think it was my fault: I recall making the fateful declaration, a long time ago, that date and time values representing actual times such as the time an alarm was issued (e.g. 3:23:52.01 on Thursday 4/01/2010), should not contain "wildcard" or pattern-matching values (e.g. 3:nn:nn.nn on Thursdays in April, any day of month, any year). And in fact a little research shows it was just about 10 years ago when I first submitted a proposal to make this concept part of the standard.

What seemed so simple at first became complex, and languished while more critical changes went ahead, but the proposal finally went to public review this spring, and it drew a lot of comments that required a LOT of debate in today's Objects & Services Working Group meeting. One comment alone, titled "Relax definition for single date by allowing day of week to be unspecified," required an hour and a half of serious and lengthy discussion.

In the process we digressed into a number of other time-related issues, such as when the BACnet standard is calling for the use of "local time" as opposed to "UTC time" (f.k.a. Greenwich Mean Time). The answer seems obvious and I have never seen an implementation that did anything differently from what we would expect. But the rule is stated nowhere in the standard, so I initiated the process for getting this into the standard for all time and e-mailed the requisite paperwork to ASHRAE during the meeting. ASHRAE responded in short order with the response form for submitting tpo the committee, I approved it, and our Chair will hopefully have it by now (he was unaware it was coming), and perhaps we can approve in the the plenary session tomorrow of Friday.

But after we finished reviewing, and deciding on the responses to, the public review comments we were finally able to start on new material before the day ended.

Tomorrow we kick off the first day of a day and a half of the plenary session, where the formal official business of the committee is executed.

But I almost feel guilty for the effort I caused a decade ago, when it might have been simpler to just allow implementations to represent actual times with pattern-matching values where elements of the time (hundredths of a second, seconds, etc.) are not known or the implementer didn't want to calculate them (day of week)

Mayhbe I just gotta learn to keep my mouth shut.

Update: Just to give credit where credit is due, I believe Coleman took over this proposal a couple of years ago and got it to passage.

Day 2 (or is that 3?)

For those of us in the BTL-WG meeting Sunday and still here, this was Day 3 of the Spring Meeting. For almost everyone else it was Day 2. Featuring meetings of the IT-WG (integrating BACnet more into the IT system administrators' world), the IP-WG (IPv6 and other discussions), the Smart Grid-WG (mostly wrap-up and review from yesterday), the Elevator working group (saving the jokes on that one until later, but I did come away with a few work items), and Objects & Services WG focusing on the Alarm Summit work.

And all that was just the conference room I was in all day (pictured). The Lighting folks continued their meeting from yesterday; this evening Christoph mentioned the difficulty of writing up the minutes of the 7 hours of Lighting Control meetings while it is still all fresh. (It took me an hour just to write up the half-hour Elevator Group meeting!) The rough equivalent of my ISO technical committee meetings usually takes me two or three days, though I delve deep into the recordings of the meetings to be sure I miss nothing.

In the meantime, no rest for the weary. Smart-Grid-related e-mails continued to pour in, plus a difficult request for a signed approval from the BIG-EU officeresulting in a quick course in editing PDFs, overlaying a signature, securing the entire document and e-mailing it back, since they were one short of signing authorities due to business travel. (No timely access to printer & scanner-to-PDF was available -- and Britta, you're welcome!)

The full day tomorrow is devoted to Objects & Services WG material. We'll see what Bernhard has lined up for us.

And to our Japanese colleagues whose business here is done: safe travels home on the morrow!

Better late than...

A couple of our guys, Bernhard and René, are unavoidably late for the meetings. Scheduled to arrive Sunday, they were held back in Europe at least until today by the volcanish ash. Unfortunately one was to lead a working group meeting this morning that ended early because he was absent.

But their loss was others' gain because the BACnet Smart Grid working group was able to make good use of the two-hour slot that opened up -- albeit to the detriment of the Testing and Interoperation working group, half the membership of which shifted to the Smart Grid meeting.

Hopefully our missing colleagues will have made it here today and we can get back to the planned schedule tomorrow.

Update 5/11: They made it! Arrived pretty late last night, but they are here.

Device Profile discussions

The BTL-WG met today and plowed through most of our agenda items. Among our discussions was a response to a clarification request about the applicability of Device Profiles that were changed some time after they were created (as the BACnet Smart Sensor and BACnet Smart Actuator did recently). Three possible responses discussed by the group were:

- Use the profile associated with the device's claimed ProtocolRevision.

- Mandate the use of the new profile from this point going forward, regardless of the device's claimed Protocol Revision. (This would not apply retroactively to devices already tested and listed.)

- Starting sometime in the future and going forward, establish (increasing) minimum Protocol Revisions that will be accepted by the lab.


I am sure discussions on these will continue; I could not say that any decisions made today are necessarily final. But a broader discussion on the third point should perhaps be conducted, say, on the BACNET-L e-mail list.

Shifting gears

The week of BACnet committee meetings has kicked off here in Germantown MD with a meeting of the BACnet Testing Labs working group. We're reviewing a number of proposed tests for various BACnet capabilities.

But it's a little hard to shift gears from last week's energy class. Looking around this building I see an awful lot of lights on, quite bright, due to the presence of our small group on an "off" day (not to mention the lights in the light wells). It's a pity they don't have a lower-intensity lighting mode, and occupancy detectors at least in the very brightly-lit restrooms.

Break is over. Meeting resumes...

Update: Wrong on (almost) all counts. The building has occupancy detectors; there was just activity I couldn't see.

BACnet Boilers

I didn't expect to have anything to add to the blog this week since I'm tied up all week in the energy class, but during todays's session on boilers our instructor mentioned something about boilers with BACnet controls. I hadn't heard of any such before so I went searching... and sure enough. They're there. One doesn't have a Vendor ID and it looks like they might be using somebody else's gateway module, but I found at least one with a Vendor ID and BACnet integrated into controls.

Step by step...

Energy Efficiency class

This week I'm away at an intensive class in commercial building energy efficiency. I was rather amused during introductions when the instructor said, "If I'd known you were going to be here I'd have had you help out!"

LOL, well, perhaps I could have in the short period where he discussed ASHRAE standards and green-building rating systems (LEED et al), but the rest of the day was a very deep dive into the details of areas that have left my head aching and areas I had not much anticipated. Financial, for example. But that's all part of the Certified Energy Manager (CEM) test prep this class centers on.

Still, I was intrigued when he noted that knowledge of ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 135 (aka BACnet) was a good idea for when one sits for the CEM exam. I will have to look into this. And acquire a few more ASHRAE standards for my bookshelf (or rather hard drive, since I prefer the more portable PDF versions.)

But that's for later. It's only day one and my head aches already. The rest of the week doesn't look like it's going to lighten up -- and a day and a half after this class ends the BACnet spring meetings begin.

Now if only I could resolve what could be the correct answer for tonight's homework assignment item #7...