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Anniversary – 30 years of BACnet Jubiläum – 30 Jahre BACnet
Practice rounds for “Open Communication”
In the meantime, manufacturers in Germany had the good opportunity to
practice “open communication” using the FACN protocol (this was easier
for many because a competitor was not “pulling the strings from above”;
IBM was not regarded as a competitor in the building automation (BA)
market. This went so far that Winfried Brandt (d. 20 September 2010) of
the VDMA HKG (today AMG) refused IBM membership in the HKG, and
therefore also me. Because IBM were not a supervisory control system
manufacturer (HKG = Heating, Ventilation, Building Automation; AMG =
Automation and Management for Home and Building).
The practice projects were:
1
985: first BACS project with GPAX and FACN and, from JCI, with
“CIS3000” (Customer Information System) as a Remote Intelligent
Subsystem (RIS): IBM headquarters with data center in Ehningen near
Böblingen.
1
987: first major customer project with GPAX, FACN and JCI:
AMADEUS travel booking data center, Erding (still the largest civilian
data center in the world).
F
urther projects followed with Hamburg-Mannheimer Insurance, the
Hitachi video recorder factory in Landsberg am Lech, and additional
IBM-internal projects such as Computer Center Automation (CCA).
Market irritations were attempts to establish Profibus in BAC (Nuremberg
South Hospital with Siemens and L&G). (Note: In the first revisions of
the BACnet standard, there were very few metric SI units as ”BACnet
Engineering Units”. To expand this, the units from the Profibus building Fig. 10: Honeywell and IBM at ISH 1987 and 1989
automation profile were used. This was done in collaboration between Bill Abb. 10: Honeywell und IBM auf der ISH 1987 und 1989
Swan and Peter Fischer). It was recognized that the Profibus method was
too elaborate and expensive for large projects. Subsequently, the fieldbus
project ISP (InterOperable Systems Project) with ISA SP 50 (Honeywell),
MAP (General Motors), Modbus (Modicon), and FIP (Flux d’ Informations
Processus), Factory Instrumentation Protocol (“World FIP”), were
highlighted. Interbus-S from Phoenix Contact should also be mentioned.
In the field of home automation and electrical installation, EIB (today KNX)
had already become established.
Fig. 9: Link to the book
”Building Control”
In the book ”Building Control” (Chapter 18), I compiled 66 protocols that all Abb. 9: Link zum Buch
claimed to be suitable for buildings (the developers probably looked out the „Building Control“
window and saw the market).
Link to the book Fig. 9 (or ask the author)
Naturally, the 10 completed FND projects also served as a training ground
for the industry. It was learned that it is not only machine-to-machine
communication that matters, but much more the communication among
the people involved in the construction process.
At ISH 1987 and 1989, I was given by Honeywell, through Axel Blodau
(d. 30 September 2008), a dedicated FACN section within the large
Honeywell booth: with GPAX – BACS/1 and FACN coupled with Honeywell
MicroCentral and DeltaNet peer controllers.
See Fig. 10.
Start of the major trade fairs for Building Automation and Control Fig. 11: 1991, BACnet,
systems (in addition to ISH, which was more product-oriented) first page of 337 for the
first Public Review.
Abb. 11: 1991, BACnet,
In 1990, I was present with an IBM booth for construction software and GPAX- erste Seite von 337 für
FACN, together with Honeywell and DL-Technik, at the CONSTRUCTA’90 das erste Public Review.
10 BACnet Europe Journal 44 03/26
