BACnet OPC Server - KEPServerEX OPC Servers

Overview

The BACnet Device Driver was designed to plug into our industrial based communications server product and is intended for use with Building Automation and Control Networks. This product supplies data access to any HMI, SCADA, Historian, or Enterprise application that supports OPC, DDE, Advanced DDE, FastDDE, or SuiteLink. It provides connectivity to equipment using the BACnet protocol over Ethernet (often referred to as ("BACnet/IP" or "Annex J"). Devices on other BACnet network types may be accessed using BACnet gateway devices.

BACnet OPC Server

BACnet Resources:
The official BACnet specification, "ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 135-2001 BACnet A Data Communication Protocol for Building Automation and Control Networks", describes all aspects of the BACnet protocol. It is recommended that users of this driver be familiar with the standard BACnet objects and properties discussed in Clause 12 of the specification. In addition, you should be familiar with the particulars of BACnet/IP outlined in Annex J of the specification. The specification document, as well as many other useful resources, is available through the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, Inc. (ASHRAE) or the official BACnet web site www.bacnet.org.

Devices

Supported Devices

Note

This driver can be used successfully with devices that use the BACnet/IP (Annex J) protocol, are visible on or from an Ethernet network, and support the objects, properties, and services supported by this driver. You should consult the Protocol Implementation Conformance Statement (PICS), available from your hardware vendor. Conformance data for this driver is given in Supported Objects and Services found under the features tab.

Features

Specific Driver Features

Specific

Supports APDU (Application Protocol Data Unit) which affects message segmentation.
Supports Command Priority which prioritizes write requests.
Supports subscription to Change of Value (COV) event notification for many properties.
Auto Tag Generation for BACnet supported object types.
Supported Objects: Most properties of all of the standard object types are supported.
Analog Input, Analog Output, Analog Value, Averaging, Binary Input, Binary Output, Binary Value, Calendar, Command, Device, Event Enrollment, File, Group, Life Safety Point, Life Safety Zone, Loop, Multi-state Input, Multi-State Output, Multi-State Value, Notification Class, Program, Schedule, Trend Log.
Supported Services:

BACnet Service	BIBB	Initiate	Execute
Who-Is	DM-DDB-A	X
I-Am	DM-DDB-A		X
ReadProperty	DS-RP-A	X
ReadPropertyMultiple	DS-RPM-A	X
WriteProperty	DS-WP-A	X
WritePropertyMultiple	DS-WPM-A	X
SubscribeCOV	DS-COV-A	X
SubscribeCOVProperty	DS-COVP-A	X
ConfirmedCOVNotification	DS-COV-A		X
UnconfirmedCOVNotification	DS-COV-A		X

General

Multi-threaded design for optimum performance.
Application Connectivity
Device Connectivity for concurrent devices.
Supports running as a Windows NT Service.
Supports Direct Scaling of device data.
Full Time On-line operation.
CSV file import and exportof server tags.
User Management
Tag Management
Network Interface Selection
Channel Diagnostics provide real-time data.
OPC Diagnostics to view OPC events.
Modem support for all serial drivers.
OPC Quick Client application.
Visual Basic OPC Client with VB Examples.

OPC/DDE

OPC Data Access Version 1.0a
OPC Data Access Version 2.05a
OPC Data Access Version 3.0

Learn more about OPC - Open Process Control

HMI/Client

KEPServerEX has been enhanced to provide the widest range of connectivity of any server product available. KEPServerEX supports the following client server technologies:

FastDDE for Wonderware
SuiteLink for Wonderware
iFIX PDB for Intellution
DDE Format CF_Text
DDE Format AdvancedDDE

To see a list of HMI's and Clients that we support go to our HMI / Client Support page.

Required

Required Software and Hardware

Supported Operating Systems

Windows NT
Windows 2000
Windows Server 2003
Windows XP

PC Hardware

Minimum

400 Mhz Pentium CPU
128 Megs of RAM
100 Megs of Free Hard Drive Space

Recommended

600 Mhz Pentium CPU
512 Megs of RAM
100 Megs of Free Hard Drive Space

Hardware Requirements

For Device and Hardware Requirements see the Devices tab.
Hardware Accessories

Protocol

Communication Protocol

BACnet/IP (Annex J)

VB

Visual Basic

KEPServerEX Visual Basic OPC Client
Complex and Simple Visual Basic OPC Client Examples
Using Modems and Visual Basic with KEPServerEX.
Download the Modem and VB Example with Source Code
Knowledge Base

Help

Help/Links

Revisions

BACnet OPC Driver Revisions

Driver updates below coincide with Server Release V4.280.435.0 (04/30/08)

BACnet (V4.64.44.0)

- Added ability to accept I-Am messages with extra data bytes on end of PDU.

Driver updates below coincide with Server Release V4.270.416.0 (09/27/07)

All Drivers

- Fixed issue where server menu buttons like 'New', 'Open', 'Exit' would become permanently disabled when attempting to perform auto tag generation on a driver that had missing runtime dependencies.
- Fixed issue that could occur when multiple items with the same scan rate are read by exception and another item is added/asynchronously read/removed at that same rate. This issue resulted in stale data for those tags read by exception.

BACnet (V4.64.40.0)

- Fixed issue where the driver would fail to parse a valid response to the read all properties request sent during tag import, resulting in an "Error reading property list from device" error and the generation of the default tag set for one or more objects.
- Fixed problem with reading Loop object Action property.

Driver updates below coincide with Server Release V4.264.401 (06/01/07)

All Drivers

- Fixed issue in the driver library where it was possible to delete a tag prior to stopping it. This would result in the accessing of invalid memory which could eventually result in an exception that would prevent a channel from processing any tags.

BACnet (V4.63.37)

- Fixed issue where driver would hang if multiple devices are configured to import tags on startup and one or more devices are not responding.
- Fixed issues with the handling of COV notifications for unsigned integer property values, such as Multistate PresentValue.
- Fixed issues involving initial COV property values reported to client. Driver would report a value of 0 until first COV notification received. It would sometimes take a long time for received values to be sent to client if subscription lifetime was shorter than time between client read or OPC group update.
- Addresses with a space between property identifer and array index "[" are now allowed.
- Fixed memory leak associated with processing messages from devices on remote networks.
- Added ability to discover devices as a foreign device.

Driver updates below coincide with Server Release V4.210.367 (11/17/06)

All Drivers

- Fixed issue where a rapid sequence of item add, sync read, and item remove requests could result in bad OPC quality for some items included in a block sync read and/or sync read timeouts.
- Fixed issue with Unsolicited UDP Mode Ethernet Encapsulation mode, where driver would stop receiving unsolicited messages after sending a message.

BACnet (V4.50.32)

- Added ability to import tags from Cimetrics OPC server.
- Fixed issue with auto-generated relinquish present value tag name. Relinquish tag was given the same name as present value tag, causing server to append a number to one of the tag names to make names unique. Present value tag now named "PresentValueRel".
- Added feature to handle unexpected nesting of BACnet abstract data tags.
- We now handle special "Any/Don't Care" values for BACnet date, time and datetime datatypes. The string "ANY" will be returned to client when when 0xFF 0xFF 0xFF 0xFF is read from BACnet device. Will continue to return "NULL" for unspecified value.
- Enhanced tag import from device feature. Previously, import could fail for devices that did not support read-property-multiple service, segmentation, or recognize the "ALL" property identifier.
- Removed segmentation and max APDU length settings for no discovery mode. These properties are now read directly from device.

Driver updates below coincide with Server Release V4.201.359 (07/19/06)

BACnet (V4.41.27)

- Fixed issue where driver would send abort instead of ACK in response to confirmed COV notification message.

Driver updates below coincide with Server Release V4.200.353 (03/24/06)

BACnet (V4.31.21)

- No longer include source specifier in the NPDU layer of our request frames. It is not needed and was found to cause problems with some BACnet routers.
- Added option to generate group names from BACnet object names.
- Added capability to communicate with devices that do not support device discovery services (Who-Is/I-Am). Only BACnet/IP can be addressed using this method.
- Fixed issue where an unhandled exception could occur if duplicate response received, possibly following a request retry.
- Replace invalid characters in object names when using as group names during automatic tag database generation. Group names cannot contain periods, double quotes, backslashes, or start with an underscore. Invalid characters will be replaced with underscores except first characters which will be replaced with a zero. A generic group names will be generated if a unique, valid name cannot be created.
- Fixed issue where a change to the device IP (device discovery disabled) would not be used if communication to an initial IP was established first.
- We now report a reason for auto tag generation failure when device discovery is disabled.

Driver updates below coincide with Server Release V4.180.338 (8/12/05)

BACnet (V4.21.16)

- Fixed issue with communication with devices on remote networks.
- Corrected order of IP octets in "Unable to bind" error message.

Driver updates below coincide with Server Release V4.170.328 (5/19/05)

BACnet (V4.20.14)

- Fixed issue where memory exception would occur if automatic tag database generation is configured to happen on startup.
- Added default tag set generation for devices that do not support the read property multiple service or the "All" property.

Driver updates below coincide with Server Release V4.160.317 (3/17/05)

BACnet (V4.10.11)

- New Driver