CAS BACNET STACK

Intro to the BACnet Stack

BACnet is a communications protocol for Building Automation and Control (BAC) networks that leverage the ASHRAE, ANSI, and ISO 16484-5 standard protocol. It is currently the most popular protocol use in Building Automation systems (BAS).

Chipkin’s BACnet Stack (CAS BACnet Stack) is a software library that allows you to add a native BACnet interface to your embedded devices or applications. The BACnet stack supports both BACnet server (Field device, power meter, gas detector, etc.) and BACnet client (HMI, Utilities, data loggers, etc.) services giving you the flexibility you need to succeed. The Chipkin BACnet Stack supports the protocol revision 19, making it a global market leader and one of a few stacks that support's revision 19. Chipkin attends plugfest annually and as of 2018 plugfest, our stack is one of the most up to date stacks in the market.

The BACnet Stack is a transport layer independent library, making it easy to use with any transport layer such as MSTP, IP, Ethernet and even PTP and ARCnet. By giving you control of the transport layer you can optimize bandwidth and performance by exploiting the resources at your disposal such as multi-threading and multiple simultaneous connections. See the diagram below of the BACnet Stack Layers which shows what portions are provided by the stack and what by the client:

             *Area in the border is provided by the BACnet Stack. The area outside is provided by the client.

Take it from us, we have been working with BACnet for 20+ years. Our BACnet Stack Resume includes 10+ years of development, 25,000+ commits, 50,000+ lines of code, 2,500 unit tests, 50+ devices using the stack and among other capabilities, 1,000,000+ device installations. We know what we are are doing. On top of that, we are also part of the BACnet Testing Laboratory Working Group. Purchasing the BACnet Stack from us will save you man-years of development when your company needs it the most. Let us handle the grunt work, BACnet Spec is complex and it takes months of work just to learn the details.

Chipkin’s BACnet Stack (CAS BACnet Stack) is an application layer BACnet library for embedded systems and application development. The stack allows applicable devices to communicate using several of the BACnet flavors and can function both as a server (Field Device, etc…) or as a client (HMI, etc…).

Because we have also built the stack to be BACnet spec compliant (we do things according to the BACnet spec.), No device that used our BACnet stack has ever failed to receive the BTL Certification (BACnet International BLT) by the BACnet Testing laboratories. We do things the right way from the start!

To ensure our BACnet stack is well tested and compatible with industrial leaders, Chipkin attends the yearly BACnet Plugfest to test new features and services from all of the leading manufacturers.

Furthermore, the CAS BACnet Stack is particularly well-suited to most contemporary programming styles as the API uses XML to transfer requests for packet building as well as for handling back-parsed packets.

Source Code and Code Quality

Chipkin's BACnet Stack source code conforms to the C++98 standard and is built for portability to many different operating systems and architectures.

Extensive unit tests have been written for our BACnet Stack in Google's C++ test framework. The source code has been tested with Valgrind to detect any memory leaks, threading issues, and performance profiling.

The CAS BACnet Stack is thread safe and can be used on systems that do not support threading.

Other compilers and programming languages may be supported as well. Please Contact Us for more information

Supported Architectures and Operating systems

The CAS BACnet Stack is designed for maximum portability and compatibility with as many different architectures and operating systems as possible.

The CAS BACnet Stack uses a series of callbacks for accessing operating systems and network functionality. An operating systems Interface has been created for the standard operating systems such as Windows, Linux and RTOS and can be ported to other operating systems and embedded systems. Our BACnet stack can be considered network layer and operating systems independent.

As of 2019, the CAS BACnet Stack supports the protocol revision 19, making it a global market leader and one of a few stacks that support's revision 19. Chipkin attends plugfest annually and as of 2018 plugfest, our stack is one of the most up to date stacks in the market.

Porting to other systems and architecture is supported.

Requirements and dependency

The CAS BACnet stack is designed to have minimum requirements to maximize the portability of the source code across as many platforms and architectures as possible. It has the ability to run on devices with very low resources by disabling BACnet services to reduce the required resources and dependencies.

Minimum Requirements:

• A relative millisecond timer
• C++ compiler
• Standard Template Library (STL)
• Networking: UDP for BACnet IP or RS485 Serial for BACnet MSTP

The amount of ram that the Chipkin BACnet stack requires depends on several factors including; BACnet Services supported, Object types supported, Object count, COV limits, etc...

BACnet BTL Pre-Testing Services

Sending a new BACnet device to the BACnet Testing Laboratory (BTL) for certification can be a daunting task. Each issue or error that BTL discovers thought the testing process will add variable costs and delays. Depending on how long it takes your team to resolve the issues discovered during testing you may be bumped from your testing slot and have to wait for the next available testing slot.

Take it from us, we have been working with BACnet for 20+ years. Our BACnet Stack Resume includes 10+ years of development, 25,000+ commits, 50,000+ lines of code, 2,500 unit tests, 50+ devices using the stack and among other capabilities, 1,000,000+ device installations... Read More!