Issue
Clarity in protocols and capability from StruxureWare Building Operation's Normalization Layer and the integration of BACnet/IP for data out of StruxureWare Building Operation.
Environment
StruxureWare Building Operation Site
Cause
Protocols and desire to input/output point data from the Normalization Layer. Desire to pull point data into StruxureWare and then back out, via BACnet/IP.
Resolution
The Normalization Layer in StruxureWare Building Operation is probably more of a design philosophy than a documented product feature, per se. It is StruxureWare’s attempt to present data (analog data, for example) to the user in a consistent manner, regardless of the protocol in which the data is natively encoded – BACnet, LON, Modbus, etc. This “data normalization” occurs automatically, although there may be some options for adjusting how certain values are presented.
In other words, the “Normalization Layer” is a term that was coined by the Product Marketing side of the use and has been embraced by many to refer to the various parts of StruxureWare Building Operation that allow us to gather information from a wide variety of field protocols, such as BACnet, LON and Modbus today as well as being in a position to communicate with OBIX or OPC or any other protocol and to present it to the user in the same way as we present the other protocols. In other words, we make it “normalized” for the end user so that he or she does not need to know or care from what type of device the data comes.
The StruxureWare Building Operation system can send point values or alarms to third-party system via BACnet/IP. StruxureWare can do this even in the present 1.0 release. The typical method to share point values would be to use either a Script or Function Block program to bind a StruxureWare point value to a third-party point value. To share alarm information just add the third-party device to the Recipient_List property of one of StruxureWare’s NotificationClass objects that is associated with an alarm.
