2 posts tagged with "hvac"

Industrial compressors and chillers are the unsung heroes of manufacturing. They don't make products, but without them, nothing else works. Compressed air powers pneumatic actuators, controls, and tools across the plant. Chillers maintain process temperatures for injection molding, chemical reactions, food processing, and data centers. When a compressor or chiller fails, the entire production line stops — often with zero warning.

Most IIoT engineers live in the world of Modbus registers, EtherNet/IP CIP objects, and MQTT topics. BACnet — the dominant protocol in building automation — rarely appears on their radar. But as manufacturing facilities increasingly integrate HVAC, energy management, and environmental monitoring into their operational technology (OT) stacks, understanding BACnet becomes a practical necessity.

This article explains BACnet from the perspective of someone who already understands industrial protocols. If you can read a Modbus register map, you can understand BACnet's object model. The concepts map more cleanly than you might expect.