BACnet is a communications protocol that governs how your building automation devices work together. Think of it as a language: the rules that guide how devices communicate, just like vocabulary and grammar dictate how we talk to each other.
BACnet’s special because it’s a vendor-neutral standard. In the days before the BACnet era (BBE), protocols were proprietary. Having devices from many different vendors in a single building was impossible because those devices couldn’t communicate with each other at all: they didn’t speak the same “language.”
So, you were locked into one vendor for the lifetime of the building. It was impossible — or at least, prohibitively expensive — to switch vendors. You couldn’t exactly replace every single device in the building. That unfortunately led to building owners and managers putting up with less-than-stellar service, or buying devices based on what was available to them rather than what was best for their system. This image by Peter MacDonald is a fantastic illustration of how challenging that period was.
Learn more about the history of BACnet in our whitepaper, “Why should you invest in BACnet?”
This all changed when a group of pioneers created a vendor-neutral, open standard. BACnet revolutionized the industry because it was suddenly possible (and downright easy!) to install devices from many different vendors. This video from Contemporary Controls is a great breakdown of what BACnet is and how it changed the industry forever.
For more information, this Quora post from Joel Bender gives a solid explanation, and this FAQ from Mike Newman also digs into the BACnet basics.
Want to know more? Check out our Ultimate BACnet FAQ.
