A large assortment of new technologies for emerging applications is contained in the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers' (ASHRAE’s) updated BACnet standard.

ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 135-2010, BACnet – A Data Communication Protocol for Building Automation and Control Networks, allows building equipment and systems manufactured by different companies to work together. It contains 19 addenda approved since the 2008 version of the standard was published.

“In just two years, the committee has added a wide variety of new technologies and contributed more than 400 pages to the standard,” Dave Robin, committee chair, said.

The 2010 standard covers wireless communications and several other new ways to communicate. Additionally, it provides a new XML vocabulary for complex standard and proprietary data and metadata, includes a new character-encoding method for greater flexibility and compatibility with international text, and defines new state-of-the-art network security to allow the creation of highly secure communications channels for sensitive data. Also, it adds:

• Higher speeds for master-slave/token-passing networks and wiring guidance for optically isolated segments.

• New requirements for workstations and definitions of new kinds of workstations.

• New engineering units to support Smart Grid and other emerging applications.

• A new object for gathering, monitoring, and distributing sets of data.

• Six new objects to support physical access control.

• 12 new objects to support the full complement of data types, including strings.

The cost of ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 135-2010 is $140 for ASHRAE members and $170 for non-members. To order, contact ASHRAE Customer Service by phone at 1-800-527-4723 (United States and Canada) or 404-636-8400 or by fax at 404-321-5478, or visit the ASHRAE Online Store.