This project provides SolarNode plugin that can collect arbitrary data from BACnet enabled devices. This is an advanced plugin that requires knowledge of BACnet and the BACnet configuration of the devices you want to collect data from.

By default SolarNodeOS has a built-in firewall enabled that will not allow access to arbitrary IP ports. If using BACnet/IP, the port the BACnet network runs on (the standard port is 47808) must be opened in the SolarNodeOS firewall, which by default is nftables and configured via the /etc/nftables.conf file. To open port 47808, you'd add the following lines, after the existing ones that open ports 80 and 8080:

# Allow BACnet
add rule ip filter INPUT udp dport 47808 accept

If instead iptables is used, edit the /etc/iptables/iptables.rules file and add a rule like this:

# Allow BACnet
-A INPUT -p udp --dport 47808 -j ACCEPT

Once installed, a new BACnet Device component will appear on the Settings page on your SolarNode. Click on the Manage button to configure components.

This datum source can persist datum based on a schedule and also based on BACnet change-of-value (COV) events, if the BACnet device you're collecting data from supports COV subscriptions. The Persist Mode device setting configures this. Regardless of when datum are persisted, transient datum will be generated for each COV event and other plugins can do things with those. For example, the SolarFlux Upload plugin can post those datum to SolarFlux.

⚠️ Note that although this component is named BACnet Device Datum Source, a single component instance can be configured to read data from any number of physical BACnet devices. The term BACnet Device (upper case D) in this guide refers to this SolarNode component, while BACnet device (lower case d) refers to a BACnet hardware/softare device this component will read data from.

This plugin provides a BACnet Device CSV Configurer component will appear on the main settings page. This component lets you upload a BACnet CSV Configuration file to configure all BACnet Device components, without having to use the component settings form.

The BACnet CSV Configuration uses the column structure detailed below, with each row representing an individual datum property to read from the BACnet device. A header row is required. Comment lines are allowed, just start the line with a # character (i.e. the first cell value). The entire comment line will be ignored.

Here's an example screen shot of a configuration in a spreadsheet application. It is for two devices:

1. Device Therm with 3 datum properties: temp, tempWater, and tempOutdoor
2. Device Meter with 2 datum properties: watts and wattHours

Spreadsheet applications generally allows you to export the sheet in the CSV format, which can then be loaded into SolarNode via the CSV Configurer.

Individual BACnet Device components are defined by the first column (Instance ID). You can assign any identifier you like (such as Meter, Inverter, and so on) or configure as a single dash character - to have SolarNode assign a simple number identifier. Once an Instance ID has been assigned on a given row, subsequent rows will use that value if the corresponding cell value is left empty.

Here's an example of how 2 custom instance IDs Meter and Therm appear in the SolarNode UI:

The following table defines all the CSV columns used by BACnet Device CSV Configuration. Columns A - H apply to the entire BACnet Device configuration, and only the values from the row that defines a new Instance ID will be used to configure the device. Thus you can omit the values from these columns when defining more than one property for a given instance.

Columns I - Q define the mapping of BACnet object properties to datum properties: each row defines an individual datum property.

Here is the CSV as shown in the example configuration screen shot above (comments have been removed for brevity):

Instance ID,Service Name,Service Group,Source ID,Schedule,Connection,Persist Mode,Sample Cache,Device ID,Object Type,Object Number,Property ID,COV Increment,Property,Property Type,Multiplier,Decimal Scale
Therm,Thermometer,,therm/1,0 * * * * *,BACnet/IP,Polling only,5000,3637469,analog-input,0,present-value,,temp,Instantaneous,1,5
,,,,,,,,3637469,analog-input,1,present-value,,tempWater,Instantaneous,1,5
,,,,,,,,3637469,analog-input,2,present-value,,tempOutdoor,Instantaneous,1,5
Meter,,,meter/1,0 * * * * *,BACnet/IP,Polling only,5000,112821,analog-input,0,present-value,,watts,Instantaneous,1,0
,,,,,,,,112821,accumulator,0,present-value,,wattHours,Accumulating,1,0

Each component configuration contains the following settings:

BACnet Connection

This is the Service Name of the BACnet Connection component configured elsewhere in SolarNode. You must configure that component with the proper connection settings for your BACnet network, configure a unique Service Name on that component, and then enter that same Service Name here.

Source ID

This value unique identifies the data collected by this component, by this node, on SolarNetwork. Each configured component should use a different value.

Sample Maximum Age

SolarNode will cache the data collected from the BACnet device for at most this amount of time before refreshing data from the device again. Some devices do not refresh their values more than a fixed interval, so this setting can be used to avoid reading data unnecessarily. This setting also helps in highly dynamic configurations where other plugins request the current values from this component frequently.

You must configure settings for each BACnet device you want to collect data from. You can configure as many device settings as you like, using the + and - buttons to add/remove configurations.

Each device configuration contains the following settings:

You must configure settings for each datum property you want to collect from a given device. You can configure as many property settings as you like, using the + and - buttons to add/remove configurations.

Each property configuration contains the following settings:

COV Increment

This value only affects the change-of-value (COV) event subscription, and has no impact on the polling schedule configured. This can be used to limit the number of COV events generated by highly-dynamic BACnet property values, so events are only generated if the value changes by at least this amount.

Property

Property names represent what the associated data value is, and SolarNetwork has many standardized names that you should consider using. For example the EnergyDatum class defines properties such as watts and wattHours for electrical energy.

Property Type

Each property must be categorized as Accumulating, Instantaneous, or Status. Accumulating is used for properties that record a value that accumulates over time, such as wattHours captured from a power meter. Instantaneous is used for properties that capture values that record independent values over time, such as watts. Status is used for non-numeric values such as string status messages.

Multiplier

The property values stored in SolarNetwork should be normalized into standard base units if possible. For example if a power meter reports power in kilowattts then a unit multiplier of 1000 can be used to convert the values into watts.

Decimal Scale

This setting will round decimal numbers to at most this number of decimal places. Setting to 0 rounds decimals to whole numbers. Setting to -1 disables rounding completely.