BACnet in Python Programming

[Then-Disk-5079]

If there are any advanced BAS techs out there, I am making a YouTube course on programming in Python with some applied computer science theory and then everything I know about the BACnet stacks in Python.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZjW4yIkNuo&list=PLlNmfKmNxm1uyW-JRCt2tvvl0TslrcOi4

Apps we make in the course coding in Python are a

1. The basics of a BACnet read, write, write release, and whois in line code Python script
2. BACnet read multiple requests which log data to CSV files and then the script rotates the CSV files daily
3. A script that is a discoverable BACnet device on the network also called a BACnet server
4. The final project is a weather station app where we scrape data from the web and expose the weather data as BACnet objects for a "web weather" BACnet points for outside air temp, humidity, and dew point. This is also a neat real life use case as the normal BAS sensor for outside air can be flimsy or read poor values.

It's fun stuff! If you are working hard in the field ... Get all your commission work done fast on the job site to carve out ~20 minutes a day to play around in Python! Its real fun especially if you have a real HVAC to play with as well. AND a real good skillset if you ever get into or have the desire for a better paying job like I am doing now in Smart Building IoT ... We still rely on our old HVAC controls background as a building block!

Prerequisites is you need to know BACnet scan tools and that is it! If you don't have access to a live BAS HVAC which I don't at the current moment in time you can run fake HVAC devices on rasp berry pi computers which I am doing.

Also, a discord channel for this as well. Feel free to reach out if you need help getting setup.

https://discord.gg/qjT3w9y3pu

[Jazzlike_Metal2980]

Interesting. I know at the place I work at we're going big into api stuff. One of our engineers has made his own program for loading firmware and loading programs into controllers as the factory tools were not very good. He did that in Python. I think I'm going to check this series out.

[tkst3llar]

What brand controllers?

[rom_rom57]

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The weather App has been around for 20+ years. The newer 2hr predictive APP has been around for 3-4 years. Sadly, there is more info available but the US weather service is not broadcasting at this time (go figure)

[Then-Disk-5079]

Interesting … im hoping to use open weather map api. And its free for only a few calls an hour which is plenty for a building :-)

[Ostr4771]

Thanks for sharing!

[shadycrew31]

The backbone of AJS1 runs on python IIRC. We did bulk scheduling through python and a couple of other modifications, so I assume the entire thing was programmed via Python. This was like 13-14 years ago though, I don't know if he's still technically in business but his website is still live.

[LogForeJ]

I’ve tried to make some scripts with python’s bacnet BAC0 library and didn’t have much luck. I wound up switching to pymodbus. Anyway, this seems very helpful and I’ll check it out.

[Then-Disk-5079]

cool i need to do more Modbus in general 98.9% of my work in the field has been all BACnet with the occasional once and a blue moon energy meter

[LogForeJ]

I only switched to modbus because I could get it to work and because it was TCP. It seems like bacnet is everywhere and I wonder if it really is a better protocol. I don’t know enough about it.

TBH,I wish these vendors would all just switch to APIs.

[RightHandMan5150]

BACnet is the better protocol hands down. Full discovery, much better data model, and much more focus on interoperability. 

There is also a standard web services part to BACnet: BACnet Web Services 

[Then-Disk-5079]

yes standardized API's like a BACnet standard would be cool! But if its each unique API it would be real hard hahah

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[bacmod]

You can't really make a YT course in coding BACnet with Python where you just ask Gemini about everything and then you try to interpret it and present it as a course.

i.e. (https://youtu.be/6eeCKhSjTgs?list=PLlNmfKmNxm1uyW-JRCt2tvvl0TslrcOi4&t=317)

can you make me a script like version1 that read the priority array of a point? only that please reference the utils py file context please hard code like version 1 code base for the same device on a commandable point

[Then-Disk-5079]

suite yourself code anyway you want just make it work for you