The OPC Foundation presents the ConneXSoft CXS BACnet UA Server live on the DEMO wall at the Light&Building show in Frankfurt (March 19 – 23, 2018).
In this DEMO the CXS BACnet OPC UA Server acquires live BACnet data and model from different devices / vendors to be displayed in a supervisory system. Discovery and the support of the official ASHRAE BACnet model standard are the main features for a secure and complete device integration.
What is the difference between OPC and OPC UA?
Standard OPC was based on the Microsoft COM technology and had separate interface definitions for data acquisition, alarms & events, historian etc.
OPC UA (Unified Architecture) combines the different interfaces into a single platform independent specification. But the main advantage of OPC UA is the capability of defining complex structures and functions for vertical domains. Specifically for BACnet this is a huge advantage. In standard OPC you can only transport atomic data (like analog and discrete values etc:) organized in a hierarchical namespace. In OPC UA you can transport complex values like weekly schedules, priority arrays etc. in the native form. In order to standardize this the OPC Foundation and ASHRAE created the official OPC UA BACnet specification which is what the CXS BACnet OPC UA Server implements.
OPC Foundation DEMO wall full size
https://twitter.com/OPCFoundation/status/974395038083010561
https://twitter.com/OPCFoundation/status/974395820081664001
https://twitter.com/OPCFoundation/status/974399460548730881