Is there a BACNet simulator which accepts ASCII text file input for datapoints and values?

Question

I am working on a project to integrate a data collection product with ALC BMS system. In this situation, due to network restrictions, I cannot connect directly to the ALC system. Instead pursuing a path where a text dump from ALC will be made available containing all datapoints and values every few minutes.

I would like to feed this file into a simulator. The data collection product would read the datapoints via the simulator.

Any advice would be great. I was also thinking, I could use an SNMP simulator, but the source file may require some translation to convert the object names to OIDs, but I don't know too much about this.

Thanks.

Answer 1

You can use http://sourceforge.net/projects/vts/. Create within VTS manually a device (Edit|Devices...) that contains IO objects (added by right-clicking the device) which are matching your data points of the provided text file.

Now you need a process that regulary reads your text file an updates the IO objects via the WriteProperty or WritePropertyMultiple service. You can use an open source stack like http://sourceforge.net/projects/bacnet/ or bacpypes.sourceforge.net.

Answer 2

You can try the simulator at http://www.cbmsstudio.com/store/p11/BACnet_Simulator.html which will accept an EDE file (CSV) as input. The evaluation version runs for 14 days before you need to purchase a licence.

Answer 3

PolarSoft make a simulator, BACsim, which accepts an XML file as input for the Device(s), objects, and property values. It support a virtual network with up to 255 virtual devices each with up to 255 objects.