Hey Guys, I come over plc4x already few times, had chat with Christofer as I peek into "industry" side of software from time to time and I am interested in evolution of project, both as contributor (if I have time & budget) and possible user.
A while ago I authored bacnet integration for openhab (actually decoded bacnet4j magic) which is used in several places. I would love to move that part forward as bacnet is widely used in bigger buildings. Obviously because bacnet4j license is not compatible with ASLv2 nor EPL I can't contribute my work back to Eclipse Smarthome nor OpenHab project which makes maintenance of bacnet integration a real burden. I see commercial spaces as another corner of "industrial" stuff since most of them have lots of equipment which is in some cases also used in manufacturing. Coming back to the point, after going over specs and learning how advanced bacnet could be, finding that most of unit tests for bacnet4j is left for historical, but not practical reasons, I come to conclusion - hey maybe it would be good idea to create a naive and simplistic bacnet api, just to have a rough read/write support. Then we could see if it will "catch" and have any traction. So far I completed easiest part - creating interfaces without actually touching a serial/udp codec. :) I know we I can get pcaps, I can even use my home ventilation unit to collect some, but I lack a bacnet mstp interface big time. I can't test bacnet4j nor even check if my code works with it. Since there is a bunch of people on this mailing list who most likely do or did some work with industrial stuff maybe, by some chance, you are able to point some cheap equipment for bac ms/tp testing. Here I mean something basic even with one property, a switch or actuator which doesn't cost 200€. The computer side I should be able to cover with standard RS485/USB adapter. I remember that in one of materials related to plc4x there was information about some firm (or someone) who contributed test equipment to project. Maybe it would be good idea to drop an information about cheap lab equipment on the webpage, which will let people to experiment. As long as costs are close to 50€/$60 (lets call it raspberry barrier) there is a chance that people will play with things. We all know that its not a industry grade hardware, but that's not what we require for most of time to test communication. Since I already mentioned openhab, I would like also to ask about one more standard/protocol which I was asked about in context of building automation - which is CANbus. I found it today on one of pictures on plc4j related to S7 - are there any plans getting CAN supported? For quite long time I presumed that CAN is car specific thing, but apparently I was wrong and it is used "in the field" as well. Having a cheap device which speaks CAN and pluggability to computer is usually first step to get things done. It might be also last one (as we are just humans and we often are short with time for fun projects), but having it is better than not having it. :-) Hope you get the point. >From my own side I might be able to contribute later this year/early next year a sample lab setup for wmbus/mbus. These two are quite popular in Europe for media consumption and have plenty of vendors who use it together following DLMS/OMS spec. Kind regards, Łukasz Dywicki -- Apache Karaf committer & PMC member Founder of http://connectorio.com
