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BACnet for Verkada Air Quality Sensors
BACnet for Verkada Air Quality Sensors

Learn how to integrate your Verkada Air Quality Sensors with BACnet

Updated over a week ago

Verkada Air Quality Sensors offer your organization a way to monitor essential indoor air quality factors, such as CO2, CO, PM 2.5, PM 4.0, PM 10.0, AQI, TVOC, and formaldehyde.

The Building Automation and Control Networks (BACnet) integration allows Verkada sensors to inform a building’s Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system about an air quality metric or any sensor reading, allowing the building HVAC to respond to these indoor air quality conditions.

Verkada sensors can integrate with the Building Management System (BMS) protocol, BACnet. By integrating Verkada's sensors with this protocol, your organization's HVAC systems can now automatically respond to suboptimal air conditions. Learn how to configure BACnet for your Verkada Air Quality Sensors.

About BACnet

BACnet is a communication protocol specifically designed for building automation and control systems. It is an industry-standard protocol used to facilitate the exchange of data between various devices and systems within a building, such as HVAC, lighting, security, and other building automation systems.

BACnet provides a standardized way for different devices and systems from different manufacturers to communicate with each other, regardless of the underlying hardware or software implementation.

The goal of BACnet is to enable efficient and standardized communication between different building automation devices, promoting interoperability, scalability, and flexibility in the design and operation of building control systems.

Benefits of BACnet

Here are some instances where the intuitiveness of BACnet can be beneficial to your organization:

  • Adjusts the temperature in a room or building to save costs

  • Adjusts the output of dampers to increase fresh air circulation in a room

  • Turns on supply fans

  • Automatically closes windows when poor air quality is detected

  • Automatically turns on air filtration systems and increases outdoor airflow when the CO2 levels are high

  • Only runs air through filtration systems when pollution thresholds are met, to avoid unnecessary filtration when the air is clean

  • Automatically increases the ventilation rate in a lab when there are high levels of VOCs

  • Uses the SV23 and SV25 as occupancy sensors to save on HVAC energy costs, if programmed to allow the HVAC system to reduce its operation when the room is unoccupied

  • Uses the SV25 light sensor to turn off the lights in a room when it is unoccupied, but light is detected

  • Triggers a strobe or alarm if vaping is detected

Use cases for BACnet

If your BMS, also sometimes called a Building Automation System (BAS), supports BACnet, you can use Verkada sensors as inputs to control HVAC equipment or any other equipment inside your BMS.

BACnet allows centralized control and monitoring, and by accepting various input readings from Verkada sensors, such as temperature, humidity, PM 2.5, TVOC, and CO2 among others, can be used to control the outputs to remediate the effects. For example, a sensor installed in a meeting room could trigger a high CO2 alert, which would then feed this information in turn to the BAS/BMS, which in turn controls a specific action such as powering on a ventilation fan or damper in the meeting room.

Example implementation

Scenario: You want your Verkada Air Quality sensor to monitor CO2 in a conference room and increase fresh air flow when CO2 hits 700 ppm.

  1. Install the Verkada Air Quality Sensor and put it on your BACnet network.

  2. Enable BACnet on the device and give it a unique device ID. See how to enable BACnet on a device.

  3. Go to your BACnet over IP compatible BMS, and use the "discover" feature to find your Verkada sensor. In this example, use Vykon WorkPlace N4.


    This returns the BACnet devices found on the network.

  4. Rename the device and add it to your BMS.

  5. Run a BACnet Who-Has discover to find all the available points.

  6. Add the points to your BMS and use them to make HVAC decisions.

    1. In this case, In2 is linked to the SV25 CO2 reading, which goes to In A which is a GreaterThanEqual function.

    2. If the SV25 CO2 reading is above 700 ppm, send True; otherwise, send False.

    3. Link the Out (the output) of that function to the input of a BooleanWritable variable; in this case, In16. In16 determines the Out boolean.

    4. Link the Out boolean to your damper control.

      • If Out is True, the damper is open.

      • If Out is False, the damper is closed.

FAQ

Do all BMSs/BASs use BACnet?

No, not all Building Management Systems (BMSs)/Building Automation Systems (BASs) support BACnet. Most major HVAC providers have products and controllers that support this feature. However, you should talk with your HVAC specialist to understand if your system is supported.

Required. Your building must have a BAS that is compatible with BACnet IP to use this integration. We recommend that you contact your HVAC specialist to understand if your system is supported. If you are unsure whether your BAS supports BACnet, contact Verkada Support for additional assistance.

Which sensor readings are supported by BACnet?

You can use all Verkada sensor readings as inputs for your BMSs, such as temperature, humidity, CO2 values, Vape Index, and so on, to control dampers, ventilation fans, or other HVAC equipment.

Do Verkada sensors control the HVAC directly?

No, the Verkada sensors do not control the building's HVAC system directly. Instead, the sensors relay their readings to your BMS, which in turn uses these as inputs in a function that controls the building's HVAC, such as adjusting the temperature in a room or increasing the airflow in a closed space.

Do Verkada Air Quality monitors support BACnet MS/TP?

No, BACnet Master Slave (MS)/Token Passing (TP), the hard-wired version of BACnet that requires an RS-485 connection, similar to our access control readers, is currently not supported by Verkada Air Quality Sensors. Contact your SE should you require additional information or support.

What does BACnet do when enabled?

  1. Once BACnet is enabled on a device, the BMS controller is now able to "discover" the device on the BACnet network. This is why the BACnet device needs a device ID, which is used to identify the device on the network, as well as a port, also used for communication.

  2. The server will initiate a handshake with the device via the "Who-Is/I-Am" flow. It will then figure out what properties the device has with the "Who-Has/I-Have" flow.

Note: The Verkada SV21, SV23, and SV25 all support the BACnet/IP protocol and support IPv4. The UDP port defaults to 47808 (0xBAC0).

Related resources

Need more help? Contact Verkada Support

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