BTIB is thrilled to announce the new version of its Active Framework with about 50 issues corrections and new features plus the support for Niagara 4.6. The btibStructure module is now more stable and offers a lot of possibilities for tagging your station really quickly. As usual, btibToolkit embeds a couple of new components. In preparation for incoming dashboarding capabilities, we introduce a new module called btibVision dedicated to the UI.

What's new in Toolkit ?

We introduce in this release the MultiGenerateLink, a component that allows you to create automatically links between multiple sources and targets based on BQL or NEQL queries. It can save you a lot of time. There is also a new dedicated component, PointLogExt, to follow your ControlPoint changes and to log them using the btibCore logging system. You can also now use the LogHistoryRecipient to store your logs into histories.Note that all the UI part of Toolkit has been moved to the new btibVision module. Follow this tutorial if you need to upgrade a 4.4 station to 4.6.

What's new in Structure ?

A number of issues has been fixed with the NodeCreator and the AssignmentView. We introduce NodeRelations in order to create relations between Nodes. You can now for example easily create relations between a floor and its allocated tenants or with schedules in the station. We also introduce it for the assignment of sources. Now, if you define that an equipment is a Meter, you end up with the Haystack tags, and it can ask you to select which meter it is a submeter of. For an AHU, you could select which chiller it is associated with etc.

 

The NodeCreator to create Nodes

 

The AssignmentView to assign a Source (anything in a station) to a Node

 

BSO-Project for Haystack

Our goal is to facilitate the tagging process as much as possible and Haystack is a big part of it. Haystack is now one on the most used standard to describe the BMS environment by normalizing about 200 tags and relations between entities. There are two major problems with it:

  • It's time consuming as it's not really organized in a "human" logic and you can easily do some mistakes by forgetting tags
  • It's English only (and that's the core foundation for it)  but not everyone talks English

So we created an open-source project called bso-project.org to tackle these issues. It's mainly based on the top of Haystack. We introduce Nodes that represent group of tags such as Heat Distribution, Pipe Flow Sensor etc. We organize them into 6 graphs making it easy to find the right one with a category graph, a resource graph, a dimension gaph etc. And we created a system to translate them into a local language while keeping the original Haystack tags.

Therefore you can deploy Haystack tags and relations in a Niagara station at an unprecedented speed.

 

So, in order to get all the Nodes in a Niagara station that are defined in BSO-Project, we introduce a powerful importer to fetch all those Nodes. Choose the language and trigger the import action, that's all it takes. It's gonna create or update hundred of Nodes that you can still override if you need your own specifications.

 

Licensing

We introduce in this release the new licensing model based on Active-Credits. Check this blog post for more information. You can ask for a free license on your OfficeDemo to try it out.

 

Training

Two e-learning programs are now available in English:

  • StructureLevel 1: Get the basics of btibStructure (NodeCreator, AssignmentView, Batch commands)
  • StructureLevel 2: Deep dive into advanced models, use of NodeTags, SourceTags, logs, the Nature Aspect etc.
Ask for an access at orders@btib.fr

 

Documentation

All the documentation is now available in English here or you can right-click on any component in the palette.

 

Download

The last version of the Active Framework is available here for downloading. Don't forget to ask for a license on your OfficeDemo.

 

ReleaseNotes

The releaseNotes of the 46.1.0 are available here.

 

Coming soon

Strategies
This is the biggest piece of the ActiveFramework, a set of components to automate all of your tasks (Create components, views, add widgets, set a properties, add an history extension etc.). We are finishing up the module to make it ready for production. We already introduced in this version a couple of features that strategies are going to require (Resources, SFormat etc.).

Node Drawer
It will allow you to create Nodes like the NodeCreator by drawing them into a page. Create a new office by drawing it on the floor plan. More than creating Nodes, it will enable you to define masters among the devices included in the zone you draw. So a final user can draw a zone, define the light controller master and thanks to the strategies, it will re-configure your devices automatically.

FlexPane
This is a really cool feature that should be available in the next release. It allows you to create dashboards inside Niagara with Material Design cards that you add to a page. You organize your pages into tabs.
Link to this page