Issues in Developing Open Source Licensing Tool for Controllers in the Context of BA (Building Automation)

Over the past ten years building owners, Managers and consulting engineers from the different Manufacturers/Vendors have become the increasingly frustrated by incompatibilities and limited Mechanism for the integration of building automation and control systems(BAS)[1] because a site may have BAS equipment from multiple manufacturers in the field . A controller comes with different functionalities. Some of the functionalities will be locked down by the manufactures. There are times when site engineer need to lock or unlock the particular functionality of the controllers, called licensing. As Controllers are part of BAS, there are at present three issues in Developing open source licensing tool, and they mainly concentrate on BAS integration. They are Integration between BAS and existing Enterprise applications, integration of widely used open protocol standards (e.g. BACnet or LonTalk), and integration of subsystems (HVAC systems, fire safety systems, life safety, lighting systems [11]) of BAS [14]. Though today many solutions are available, Integration of diverse and heterogeneous BAS systems is a challenge. The paper describes the issues in developing open source licensing tool and how to overcome these issues