M-Bus to BACnet IP: meters into building management

Why a gateway instead of meters with BACnet?

Meters with their own BACnet interface are rare. Heat, water and electricity meters with M-Bus, on the other hand, are available from almost every manufacturer, and many buildings already have them installed. An M-Bus to BACnet gateway brings these meters into the BMS without replacing a single meter.

The M-Center does more than pass on the values. It knows every connected meter, logs every failed readout and stores all values in 16 GB of internal memory. If a meter stops responding, you see it in the M-Center. Without a gateway, this is often only noticed at the annual billing.

Settings in the M-Center

• D-Net number of the BACnet network
• Port for BACnet IP
• Device instance under which the M-Center appears in the BMS
• BBMD enabled: the M-Center can be read via the BBMD devices entered. It uses the two-hop broadcast method.
• Continuous reading: the M-Center polls the meters continuously so that the values in BACnet are as up to date as possible.

With «Continuous reading», only the values at the time of the readout interval are stored. BACnet and the other interfaces receive continuously updated values in between.

Typical projects

• Office building with BMS: electricity sub-meters per tenant, heat and cooling meters of the ventilation, all via one M-Center in the BMS.
• Retrofit in existing buildings: existing M-Bus meters stay, only the gateway is added.
• BMS and billing: the BMS reads via BACnet, the service charge billing receives the same values as CSV or Excel via (s)FTP or e-mail.

Order numbers