The concept of a control networking architecture, which provides fair competitive bidding on all levels of a system and over the life of the system, is something the user market has been demanding for years. LON~R and other network protocols, such as BacNet, ModBus and Zigbee, have been developed to deliver on this need. In this vein, defining new rules and a structure for inter-operation allowed for competing manufacturers to sit down at a neutral table and design for the betterment of their industry. Though a monumental task, it was fuelled by the desire to grow the market from a level playing field - irrespective of company size and market dominance. By creating a common language', which allows developers to focus on their applications, development times for new products are greatly reduced and the effort to make products interoperable is simplified. It also provides the added benefit of enabling the many different control systems to work more cohesively in the same system. Functions such as HVAC, lighting, access, security, energy monitoring, indoor air quality, irrigation, elevators, life safety, and much more can now be integrated into a common graphical interface without any aspect of the system being locked into a sole source provider. This answers the plea from the market for more options, more open bidding, and greater intelligence in control systems.
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