The BACnet Supervisor uses much of the same software as the regular BACnet driver. A few extensions are made to allow enhanced operations. Instead of a BacnetNetwork, you use a BacnetWsNetwork (from the bacnetws module) as the root container for BACnet operations.

Using its Bacnet Ws Device Manager view, you add BacnetWsDevices instead of BacnetDevices. Because the BacnetWsNetwork is also a BacnetNetwork, you can also manually copy regular BacnetDevices into the network—however, in AX-3.4 or earlier, you will not be able to perform the supervisory-related functions on them.

Starting in AX-3.5, device type defaults to BacnetDevice, which does allow supervisory-related functions.In AX-3.4 and earlier, the distinction between a BacnetDevice and BacnetWsDevice is purely a Niagara difference—this simply identifies what properties the Niagara representation will have, and what functions may be done with the device. If a target BacnetWsDevice cannot support a specific supervisory request, it will return the appropriate error, meaning that the action will fail with an understandable message dialog.

To use the BACnet Supervisor, you need to have a couple of things in place: