Protocol Bridge · BACnet/IP ⇄ MQTT
Nodex Connect is a DIN-rail appliance that auto-discovers your BACnet devices, publishes every point to your MQTT broker, and writes commands back — with no Linux command line and no per-point mapping.
Why we built this
We spent years on the wrong side of building-automation integration — juggling a stack of protocols and paying per connection for the privilege. Nodex Connect is the box we wanted and could never buy.
Every project meant juggling protocols and endless back-and-forth with a manufacturer, chasing a communication bug that was never really ours to fix. So we drew a hard line: one canonical point model, one clean adapter per protocol, all of it tested against simulators before it ever reaches a panel. The protocol boundary is our problem now — not a ticket you open on a Friday afternoon.
We were done with gateways that meter your point count and charge per batch of connections — then bill you again when the site grows.
Fifty points or five thousand. No upgrade the day you commission the next floor.
The commissioning flow
This is the whole job. Everything under the hood serves it.
The unit boots to a known IP on the wired field port. Plug in a laptop, browse to it, land on the setup page. No install, no SSH, no config files.
One click runs BACnet discovery — Who-Is and object-list reads. Devices and their objects fill the table with live present values.
Every discovered point already has a default MQTT topic and is publishing. You see live values immediately — zero manual mapping.
Export to CSV, edit friendly names, scaling, enable/disable and COV-vs-poll in Excel, re-import. Thousands of points in minutes, validated before anything is applied.
A status page shows link state, point counts, publish rates and errors. Write to the designated topics and the BACnet objects change.
Capabilities
Publish BACnet → MQTT and write MQTT → BACnet. Reverse writes use WriteProperty against the priority array, with relinquish.
Who-Is + object-list, then a generated tree: <site>/<device>/<type>/<instance>/pv. Works with zero manual config.
First-time network setup, scan, the point table, broker settings and live status — all in a browser served from the box.
Export and import thousands of points. Safe apply: the whole file is validated first — a bad row never leaves the running map half-edited.
Change-of-value subscriptions where the device supports them, automatic fall-back to polling where it doesn't. Fail-safe, never fail-stop.
A signed licence bound to the hardware, verified offline. An invalid licence blocks config changes and alarms — but never stops live data flow.
Per-point scale and offset, friendly names, topic overrides, QoS and retain — engineering values on the wire, not raw counts.
DIN-rail Raspberry Pi (CM4/CM5), with an optional dual-Ethernet build so the BACnet field network and the MQTT/IT network stay physically separate.
Zero-config by default
Discovery seeds a predictable tree the moment you scan — present value, retained metadata, and a write-back topic for each point. Override any of it per-point later.
plantA/device_1001/analogInput/3/pv → 21.4 plantA/device_1001/analogInput/3/meta → {"name":"Outside Air Temp","units":"°C"} plantA/device_1001/binaryOutput/7/pv → active plantA/device_1001/analogValue/12/set ← 68.0 # MQTT → BACnet
MQTT → BACnet writes go through WriteProperty at a configurable priority; a relinquish hands control back. Only points you mark writable ever accept a command from the broker.
If a licence check fails — say a cloned image on the wrong box — config changes are blocked and an alarm is raised, but live data keeps flowing. The plant stays up. Insurance against cloning, not DRM that fights your operators.
Who it's for
Take it out of the bag, browse to it, scan, go. Bulk edits happen in Excel, not by hand on a keypad.
Standardise one BACnet ⇄ MQTT gateway across every site. Config is a single JSON file — backup, restore, template it.
Get building data into your MQTT or IIoT platform without a SCADA rebuild — and write setpoints back down when you need to.
At a glance
Get in touch
We're onboarding a small number of integrators and building operators for the pilot. Send a few details and we'll come back to you.