CLI reference entry points

Use bacnet --help and the subcommand’s help from the exact installed binary as the immediate reference for accepted syntax. This page is an orientation, not a separately maintained copy of every CLI option.

Common command families

Task	Command family	Operational note
Discover devices	discover, devices	devices is useful with a populated session cache
Find an object	find --name	One-shot form is parser-backed; shell grammar may differ
Read one or several properties	read, readm	Handle object/property errors individually
Read log/list ranges	read-range	Bound request size and result volume
Observe changes	subscribe	Creates remote subscription state
Write a value	write	Requires explicit site authorization and cleanup
Inspect BBMD tables	bdt, fdt	Table inspection is different from changing registration
Packet analysis	capture	Optional feature and platform prerequisites
Alarm/device/file operations	See the full reference	Not ordinary read-only onboarding

Names and aliases

The Cargo package is bacnet-cli; its executable is bacnet. Examples use ai:1 for analog input 1, av:1 for analog value 1, and pv for present value. Full object/property names are useful in teaching material; short aliases are convenient in an operator’s terminal.

Do not use an object-name string where an object identifier is required. Do not assume a BACnet device instance is an IP address or that a discovered downstream device can be addressed by a router’s IP alone.

Session behavior matters

The interactive shell retains a default target and discovered devices for its session. A new one-shot process has a different lifecycle. The reviewed one-shot DNET:instance path rejects routed expressions; successful discovery of a network does not establish a routed read capability on that path.

Machine-readable output

Use --json explicitly in automation. Preserve protocol errors and nonzero process outcomes rather than interpreting an empty result as an empty building. If scripts depend on particular JSON fields, add a small fixture test against the supported CLI version; a formatted example is not a schema guarantee.

Full documentation

Read the versioned CLI guide, but resolve discrepancies against the parser, dispatch, and actual installed command help. The website migration should fix known conflicts rather than reproduce them on a prettier page.

Sources and release scope

These instructions target v0.11.0. Source review is not a claim of hardware qualification.

CLI documentation · Argument source · Dispatch source.