Patent ID: 7917232

Claim:
A building automation system (BAS) apparatus comprising: a plurality of end devices each associated with at least one of a space, a system, or a subsystem for at least a portion of a building or a campus; a communication network communicatively coupling the plurality of end devices and having a dynamic extensibility capability and an automatic configuration capability; a protocol-independent server engine communicatively coupled to the communication network and configured to selectively implement the dynamic extensibility capability to establish communications with, to receive and store data about, and to control the end devices and to selectively implement the automatic configuration capability to determine at least one characteristic of each of the end devices, wherein the at least one characteristic comprises a communication protocol compatible with the end device; and a graphical user interface (GUI) communicatively coupled to the server engine and configured to present at least a portion of a device page for a known end device including both static and dynamic data about the end device, wherein the server engine is configured to store the static data and to load the static data on the device page concurrent with initiating a read request to obtain dynamic data from the end device and to refresh the device page until the read request is complete, and wherein the server engine is configured to cache the dynamic data and to automatically periodically reinitiate the read request to obtain updated dynamic information from the end device when the dynamic data is cached, a reinitiation frequency is determined by the server engine and is different for different ones of the plurality of end devices, according to at least one characteristic of each one of the plurality the end devices.