A Building Operating System exposes assets to third parties. These assets compose the digital system of a Smart Building. An asset may be of different kinds: a piece of a data model, a live data, a device... Linksper standardizes the various types of assets it exposes to third party services so it's easier to understand what is what while exploring the BOS graph database.

There are 5 types of assets with Linksper as described below.


Asset type list



Asset TypeDescriptionExamples


Model Related to any piece of a data model. It's used to provide contextual information (See Linksper data models: Structure, Equipment, Product, Point).A specific floor "Level 2", "Fan Coil Unit", "Power", "Temperature"


EquipmentRelated to any physical element that may produce live data"Chiller 01", "FCU_01", "Room Sensor A"


LinksperInstanceRelated to any running instance of Linksper such as Center, Hub, Enterprise... (A project usually contain one Center instance with one or several Hub instances)"MyBuilding_Center_01", "MyBuilding_Hub_02"

DeviceRelated to any communication system connected directly or indirectly to the BOS"ECYPTY_14", "EM200_01", "WavePlus_40"

DataRelated to any live data points, schedules or references to another system."Active Power", "AHU return air temperature", "Occupancy_Schedule_04"


Note the distinction between Equipment and Device. An Equipment is a physical representation of a system (a light, a fan coil unit...) while a device represents the communication side, the associated controller of an equipment.

Example 1: A BACnet controller is modeled as Device while the fan coil unit, the lights and the multi sensors it controls are modeled as Equipment

Example 2: A simple temperature IoT sensor is both a device and an equipment. Linksper separates it and exposes both a device and an equipment to third parties.

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Depending on what your interest is in the data, you will target more specifically a type of asset. If you are interested on understanding how the equipment are working together and where they are located in the building, then you will need to browse all the Model assets first to understand how the building is structured and then all the Equipment asset. Whereas if you are specifically targeting CO2 sensors then your interest will be focused on the Data only, and you will be able to use a simple query on all CO2 measurement.


When assets are shared through the API or through a connector (MongoDb, MQTT...), a tag named "assetType" is used to describe the relative asset type of each asset.

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Asset diagram

If we focus now on assets dependencies, below is a simplified class diagram: 

You will notice that a Data asset is related to all the other assets. For most common use cases, on the left part including Data, Equipment and Model assets will interest you. Device and Linksper Instance are used for advanced use cases, mainly on Facility Management.

Let's focus on each type of asset:

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Relationships between assets

Implemented assets (a specific light, a specific chiller for example) have relationships between each other. Relationships are used to describe interactions and compositions (one asset into another) between assets.

Below is an example of a classic chain of assets to describe a flowrate measurement data from a chiller located in a basement of a campus.


Relationships between assets are "typed", meaning that they are standardized.

You can browse this page Linksper assets relationships for more details.


Below is another example to describe interactions between three different equipment: A chiller provides cooling water to two AHUs.

In a building, there are usually thousands of assets and thousands of relationships shaping a graph of data. This graph of assets can be accessed through the Linksper API or exposed to third parties through connectors (MQTT, MongoDB...).

Below is an example of VayanData's office with all the assets involved and their respective relationships.



To get deeper, please see below:

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