1000th Post

Given that I've reached a milestone of 1000 posts on the forum I though I'd start a thread for a change.

Below are two of my favourite C-Bus photos.

The first is an example of the imitation that goes on in China. CLQISEL, and wavy colour bars. Classic.

The second is an awesome piece of ingenuity where optocouplers have been used to hook up a 3rd party system to a Neo PCB to trigger Scenes.

Neither of the photos are mine, but they're both creative in their own ways.

 

Congratulations on your milestone mate, it only goes to show that you are amongst the most dedicated people on this forum. So thankyou for helping us all out in our times of need.

And re the Neo bodge job, wouldn't it have been WAYYYY easier and cheaper to have just used a pair of bus couplers?

 

No worries mate. Glad to help.

Re the bus couplers... I suspect that this was done in the days prior to either Bus Couplers with Scenes or touchscreens with logic. Even so, there would have been ways to remotely trigger Scenes stored in other key units. Maybe it was a multi-application thing? Our only hope to find out exactly why it was done this way is if the inventor comes clean here. And then we can all flame him with 57 other ways it could have been done!

 

Is that a dare?

 

Dare, dare...

 

Yes, you are right. That photo was taken a little over 4 years ago (and where did you get it?!). I had been waiting on the colour touchscreen to be released when I started, but by the time they finally came out they were too expensive, too power-hungry and too big to fit the mounting we had already cut into the blockwork (and which was by then plastered over and painted).

It was more than simply triggering scenes, although that was certainly part of it.

Yes, it was (and is). Several distinctly seperate systems from various vendors which I wanted to get "into" the cbus system. Everything from generator status, cooling water temperature, wood-fired boiler operating state, security system, doorbells, RFID readers and various other things.

The bus-couplers were (as I recall, and it's a fuzzy memory) - but something like $600 each, only 2 or 4 channel, and did a lot less than the neo did.

I had a few hundred optos in the junkbox, and it only took 10 minutes to cobble up this thing (including the mounting box and screw connectors).

When you're in the middle of nowhere, you make do with what you can get, make or modify. Some of us also live in the real world and don't have the luxury of customers with unlimited budgets.

 

Huzzah! The owner is revealed!

Current trade price in the TPG is AU$143 for a 4-channel bus coupler and AU$210 for an Auxiliary Input Unit. Up until recently, they only supported 1 Application and did not support Scenes, which did impose some limits on what you could do with them.

Has it been superseded by something else or is it still in service?

 

It's tucked away in the security panel and hasn't seen the light of day since it was installed. Never given any trouble, just quietly keeps working away.

 

Only a new forum member and you have been a great help with your expert responses and know how! - happy 1000th