Address Protocol

G'day All,
Do any of you blokes have/use a protocol for organising network addresses?

It has occurred to me that starting out with most categories catered for in a structured addressing system will save a lot of confusion further down the track.

i.e. 010-017 for Outputs (Dimmers, VFR, etc)
020-099 for Output Channels
200-254 for Inputs (Switches)
100-149 for Groups
What other categories?

Any advice greatly appreciated.
tia
build

btw, if this has been discussed before I couldn't find the relevant threads, so a pointer would be appreciated.

 

I for one am not sure what you're trying to do..? can you describe the confusion you think will happen if you dont do what you're thinking of doing?

 

Way back in C-BUS v1, I personally used to use a "Network Grouping / Device Address" like being proposed here. Whether that was actually "required" or just my personal way of organising things, I cannot remember.

To a degree in C-Bus V2, and definitely now we have Toolkit - there is simply no need to Address the Units in that way. You can sort them by Item Type, Cat No, Unit Address, etc in Toolkit...

So, just let them go with whatever Unit Address they accept, and then use Tootlkit to sort and view them.

As an aside - if you NAME your units in an organised way, then that can REALLY help with sorting. But you don't get many characters (is it 7 or 8 that get stored in the unit?), so it has to be something like "DB1_D1_A", "DB1_R1_B" etc

I hope that helps

 

G'day,
Thanks for your replies.

I do plan to print all documents and save a copy of the database to CD, all of which will be stored in the CBus enclosure.

However, my concern is that at some point Murphy may get involved and documentation, database etc will be lost to Sod. Should that happen, some poor bloke will have to reconstruct the database from addresses alone. With careful grouping of addresses this will become obvious pretty quickly and save the bloke a lot of guesswork and testing (remember undoubtedly he'll be trying to sort an error).

Any further thoughts appreciated,
build

 

I found that the efficiency of the network and ease of management improves with arranging the hardware into blocks.

It also related to how my wiring was done. The keypads were not directly connected to dimmers on the same junction blocks. There was a logical wiring group to connections and I took advantage of that fact in how I allocated the numbering.

It would have been easier to lump it all together but I like the idea of being able to isolate whole segments for trouble shooting. The "main" cable would represent dimmers or keypads from a different area of the building. Isolation would be easier and reduce the number of culprits.

From a software view it is true that it makes no difference. But then it depends on whether you feel for the next person dealing with the site.