All Off

Hello again folks, merry christmas to everyone.

Another quick one (hopefully) for you......I am doing a job with 4 dimmers and 2 x 12 channel relays. I wanted to create an "all off" function on the saturn by the front door so I named each dimmer and relay in the "area" tab.....dimmer1, dimmer2 etc.

I then went to the saturn and created a scene on the last button with all the dimmers and relays set to 0%.

First of all....is this correct??
Secondly...is there other ways to do it so that the same button will turn all the lights on and off???
Thirdly....on a different subject....why when I use my laptop and connect to someone elses project do I not see the groups thet they have created???

I ask the first question because apparently when I left the house and used the button I had created to turn all the lights out they all went back on 30 mins later and the owner had to go round each switch individually to turn off the lights...........has anyone heard of this before or have I just screwed up with the way I configured the saturn?????

Thanks in advance,

JL

 

Every dimmer and relay should be in the same application area (eg house).

Set a button to ramp off area house. You have to use the ramp off function, but this is probably better as you get a ramp time as well so you can delay the turn off so that you can walk from the door say to the car while the lights are still on. The dimmers will ramp down the outputs to zero and the relays will stay on until the 0 is reached (this can be different if you have the on and off values for each of the channels different in the relays)

Mick

 

Sounds to me like your method should have worked. Is it possible that you only "pulsed" the loads off for 30 minutes in your Saturn scene configuration?

Regarding the groups you can't see on someone else's installation - the descriptive text tags used in C-Bus are stored in the database, which resides on the PC. The network itself only stores the hex addresses - so to get the text tags, you need a copy of the database from the person who created them.

 

The manual specifically talks about the all off scanario and how it works and why. Read it to understand what you need to do.

 

Hi, thanks for the input.

As you have guessed I'm fairly new to the c-bus programming and am trying to sort out a problem for an unhappy customer who wasn't my own.

I have done the clipsal "training course" in Britain that taught me the (very) basics of the programming and unfortunatly do not have or do not know what you mean when you talk of "The manual".

If I can download it or it can be sent to me then please let me know and I shall read it so that I can understand what to do.

Excuse my ignorance.

JL

 

Try here

http://www3.clipsal.com/cis/lit_installtraining_techmanuals.php3

specifically part E

but you should download the lot and read them all, at least to a point where you know whats in there so you can refer to it when required.

 

Part E

That would be great if the training manuals weren't written around software that was released in Oct 1997, and has now been pretty much obsolete for 12 months. Perhaps its time for CIS to write new training and help manuals

 

Functionally it is the same. Get past the fact that the graphics look different and you are almost there.

 

Ramp off ?

I downloaded the manual - and it's a mess - ive got fed up hunting around after 10 minutes.

My Application is "Lighting" (just using the default)but I dont see that as an option anywhere when selecting something to control on a button (using a DLT)

Cant see anything in the scene control either

Mebe this can be explained a little here ?

Thanks

 

First just get back to my experience of using a single "All on/All Off" button:

Just imagine if you have a key that switch everything off easily, it could be bad practise unless you are the only one living in the house or the only one to use the switch. People always press the wrong key one day and you don't want it affect everybody in the house.

Solution, using the "Long Press" feature for master keys,while "idle" on any short press/release. That means we may not be able to use the scene function until Clipsal put more functions into switches.

For All on, do we really to switch everything ON altogether in one touch? Using area address, it means everything would be switched on, including some high loading control. If there is no problem, then maybe we can use "toggle" in the "long press" block to switch on and off everything.

That means I need to name nearly all the dimmer/relay with a common name (e.g. AllLights) to save Group address blocks. It is the first limitation.

But then I run into another problem. After I press "all off" (i.e. set AllLights to off), I use individual keys to switch on some lightings. i.e. I never toggle to "all on" (so the state of AllLights is still off even though some lamps are switched on). In this case, my "all off" never work again because it wouldn't do anything on a already off channel.

Solution: I need to use "preset value" instead of toggle. Problem, I can't have one single key for "all on" "all off" together.

And Ramping is a much better solution, so I end up using a key with "long Press" "Ramp 1" and another key with "long Press" "Ramp 2'. Ramp 1 is set to 100% and Ramp 2 is set to 0%. All the dimmer/relay involved has the same "Area Address, AllLight".

I don't now if it is a good practice but it is what I ended up with.

(In fact I also use scene function to set area address to 0% in one project. But, maybe due to the NEO bug, ramping doesn't work in some case. The channel itself is turned off immediately while it's indicator clearly turned off only after the ramping period. I've got no fix on that one.)

 

Section E, page E-110 - Master Off, Resettable.

Page E-112 shows the config for the master off switch.

forget the fact that the graphics are from V2 toolkit, setup is the same for both toolkits.

Mick

 

The example is quite clear about what we should do, but I have couple questions:

Why is it necessary to set the switches' Area Address to the same address? Sorry, in fact I never know what the Area Address of any input switches is used for.

What in fact is the difference between OFFKEY and RAMP OFF? Does RAMP OFF always turn the load off whatever it is ON or not, while OFFKEY would only turn off load which is ON?

BTW, when will NEO behave the same as DLT? (i.e. which fireware?) NEO always have funny behaviour in master controls.

 

First question by example.

Area addressing allows group control. If you have two buildings on the same network and you want to turn off all lights in one building only, then you assign the area address to something different to that of the other building. This then allows a sort of segregation. This may not ever be a real issue for a domestic dwelling though. (It is for me as I have this scenario).

i cant answer the second question, although i do remember reading about it somewhere quite a while ago.

Have a read of this thread
http://www.cbusforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=281&highlight=master+off

and try a few searches, you may find the answers

Mick

 

Area Addressing

Hi All,

Just luvly to be back for another year!

RAMPOFF: Ramp level of group to zero using 'Ramp Rate 2'.
OFFKEY: Terminate ramping and turn group off instantly.

Yep. RAMPOFF will always issue the 'Ramp to 0% over Ramp Rate 2' command, even if the group is already at 0%. OFFKEY will not set the groups to 0% if it is already at that level.

Sorry, release dates are not discussed on this forum.

Cheers,
Mark.

 

If the switches are controlling loads affected by AREA programming, and if these switches do not have the same area address as the output units, then when the AREA group is changed, the outputs will change but there will be a disagreement between the input and output unit states, so the LEDs of the input units will not agree with the state of the outputs. The status reporting mechanism that is part of C-Bus will evenutally correct the input unit states, but it is best to avoid any unexpected behaviour if possible.

Don