Applications and Trigger Control

An Application is like a language.

Two people speaking English understand each other, the Chinese speaker alongside them has no idea what they are saying.

Two people speaking Chinese (ok, Mandarin) understand each other, the English speaker alongside them has no idea what they are saying.

In C-Bus, Applications are the LANGUAGE that devices talk to each other.

The most common, for historical reasons, is Lighting (or more correctly - Lighting-Like). The lighting application commands are pretty simple: On, Off, and Ramp to a Level. All the other clever dickery you see happens in the input or output units based on those basic Lighting Application commands (like words of the language).

Another Application is "Date and Time". Clearly, sending On and Off and Ramp commands to somebody who expects a Date or a Time will be meaningless. So we go to some pains to prevent incompatible commands being configured.

Trigger Control is used to send "one-shot" messages around, whose purpose is "when you get this, go and start action blah blah blah."

To add to the confusion, Trigger Control commands (on the bus) LOOK THE SAME as lighting commands - but the purpose is different.

To extend our analogy, most English speakers can pick out and understand a few words of Dutch, Danish, German and even some French. That's because English is a mish-mash language built on centuries of invasion and conquer. (Just don't tell the English that.)

In this case, Trigger Control Commands are used to make stuff happen (get the right command, do a bunch of actions RIGHT NOW).

To shoehorn Trigger Control Commands into standard units you have to do some fudges:

Trigger commands look, to a degree, like Lighting Ramp to Level Commands, but a Ramp to Level has two pieces of information that go with it: the Group, and the Level.

Trigger commands also have two pieces of information going with them: a Trigger Group (ie which cluster of thingies does my action fall inside), and an Action Selector (once inside the cluster of thingies, which one of them is to be selected to do stuff).

Trigger Control is typically used to trigger a scene, and the setup of the Trigger Group and Action Selector is important to get all the indicators and things working right - you then need to under stand mutual exclusion.

So if you can get a standard lighting device to send a standard ramp to level command, but send it on the Trigger Control Application, with the Group set to the Trigger Group, and the Level set to the Action Selector, you can make a standard unit trigger a scene. This is the fudge. *Newer units support a much easier to understand method of triggering scenes where you don't need to know this fluffing around.*

There is a tutorial, here: http://www.cbusforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=439

 

Assume you set up your scene in a touchscreen.

Then, on a Neo there is only a single Trigger Group available for the whole unit. You will find this on the Scenes Tab.

Make sure the Trigger Group is set to something other than UNUSED. You may need to make a new Trigger Group (use the green +).

When you have a Trigger Group for the Neo unit, you can make a key unit a scene key by selecting the Function (top part of the screen). Then press the button alongside the function (3 small squares + bunch of lines), this lets you set up the properties of the scene key.

Select the scene, the ramp rate, and select or make the Action Selector.

To trigger a remote scene just use an empty scene on the Neo.

 

In that tutorial the technique 1 "put whole unit in Trigger Control" is NOT what I'd recommend if you are using a Neo.

It's the old way of doing things and still mandatory if you use the 2000 series white plastic stuff, but for Neos, I'd recommend using Technique 2.