Best way to operate 82 lighting groups from one button

Hi,

I'm relatively new to C-Bus so please be gentle.

Please could someone recommend me how i can operate 82 groups from one button, 70 groups doing 0% and 12 doing 100%

Currently have got all the output units in the area of one group called (All off) and then have a button set to Preset1 and 0% which works fine and turns all 82 groups off, but would now like to leave a few groups on without the need of having to push a another button.


Thanks
Jimmy

 

In C-Bus, the concept of Scenes covers this case. A Scene is used to set one or more Group addresses to independent levels. There's a good intro on the forum here. You can also read about them in the Toolkit and PICED help. In simple terms a Scene is just a long list of groups and levels. If using a Scene you would use the individual channel groups, not the Area Address to control them.

82 Groups is a fairly large Scene, so you'll need to have a device on your network capable of setting a Scene that big, such as a Touchscreen, Wiser or PAC. You can then remotely trigger this scene from the button on your switch.

If you don't have any of these devices but you do have some Scene capable switches (Neo, Saturn, Reflection, DLT, Avanti, 30M, etc) you can still do it. You'll need to spread the contents of the Scene among multiple units and remotely trigger the Scene.

If you don't have any Scene capable units on your network there's potentially still a simple way. If the output units are relay units and not dimmers, you could fiddle with the turn-on thresholds of the relays. Set the turn-on threshold of the relay to, say, 100% for those channels you want to be off when the Preset button is pushed. Set the turn-on threshold to 1% for those channels you want to be on when the preset button is pressed. Then configure your Preset 1 button to use a level such as 50%. In this way, all the output units that are programmed to be a part of that Area Address will set their internal level to 50%. If the turn-on threshold is set to be above this value, then the relay will remain off. If the turn-on threshold is set to be below this value then the relay will turn on.

 

Hi Newman, thanks for the reply.

Yes unfortunately the devices i am using are only capable of 40 Commands total (Saturn and DLT).

Am i right in thinking that on the device i wanna use to operate 82 groups (DLT) i can on Key1 set a scene with the 12 groups i would like at 100% and set the trigger group to say A and action selector to B and then spread the rest of the 70groups in different units set as a scenes at 100% and set the trigger group to A and action selector to B.

Thanks
Jimmy

 

That's basically correct.

When you press the button on the first DLT it will send not only the group/level commands onto the bus but also the set Action Selector for that Trigger Group. This will cause any other units on the network that are also configured with a Scene that uses the same Trigger Group and Action Selector to also send their group/level commands onto the network.

You don't have to keep the groups you want at 100% in one unit and the groups you want at 0% in the others. You can mix these up any way that you like. The only rule with the Saturn/DLT's is that each can only hold a total of 40 groups in it's local portion of a scene, so you'll need to use at least 3 separate switches to hold all the groups.

 

thank you for your help