c-bus air cond. zone controller

New to this forum and I have a question, installing a new ducted air conditioner system with its own wall control panel but it does not have a zone controller, is it possible to have a c-bus system that will control each room and each room to have its own wall control panel?

 

There are many ways to do this.
L5108RELVP should be a good fit for low voltage damper motors.
http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&r...=Ws1NNEdxTCOEK4g8zjOOOQ&bvm=bv.99804247,d.dGY

 

whats going to control the L5108RELVP unit, I still require the wall zone control switch panel in each room correct?

 

Any CBus input unit can control it.
Do you have CBus in the house?

 

Yes I do only for lighting but, what I want to do if possible is install a c-bus zone control in each room which will set the temperature in that room via the zone damper, so if I have say 4 rooms each room has a zone damper and a temperature control wall switch to set temperature, Something like the 5070THP series.

 

Then that is a whole different matter.
I'm not familiar with 5070THP so someone else will have to tell you about it.

What I have used previously was a CoolMaster unit controlling a few Daikin ducted units and a few wall mounted splits in a home.
CBus touch screen sending the commands to the CoolMaster.
The zones were controlled by IAS Smart Zone and had variable air dampers with thermostats in each zone.
Forum member djagger set up the programming to open the dampers when the ducted unit started which was very cool.
Unfortunately I never got around to integrating the room temps into the touch screen but they can be adjusted on the zone controller.
It really was too much trouble.
A well set up ducted AC works pretty nicely without all that.

In my opinion if you really want good control over each zone you should have a look at a VRV system with a separate fan coil unit in each zone and possibly CoolMaster if you want to integrate it to CBus.

 

thanks for the info

 

I am using 4 x Cbus thermostats to control the dampers in 4 rooms. The main thermostat directly controls the unit though. However, since it does this by using a group address to turn the unit on and off , you could potentially use this to control your system.

 

Yes Ashley that sounds like what I'm after, more info please

 

With a 4 zone system one thermostat is the master and controls the equipment. The other 3 act as slaves. Each thermostat can control it's own zone motor. The master is designed to control what's generally known as RWB equipment which have a minimum of 3 relays. One controls the main motor, the second the heat/cool valve (or whatever) and the 3rd the fan. These 3 controls are assigned to 3 group addresses that are normally associated with cbus relays which directly control the equipment. Whenever one of the thermostats calls for heat/cool the master will turn on the system. When all thermostats turn off their zones, the master will turn off the equipment. If you have an interface to your equipment you could use logic to respond to the 3 group address and send the appropriate commands to your system. All you really need is an on/off and possibly heat/cool control. If you set the temperature of the unit to the max (or min) you ever wanted the master thermostat would cycle the unit as appropriate.

 

Thanks for the info, I can see a problem with your setup on my Mitsubishi system as it has it's electronics talking between the inside & outside units and tapping into that may be a problem. The a/c will be shipped mid week & then I can see how it's wired up if I can tap into it's control system or better still have an input to control it.

 

This is an ongoing problem with aircon's. They just haven't caught up with home automation yet. If you want to control them remotely you need to figure out which ones can do it beforehand. Some do have optional boards to allow remote control but the boards are usually ridiculously expensive. Some are now coming out with android/ios app control, so they obviously have network access. It will just take some time for a keen person to reverse engineer the protocols.

 

Yep your correct it looks like the air cond. manufacture want you to use it's gear and if you want something better like you said smart phone interface you have to pay big.

 

I have found that some of the bigger manufactures do have interface options, that they use for commercial installations.

The problem is getting information, and then getting the parts as the commercial A/C world seems to be a bit of a secret society.

If you can make contact with a commercial A/C crowd that installs the brand you have, you might get lucky.

As another option there is a new company that has produced a C-Bus IR module specifically for control of split system A/C units, but I can't remember their name off hand. I'll try and find it, or Conformist might remember before me.

Cheers

Rohan

 

I've not tried it, but this probably the one? http://inirt.com

I've used the Coolmaster on serval different Daikin and Toshiba systems with great success. https://coolautomation.com

Also I've not tried this, but Daikin and probably others are releasing products like this: http://www.daikin.com.au/skyfi

 

Yep that's the one I was thinking of. I haven't tried it either.

Cheers

Rohan

 

Thanks for the info guys