C-Bus Module Questions

I'm making good headway porting my embedded xAP/HomeVision gateway using the newly released C-Bus module C code. I've probably missed something but what I wanted to know is how do I best recover the status/list of all the groups actually present on the C-Bus network ? Can I also get advised if they come and go ?

At startup the database handler only seems to return events for groups that are on . I suspect this is because the database is initialised to level 0 so no level change trigger occurs. I thought the MMI handler might report an event for the off groups as they would be changing from absent to present when discovered but it doesn't and there doesn't seem a way to read absent/present if I poll through all the groups. I don't have to decode the MMI directly myself do I ?

As soon as a group level changes I get a lighting and database event but that's not useful for initial synchronisation.

K

 

I did look at Discovery and it does return all the units and the groups within but it means I have to augment the database and my compiler can't handle bit wide values either so it's a bit of a memory waste (had to work around this in your code). Also it returns groups that are present in key input units and these don't participate in the MMI level, unless they are matched in an output unit too. So I can't rely that the value in the DB is accurate , without interpreting the various unit types as well. (see * edit below)

It just seems much more appropriate that absent/present be maintained within the module DB and that at initialisation the DB handler should report the values of all groups , not just those that are physically on which seems half right/half wrong. Or alternatively that there be a function call to return these. It's probably easiest for me to intercept a status MMI as it's returned via the serial receive handler... just messy.

I assume that the discovery code is a mandatory inclusion if you operate at Enabled Level 4, or can it be left out with MMI's surficing ?

The advice of coming and going units was not something I anticipated being frequent - it was just a way of automatically adapting to network changes should they happen

K

* edit: I just realised that if I include CBUS_DISCOVERY_LEVELS that the input units return zero length parameter data so conversely I can identify MMI maintained level data (groups) by there being a non zero length here.