CBus/ctouch system time

Yes, problem does occur with 4.8.3, as I found out after updating the ctouch firmware.

When you say to use something other than the ctouch to set the time, what type of device would suit? And as I understood it the problem was that the ctouch is broadcasting the time around the system every 60 or 90 mins which in turn overwrites the time set by the DLT.

Stephen

 

As far as I can tell, the problem only exists immediately after you manually set the time on a Colour C-Touch. After this, it will be fine, even if the Colour C-Touch is the time master.

 

With me at least it seems to be that if the time is set with a DLT it only remains "correct" until the ctouch broadcasts the time to bring it back an hour.

When this problem first occured last year it was the same, i.e. correcting the time using a DLT or the Date/Time of the ctouch only fixed the DLT displayed time until the ctouch broadcast took place 60-90 mins later.

Very strange that it seemed to be cured on my system up until a few days ago. Nothing was changed recently that could have triggered this broadcast error.

Stephen

 

Work-around?

Hi Stephen / Darren,

I followed this thread, as the time master management of the system is quite interesting to me.
I'd like to make a suggestion which may be tried out. Since I have not had any report of this issue here, where we have no summer time offset, I am thinking that the issue may be related to that.
Therefore I thought that loading the relevant project on the C-Touch without any summer time offset, might resolve the issue for now. If so, at least you only need to change the time twice a year.

Could this work?

Regards
Thomas

 

Note that although you say the problem occurs when the ctouch date/time screen interface is used, I'm still having the issue after correcting the time using the DLT's.

Anyway, hopefully the next PICED release will sort this.

 

Any fix yet?

I am having the exact same problem on a site in the UK which started happening around the start of May.

This project has 3 networks (one a wireless) with 6 Colour touch screens accross the networks. Once you reset the time at one of the screens that screen will set the clocks accross the whole networks back one hour and then keep sending out the wrong time. If you change it back at a different screen it will be ok until it resends out the time and then it will set it wroing again.

I have a nice long lists of logs if you guys would like them, let me know where to email to.

If this has been fixed please let me know what it is as i've been pulling my hair out and only just found this thread today

 

Oddly, a day or so after my last post on this issue the time "corrected" itself for no reason, i.e. nothing was changed on the system but simply after a while the time went back to what it should have been.

And now yesterday the time has changed back again, and nothing was changed this time either. As I use the DLT time read-out quite a lot I notice when it's incorrect quite quickly. As of yesterday evening the DLT times are 1 hr behind the actual and ctouch time.

 

The problem is in our system as #19316. A fix for this will be included with the next release of PICED, but I can't say exactly when that will be.

If you set the time with a different type of unit (black and white C-Touch or DLT), then things should work OK. You could also use the C-Bus diagnostic utility to send a date/time message onto C-Bus.

 

Can you give me any idea? Are you talk days, weeks, months

How do you send that message from diagnostic untility. I was looking through it and couldn't find anything.

Is this a problem only in the UK as so far iHome and myself are in the UK and i haven't seen anyone else asking about it in the forums? If so can CIS please update Tech support in the UK as i rang them and they knew nothing about it.

Any idea on what is causing it to start happening?

 

Are you saying your colour touch screens are showing the correct time but the DLT's aren't?

My system the touch screens are displaying the wrong time. I have not looked at the DLT as the touch screen are the bigger problem for me. Strange thought if your touch screen is displaying the right time, while mine is not

 

Assuming you're running Diagnostic Utility 2.0.0 and successfully connected to your network, go to the Time tab at the very bottom of the program. You might have to scroll to the right through the tabs using the arrows in the very bottom right hand corner of Diagnostic Utility. Once you've got your time entered (system time or otherwise), press the Transmit button.

 

And there is the problem newer version on Diagnostic needed. I was using 1.8.1

 

Still Having Touch Screen Time Issues

I am still having similar time issues on our installation. 10 Touch screens (4 Color, 6 Mark II). Homeowner is reporting the system time shifts by 1 hour increments spontaneously. It sometimes shifts forward, sometimes backward. The shifts seem to be betwen 12 and 24 hours between events, but so far, they seems random. Homeowner has reported system has eventually shifted as far as 4 hours forward over several days.

I made a site visit a couple weeks ago for a couple other issues and made double sure all 10 touch screens were on the same time zone, thinking this was perhaps the issue. Perhaps the time master was shifting to a device set to a different time zone? (if this was the case it would have been a 2-hour shift - as the job is 2 time zones from where I've done much of the programming). After the check, I got a call 3 days later - still having the same issue.

On a couple instances when I was there, I set the time on a color touch screen and then hit 'OK'. About 10 seconds later the time would shift by an hour. On other occasions it would not shift. (Unfortunately, I did not have time to run a log to watch the time messaging.)

The project has 4 networks. 2 of the networks have devices which can set the time; Touch Screens (color and MII on both networks), 9 DLTs on one network, 8 on the other, 6 Thermostats, and a Ness/Elk C-Bus interface for an Elk M1 panel.

All programming has been done with Toolkit 1.10.9 and PICED 4.7.2.


The homeowner is upset and I can't get him to run a log file to look for the culprit.

Any suggestions?

 

From what the guys here are saying it's not a singel device that is doing it but something to do with the colour screens for some reason send out the wrong time message. So don't spend time hunting down a problem device. I did but found the screen that was sending out the wrong time message was the screen I set the time correctly on. Then by changing the time at another screen it in turn started to send out the wrong time. Trust me it was a fun fault to find and work out

Now just hoping the permenant fix will be released soon

 

I get the feeling we're flogging a dead horse here as this problem in its various forms will hopefully be fixed with the next PICED release, which normally happens quite regularly.

It's odd that I've only came across this problem with my own home install and none of the client installations. And perhaps even more odd that it has came and went a couple of times for no reason I know of. Certainly no-one else in my home fiddles with the units or times, so I'm certain no-one changed the time on the colour ctouch to make the unit broadcast the time change.

And with my install, setting the correct time using a DLT is only a short-term fix. The ctouch overrides this after a short time. So IME setting the time with a DLT does not bypass the problem.

When the problem is evident, i.e. the DLT times are 1 hr behind, the ctouch time is correct. As I've said before, simply going into the ctouch time/date page, not changing any values and then selecting ok, would make the ctouch broadcast the correct time. But this (as with the DLT setting) is only a short-term fix.

Stephen

 

We have just released a service pack for PICED (V4.8.4) to address the problem with setting the time from Colour C-Touch.

We believe that this should solve the problems people are having. We would appreciate any feedback regarding whether the update resolved all of the problems or not.

 

I have just updated the 6 screen on my project that was having the trouble. I will update if the fault appears again.

Do you know what caused this to start happening? And who to send the bill to

 

The tool we use for building the C-Bus Module DLL (used in the Colour C-Touch and elsewhere) was updated a while ago. The tool vendor changed a default compiler option which caused a very slight change to the DLL interface. The change did not show up in our regression test harness (which performs over 500 tests on the C-Bus Module) because it was built using the same tool. It took quite a while to work out where the problem was coming from.

In the end we did not have to make any changes at all to the code. We just had to change the compiler option back to what it was and re-compile.

 

Time

Hi ,
I have a c touch which when I go to change time from touch screen it changes for a few moments then compiles logic and schedule and when complete reverts back to original time any ideas welcome .

Regards Conor