CBus Fault

Hi

I have a small problem with one of my customers sites that I ahev not seen before, unfortunatly I could not replicate while there.
This is a commercial site where they have one button that switches off almost all of the lights in the store - simple enought except for a few nights this would not work.
What was happening thay would push the button the LED would flash but stay on and so did the lights - I rocked up a few days later pluged in my computer interface (as I can't find the one on site) and proceded to read the network, all looked ok and all components came up as OK.
Unfortunatly this is an older cbus system so I was not able to get a status display on the items but all was working.

Now my question is what type of faults could have caused this to happen, dose the CBus system get glitched and either time or a power down resets it?

I ask this because my exposure to CBus is minimal and with them dropping the Thinkboxx or Minder almost removes all cause for me to - why why why drop such a fantastic product - actualy I know why but what are you guys doing to replace it.

Regards
Peter Richens
Ph 0427 600 181

 

Peter

The early key units with Version 1.00 firmware would flash their indicators at about 4 - 5 Hz if they detectet a network communications error. It sounds like this is what you are observing. Is the duty cycle of the flashing about 50%, i.e. is it different to the regular timer flash?

I would start with a basic check of the system to make sure there's 1 and only 1 burden on the system, that all the cabling is sound, the C-Bus cable is not cable-tied to mains cables etc etc.

If that doesn't show up anything then I'd check the build date of the key unit in question. You mentioned that the site is fairly old. There were some key units built from 94 through to August '97 had a Capacitor that ac coupled the data off from the bus. This capacitor proved to be of dubious quality and life span. Towards the later stages of degradation of this capacitor the led's on effected inputs would flash as comms became marginal and/or the C-bus clock pulse was not detected. Not all units built during this time may be affected but it's worth checking.

Be patient my friend.....