Cgate and Wiser

Hi,
Quick question can Cgate and Wiser work together or will the one always disconnect from the CNI if the other initiates a connection?

Tnx
Andrew

 

Whenever you use the Wiser as a CNI all wiser operations are disabled. So it's really only useful for temporary access like toolkit or Piced, not a permanent cgate connection.

 

Thanks for the reply, sorry I am new to CBUS. So can you replace the wiser with Cgate (all scenes and logic) and only use the CNI in the WISER?

Reason is I want to introduce Iridiummobile into the home that can connect via cgate or the cni. If I connect to the wiser CNI directly then all my current scenes configured in Wiser don't work as you explained.

But apparently I can connect to cgate and then iridium and the scenes in cgate will work? Is this assumption correct?

Thanks
Andrew

 

Yes, you can use the Wiser just as (an expensive) CNI. You can connect to it directly via Iridium without using Cgate but the CNI only supports a single connection, so while Iridium is connected you will not be able to access the CNI via anything else. You can also connect Iridium via CGate which then talks to the CNI. The advantage of this is CGate will handle multiple concurrent connections. The disadvantage is you need a windows PC (or Linux box if you're very keen) running 24/7. Unless you have another logic and scheduling device on the cbus network you would be better of buying a dedicated CNI as you will discover a cbus logic device is pretty much essential on anything other than a basic network.

 

Hi

Tnx for the advice guys, ok so just to confirm I understand I buy a CBUS CNI (whats the difference between cni and pci?) as the gateway. Then do I move my logic off the wiser to a touch screen? or can you host the logic in cgate? Is cgate only a gateway to the cni? Or can I keep the wiser and point it to cgate? which will then point to the new CNI essentially not using the WISER CNI?

Thanks again for the help

Andrew

 

A CNI is ethernet to CBus. A PCI is Serial (RS232) or USB to Cbus. Both have the same functionality. Both can only handle one connection at a time. You can have multiple CNI/PCI on a cbus network, so you would would keep the Wiser (which would use it's inbuilt CNI) as you logic/scheduling/scene device. Wiser has nothing to do with Cgate. It connects to cbus via it's own CNI which is the main reason it has one. Clipsal was just being nice by allowing you to take over the Wisers CNI temporarily for Toolkit/Piced access so you didn't need to buy a seperate CNI just for configuration. As Daniel said, it was never meant to be a general purpose CNI.
You new CNI would be your interface to Iridium. CGate is a software driver that runs on windows (and Linux if you follow the instruction on this forum) and connects to a CNI/PCI. It allows multi-user access to a CNI using plain language commands that it converts into the rather complex cbus commands (which are detailed in the protocol documents if you really want to know). Cgate has no logic/scheduling or scene functionality (it's just a driver). You connect to Cgate via TCP. Toolkit and Piced talk to cbus via cgate so cgate is intalled along with these applications. Iridium can talk directly to a CNI or via Cgate. If you connect via Cgate you need a Windows/Linus box running 24/7, but the advantage is you can have concurrent connection like Toolkit etc. Iridium can also connect directly to a CNI so you don't need Cgate running, but while Iridium is connected you cannot use the CNI for Cgate access.

I hope that all makes sense. You might want to download the Intro to CBus and other training documents on the cis website which describes al this in detail.

 

Makes perfect sense, I think the easier router is just to buy a second CNI and use that for irridium - and wiser can continue with the logic and scenes that I have developed. Thats great News!

Thanks very much

Maybe if you allow me one or 2 more question unrelated to CNI's, I bought a 5031TS sensor on Ebay for really little money. But of course in retrospect not the greatest idea, so the network picks it up on device id 255 without a serial nr but of course it doesn't broadcast the temp as the power meter does or the newer temp sensors.

The device does work, if I open the device in the toolkit it gives me the temperature, now I have researched this alot and there was a forum post http://www.cbusforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1229, I am comfortable writing logic and setting up IO but I have no idea how to convert these instructions to execution? any idea?

Also last question I have integrated my paradox alarm system via the prt3 serial interface into a serial to cbus interface (which I now understand is the PCI) now alot of people make mention of the fact that you can use the CBUS security fields to build logic related to the status of the alarm system,

I have been manually creating groups for each status and then in the paradox alarm system setting these groups to the correct status (which now seems like alot of work for nothing)

So my prt3 is configured to print the status to the CBUS I just dont understand how to get a handle on these statuses in PICED

Thanks again really appreciate you taking the time to respond to my questions

Cheers
Andrew

 

All Cbus devices come with a pre-programmed address of 255. You should be able to change this using Toolkit. If you don't you will have problems installing any new devices. You should be able to access the 5031TS using Monitors in your Wiser. From Piced open your Wiser project then select PROJECT/MONITORS from the menu and enter the 5031's details. The Wiser will poll at the preset rate and make the temperature available for display within the Wiser. If you need to access this on the cbus or externally you could write a bit of logic to convert it to a group address or broadcast it on the measurement application. See here for some help: http://www.cbusforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11541

The page you referenced is to poll the 5031TS externally via the PCI/CNI. It is much easier to let the wiser do the polling.

Cbus has a specific Security protocol (know as the Security Application). As far as I am aware, the Paradox prt3 option can only communicate on lighting compatible applications (i.e. group addresses) so you won't be able to use the security related widgets. You can, however use standard lighting type widgets to display info from the alarm system, or access them from logic and do whatever you want with them.