-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- hi all, i hope any one can help me on following : i'm in a middle of programing a clipsal lighting & shutter control system. my company had order a Clipsal changeover relay L5504RVFC and was installed as per installation instructions.the shutter is working fine but it can only Completly Open or Completly Close,but the owner wants the shutter to partialy open or close\ . so inorder to satisfy the owner, the shutter will have to work as following : a toggle for UP a toggle for down a toggle to stop at any level. i got advise from a friend to use a seprate channel for each function (a channel for UP and a channel for Down) but i think it's a waste of money as i will have to dublicate the number of change over relays. , and not safe as well because it may destroy the shutter motor as well. please advise thanks
Your company has bought you the wrong product. The C-Bus Shutter Relay product is specifically designed for controlling blind motors and can do all this. If possible, I would ask your company to replace the change-over relay with the shutter relay units. The change-over relay can be successfully used with blind motors, and this is what people used to do prior to the release of the Shutter Relay product, however it is not so straightforward. If the owner wants the shutter to partly open/close then you will need to use a second relay channel. The second relay channel does not need to be a change-over relay; it can be a regular relay channel. In simple terms, you take the in-coming active and put it through a normal relay. You connect the output from this relay to the common terminal of the change-over relay. The two outputs of the change-over relay go to the open/close connections on the Shutter. These two relays need to be programmed with 2 unique group addresses, the first for power, the second for direction. From the C-Bus control devices you need to set a scene for each of the modes of operation, i.e. open, close and stop. The open Scene turns on the 'power' relay and sets the 'direction' relay to connect the open motor winding, the close scene turns on the 'power' relay and sets the 'direction' relay to connect the close motor winding, and the stop scene turns off the power relay. If the scenes for this are stored in a PICED-programmed device (Touchscreen, Wiser, PAC, etc) then you can pulse the power relay on for a short duration (slightly longer than the run-time of the blinds), rather than just turn it on. This will provide some additional protection if one of the motor limit switches happens to fail. To protect the change-over relay you also need to fit a capacitor as-per this application note. Prior to the release of the Shutter Relay, the use of the change-over relay for Shutter control was discussed a lot on the forum. I suggest you do a forum search for "blinds" or "shutters" as there's lots of additional information here.
Your friend is correct. Clispal released a document showing the best method for using a change over relay with blinds etc and in that is showed the use of two relays power motor. If you had used this method, you would have been able to get the blinds to stop part way. Using one relay per motor only gives you full open and close and you rely on the reed switches from cutting the power to the motor - you are currently leaving the relay on and thus power to the motor constantly. It should be turned off after a period of time (slightly greater than the time for full travel). You are also not getting the desired time between change of direction (nominally 0.5sec) using this method as well. Using two C/O relays and PAC logic will achieve this. As you can see, C/O relays are not the easiest to use for a technically correct install. Do a search on the forum here, there are lots of good threads and discussions on the topic and you will learn the best way to do it. A single channel C/O is not the best way. Two C/O relays and logic is better. And as Newman indicated, the blind and shutter controller does all this in one single unit and is definitely the best way to go. Mick
Hi ! I have the same problem in my project, worst is there's no way to change the changeover relay so I have to use them anyway. My problem is I don't have any idea on how to configure it using PICED. By the way, I need to control the blinds thru C-TOUCH SPECTRUM ( C-5080CT2-3 ). Can anyone show me how to create a blinds control using the PICED. Thanks a lot.
When you say there is no way to change the existing relays I assume you mean it would cost too much (otherwise it's always possible). However if you look at the amount of time you will spend programming change-over relays and replacing blown up blind motors the shutter relay will be much more economical in the long run. There is no direct way of controlling blinds via change-over relays using Piced. The shutter function are specific to the shutter relay and will not work with normal relays. You can't use a single change over relay anyway because most blind motors require a 500mS pause between going from open and closed or the motor will be damaged. This means you also need another relay providing power to the change-over relay. Programming this set-up is complex and error prone, and everyone abandoned it once the shutter relay was available.
Thank you very much Ashley for the explanation. It will be a great help for me in our future projects.
