Chasing Lights with Toolkit

hey everyone. i have just started with CBus Toolkit and my teacher set me the task of doing chasing lights. Unfortunately I am totally stuck and have no idea how to accomplish this. Any help would be very much appreciated. I was thinking of using cascading scenes but I don't know how to achieve this.

 

If this is an assignment from a teacher I assuming that he/she wants you to work it out as part of the education experience rather than getting some one else to do your homework.

 

I want you to use this world class technology to do something it was not designed to do and something that has no relevance to real world applications for same

Maybe just before you embark on this wonderous task just ask - - - - Why

 

Because you can! I decided to put C-Bus on my 12 yr old son's PC so he could 'learn the trade'. After p**sing his sister off by changing her setup, he then made the the 6 gang Saturn in his room have the LED's chase around the plate. Why? Because he could! Must admit.... it looked pretty cool. I'm sorry, can't tell you how he did it (you'll have to work it out). But it can be done

 

Not a proper assignment

Its not technically an assignment. I broke my foot and on my return to work program they are allowing me to play with one of their cbus boards for something to do. This task was set because I picked up most of the tasks he set really quickly and the teacher wanted to see if I could work this one out because an ex student did it but no one knows how he did it. I have being pondering over it for days and cant think of how to achieve this. That is why I came here looking for help.

The board has the following components at the listed addresses:
001 PCLOCAL4 - DIN Rail PC Interface
002 DIMDN8 - DIN Rail 8 Channel Dimmer, 1A per Channel
003 KEY 1 - 1 Gang Key Input Unit
004 KEY 2 - 2 Gang Key Input Unit
005 KEY 4 - 4 Gang Key Input Unit
006 KEBL5 - 5 Gang DLT Input Unit (Saturn)
007 KEYM8 - 8 Gang NEO Key Input Unit
008 SENLL - Light Level Sensor
009 SENPIRIA - Passive Infrared Motion Detector, Indoor, Corner Mount PIR
010 RELDN12 - DIN Rail 12 Channel Voltage Free Relay 10 A per Channel
The dimmer is connected to 8 low voltage light globes but the relay is not connected to any globes.

 

it can be done... keep trying.

Maybe if you give some ideas, people will notice that you have made the effort, and then gently steer you in the right direction.

 

Depending on how pure you want your solution...

You have a PC interface. That means you can use PICED logic for an easy solution. Obviously since you don't have a PAC or a C-Touch, its only a temporary one though.

As ICS-GS says, start throwing some ideas around and see where it leads you.

Is your goal to chase the LEDs on one of your input units, or to chase the dimmer channels?

Is your target chase sequence like this:

100 0 0 0 0 0
0 100 0 0 0 0
0 0 100 0 0 0
0 0 0 100 0 0
0 0 0 0 100 0
0 0 0 0 0 100

or something like this:
0 25 50 75 100 0
0 0 25 50 75 100
100 0 0 25 50 75
75 100 0 0 25 50
50 75 100 0 0 25
25 50 75 100 0 0

Dammit.. you've given me some idea now, unfortunately I don't really have any lighting groups in my house that would suit a chase

 

i do on my front retaining walls... they chase in and out, depending on what i want from my visitors...

 

thank you for those suggestions. my understanding is to achieve:

100 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 100 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 100 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 100 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 100 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 100 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 100 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 100
100 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 100 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 100 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 100 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 100 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 100 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 100 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 100

across the globes using the dimmer channel. and so and and so forth.
I have PICED on my laptop but have not attempted anything using it so I might take a look. but I think he would like to achieve it using only Cbus Toolkit. but ill give it a go at least. thank you both.

 

try to play on key input, in key functions and blocks tab.. it will do what you want..

 

Interesting exercise.

It's not the first time that light chasing has been requested. A light chase mode was even seriously considered as a native mode for multichannel output units. The conclusion was of course, that in practical applications, there is no real need.

Using dimmers is fine BTW, but if you do achieve a fast chase (and a slow chase wouldn't have the same impact, would it?), then implementing it with relays will most certainly result in a system that would not comply with Australian (and European) EMC requirements .... too much 'click' noise! This is also a good reason not to have 'chasing' as a native mode for relay units.

I can think of several ways to do it with Toolkit, but each requires interactions between 2 or more units. I would like to see what you come up with.

 

Okay it's good to see that people believe it can be done with Toolkit. Unfortunately we can't use PICED for it or I would have already tried. I am not going to give in on this one until i get it to work. Thank you for all the support thus far though. I really appreciate it.

 

at a guess without too much thought

set every group in a 8 channel dimmer to the same name

change the min max for each channel to 10% range (ie ch1 0-10%, ch2 10%-20%) and then ramp that group up to 80%. That should produce the chasing effect.

not sure how to set it back to zero and start the ramp again without thinking too much more about it.

Mick