Control 4 - C-bus

Am working on a project at the moment that has raised a couple of interesting questions. The project involves intergrating a control 4 home theatre system with an existing c-bus network. The control 4 system supports 2 way comms with c-bus via rs 232.

1. Connecting to the rs232 port of the PCI we have comms and things work, although we did have to turn off the c-bus clock in the PCI and move it to another device. BUT, if we connect to the rs 232 port of the PAC we cannot get it to work, we have powered the PAC with a seperate 24 volt supply.

Can anyone tell me why this might be so?



2. With the application log of the control 4 system running we see the message " invalid 17 " constantly scrolling, approx 2 per second. All other group addresses report normally. The invalid 17 message does not appear in the c-bus application log.

Everything still works ok I am just worried that the constant traffic may upset something as we build more operations into the setup.

Thanks,

Peter.

 

I dont think the serial port on a pac and the PCI are the same thing.

The PAC can sent and receive data via the serial port, but it is down not do the job of a PCI.

I could be wrong though

Mick

 

The RS-232 port of a PAC is not the same as the RS-232 port of a PCI. The port on the PAC is for control by the logic engine in the unit. It does not connect directly to C-Bus. It is used for controlling external a/v gear, etc, so what you are trying will not work. You will need to use a proper PCI.

All the messages in the Control4 Application log are telling you is that Control4 are not properly handling all the C-Bus messages they observe. There are regular messages on the C-Bus network that occur every 3 seconds, in addition to the regular on/off/etc commands. These are for error correction and status checking. It seems that Control4 is not properly decoding these.

 

Why doesn't anyone utter those three letters any more ???

M M I .....................

There I said it, , , , , , No lightning bolts, the sky did not fall, no major explosions.

 

Ahh MMI

Thanks guys. MMI, we need a smack the forehead smiley. Please repeat after me in a Forrest Gump accent, "" Duh, messages appearing constantly, duh, about 3 per second, duh, what could they be."

Thanks,

Peter.