"Green or Eco Button" for limiting energy consuption ??

With energy consumption becoming a great selling point for automated homes, as a concept I was thinking a "green or eco button" on a touch panel that limits specified group addresses to a maximum output of say 80% rather than 100% would be a great feature. The associated logic module/s could easily be turned on/off via enable control.

When the client activates a light from an input unit anywhere in the home, with "green button" on, the light always switches on to 80% max. With the "green button" off the light switches on at 100%.

The dimmers can obviously be set manually to max output 80%, however it would be nice to give the client the choice to automate this feature. The problem is, I can't find any code examples or information based on how to modify the maximum output setting of a dimmer channel.

If there's anyone in the C-Bus community that thinks this may be possible via logic I'd love to discuss the place I start looking.

Cheers
Noyzey

 

You can do this using the logic functions that are in-built into the C-Bus Dimmer units.

Go to the dimmer unit Logic tab in Toolkit and assign a group as something like "Eco Mode". Tick the box that assigns this group address to every channel. Select the radio button for Min logic on each channel.

Then, on the touchscreen, have a pair of buttons, one for Eco Mode On and the other for Eco Mode Off. Configure Eco Mode On to set the level of the Eco Mode group address to 80% and configure the Eco Mode Off button to set the level of the Eco Mode group address to 100%.

When the user presses the Eco Mode On button the level of the associated dimmer channels will be limited to 80%.

Limiting the brightness to 80% probably won't save much on the electricity bill, but it might make them feel better.

 

Brilliant!

Thanks Newman

I was after a simple soloution and this is exactly what will work well. I can also create different eco buttons for activation in various rooms of the house this way.

There is one thing you have to do as well though. As the "eco mode" GA powers up after a power failure with it set to 0% no group addresses associated with the eco mode switch on or off. A work around is to set in the load monitor of the touchscreen the eco mode GA at 75%. Save and transfer the project and this will eliminate this issue on power recovery.

Thanks again.

Cheers
Noyzey

PS - Is there any literature or web presence apart from this forum that offers "real world" solutions in the form of example scripts or techniques and tutorials?

 

This will definitely work, but you can avoid the need to do this in the touchscreen by specifying the power-up level of the logic group to be 100%. You can do this by specifying the power-up level on the Logic tab of the output unit under the Logic Recovery section. The output unit will consider the level of the logic group as 100% (or whatever level you specify) on power up.