I just bought a house with C-Bus and have no clue!

Hi,

My name is Fred Flintstone and I just bought the Jetson's house, haha.

I have most of the house figured out, but the previous owner had been upgrading the basement into a wet bar. I'm going to be using it as a recording studio. I have some experience with electronics and networking, but I'll admit that I'm lost with the lighting in this room.

There are four C-Bus rack units and three large purple (maybe power supplies?!?) metal boxes that look like power amps labelled SLC5102DL10.

The four racks are:
1. RS-232 PC interface
2. 4 channel C-Bus dimmer
3. 4 channel C-Bus dimmer
4. 8 channel C-Bus dimmer with power supply

The 4 channel dimmers don't seem to do anything, but they light up. The 8 channel dimmer turns on and off various lights in the room. The 8th override button makes a loud hum that accompanies the lights. The other 7 are silent.

The three large purple power amp looking things have two buttons each that say channel 1 and channel 2. They don't seem to do anything.

There's a Saturn dynamic light switch with a display and five buttons by the door. It doesn't turn on or do anything. I looked in the back and it appears to be wired with Cat5 blue and orange cables. Brown and green are twisted up and not connected.

There are several places for wall switches around. They are all wired but don't have switches installed. I think the switch by the door has an output to these other boxes but they are just bare wire.

First and foremost I would like to be able to turn the lights on and off from the switch by the door rather than crawling through the dark room to get to the closet with all the dimmers.

It would also be neat to have an occupancy sensor.

Any clues on my next step? I'm clueless about who to call to help me get this system up and running. If I could do it myself that would be great.

 

Here are some pics to give you a better idea.

http://imgur.com/qUCZgq1
http://imgur.com/MywRJjy
http://imgur.com/UeKQoRt
http://imgur.com/mye1Qv2

 

Hi Rufuss

Congratulations on your new home.

Have a look at these sites.

http://m.lightingcontrol.schneider-electric.com/product_landing.cfm?id=10
http://www2.clipsal.com/cis/technical/product_groups/cbus

You could search Google for a CBus Training Manual.

If things haven't been installed properly or the job was unfinished you will probably be better off to get an electrician with previous experience to check it out.

 

C-Bus home automation installers and systems integrators.

Hi Rufuss,

If you were in Australia, I would recommend you contact at least a C-Bus Approved Installer, or better still a C-Bus PointOne Professional, regarding your C-Bus home automation.

A list of each of the above for home owners in Australia is available on these website pages:
http://www2.clipsal.com/cis/technic...an_installer__integrator/australia_installers
http://www.c-buspointone.com.au/general/find_a_c-bus_pointone_member

For home owners overseas, you might try to seek out someone local to you who is highly trained and experienced with C-Bus home automation. You may even find that someone suitable and local to you responds to your post here.