I?ve got the DLT label programming blues

Normally I don?t do much bread and butter site work, as I?m more of a back room interfacing C-Bus to other stuff type person, but somehow I got roped into this one.

I have a site that I inherited from another installer. This site was frankly a disaster and I have been slowly sorting it all out and getting it working properly.
However I have come to the point where I am having problems programming the labels on the 7 DLT?s throughout the house.

Everything else about the C-Bus system is working, and all the C-Bus units program and operate correctly, except for the labels on the DLT?s.

I have even gone as far as running the diagnostic and reliability tests for several hours on the network, with not a single failure, but still the DLT?s mostly display Button1 etc.
Some labels program, some don?t, and reprogramming several times just changes which labels are right and which are wrong.

I have talked to many people including Tech Support and they all say you will see that sort of problem if the network is not built correctly.
Now I am quite happy to accept that, but why is the DLT label programming the only problem?
I would have expected to see general unreliability and scan or programming issues, but I don?t.
What is so special about programming a label on a DLT compared to programming any other piece of information into it (or any other unit)?
What does it need from the network, that other programming or activity doesn?t?

Confusingly, when I read back the programming from a DLT, the labels show correctly, however the Tech Support guy told me that is because it doesn?t actually read all the information back from the DLT, some of it comes directly from the toolkit XML file and not the switch, to save time. What that means is you have to physically look at the switch to see if it has programmed correctly. Massive problem when programming remotely. (May I suggest an option to read back the actual programming from the switch, even if it is slower)

Perhaps it?s not the network at all? I read one post here that had a similar problem that was apparently solved by programming using a different PC.

The PC I?m using is also running the current Homegate and connects via a USB PCI. When using toolkit I shutdown Homegate, however C-Gate keeps running is this a possible problem with C-Gate being in the wrong mode or something?

BTW is it normal for the labels of triggers to be a lighter colour grey and have blocks at the end, in toolkit?



I ask these questions in the hope that the answers will give me a hint as to what might be the problem.

Cheers

Rohan

 

Is no one able to offer any insight, experience or even crystal ball gazing/guessing as to what might be going on here?

Cheers

Rohan

 

All I can say is if the secondary application is selected then it is normal to be greyed out; the blocks after it I've not seen before. You need to save all your labels first (even if the application group is incorrect) then program it and save without the checkbox for 'save DLT labels' checked. Hope that helps a bit.

 

Ambro your solution worked, although I didn't really understand it until I got another company in to fix what I couldn't.

They did it slightly differently in that they removed the secondary application, programmed the DLT and labels, then added back the secondary application and reprogrammed without the labels.

They knew what the problem was straight away.
Apparently this is a known bug with DLT's and secondary applications

So why does Clipsal tech support not know about this? When I talk to them and specifically spell out the exact problem, all they tell me is it's a network problem, and to go and fix that. Despite me running hours of network tests without a single error, and the system actually working, I still get told, it is a network build problem.

Clearly this is a known problem, as the guys that do site work more than me, have suffered the pain and hours (or days in my case) finding the secret sequence that is needed to program the labels into the DLT's

I understand that there will always be bugs, I get that, but what makes me upset is something apparently as well known as this, is not known to Tech Support.

Rohan

 

I've had this exact problem on a couple of sites, yet other sites it works. I have found when reprogramming back into secondary application it doesn't make any difference if the program DLT label is ticked or not.

 

The issue of the above is even more of a pain when you actually want to use the Dynamic part of it and update labels using logic..

The amount of work around that I have had to do because you cant update a secondary app label is rather large..