PC Interface lighting control again

I had some problems getting control of cbus lights a few months ago. Since then they've worked fine, until we had a power failure. Now one of the original symptoms has returned. This is that when I turn a few lights on during the same command string (happens when only 2 are turned on), the light that was turned on last, turns itself off again about a minute after switching. Originally, this was tracked down to area addresses being used, but although these are still used, I'm pretty careful to follow all the 'rules', and it has been working fine until this power failure. I've tried to reinitialise the lights and looked at all the power fail recovery, but can't see anything wrong with that.

Any clues?

Thanks

Ben

 

As a general rule, whenever there is behaviour you don't understand on C-Bus, run the C-Bus Diagnostic Tool (http://www.clipsal.com/cis/downloads.php3#Diag) and see what messages occurred at the time of the unexpected behaviour. Make sure you have all of the logging options switched on so that you can see unit addresses etc. If you still can't work it out, post an annotated extract from the log for us to see.

 

Thanks for this. I've had a bit of a play with this, but it's a bit complicated because the serial port on the PCI is already used and if I disconnect it to use the diagnostic, then it's no longer representing the system. I think I'll put a serial port analyser on it first to ensure that no command is being sent from my controller (I'm 99% sure this isn't the case, but need to check properly) before disconnecting the interface and seeing what happens on the diagnostic tool. Will report back when I've done this in a few days.

Ben

 

If you have run out of serial ports, you can use a CNI with the C-Bus diagnostic tool. Otherwise you can use a USB to serial converter to another PCI.

 

Just to close this off, I've now used a serial port analyser on the link between the controller and cbus PCI and have seen some strange stuff. So I'll investigate this, but I'm assuming the CBUS is clean!

Thanks

Ben

 

Hi Ben
Not sure if this helps

Im assuming your having issues with sending cbus commands from Homevision.?

If so i had an issue a while back cant recall exactly what it was but Craig sent me a new prom for the addon serial port and that appears to have fixed it....

I had some problem either after a download i think.....

New addon serial prom version 2.3

HTH
Frank