Programming C-Bus Wireless with Toolkit

Hey Guys -

The newly released C-Bus Wireless product in the USA is a bit different than what you have in other parts of the world, but I have a question to you guys (and gals) who have experience in regards to the Wireless products you use.

When programming your wireless devices from Toolkit, going through a Wireless Gateway, is there any limit to the number of wireless devices that will scan on any given wireless network?

For example, if you have a wireless C-Bus project with 80 wireless devices, are you able to scan all 80 of them into a single network, or do you ever have to add another Wireless Gateway and split those 80 up into two separate wireless networks with 40 each?

 

The theoretical limit to the number of devices you can have in a single network is 255. In practice, the network scan speed is going to be getting pretty slow by that point so it may be prudent to split the network up if it gets that big.

 

Here, we've been seeing the need to split up the wireless network at about 40 wireless devices. Is that pretty similar to what you've seen?

I guess the other part of what I'm looking for is that I'm curious to see if anybody has any tricks up their sleeves for squeezing in some more wireless devices onto a single network.

Thanks!

-John

 

I haven't observed any problems myself, although I personally haven't experienced wireless networks with over 40 units. It is possible that the devices are simply out of range of each other. If the installation is typical, it's quite likely that the units on the ends of the network are just too far from each other to communicate. If you physically move the location of the Wireless Gateway, do the reported units change?

If this is the issue, you can probably solve it by turning on the repeater function in a unit that is physically located in the centre of your network. How to do this is explained in the Instruction Bulletin.

It also takes the Wireless Gateway about a minute to discover all the units on the network after it's been power-cycled.

 

Is this repeater function only on the US implementation ?

If so will you have European models available that might include this at a later date that we might substitute into other large networks ? (I believe the firmware is not updateable so I'm guessing only substitutions).

K