Receiving feedback onto my Pronto

Discussion in 'C-Bus Serial Protocols' started by Guy Palmer, Aug 19, 2009.

  1. Guy Palmer

    Guy Palmer

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    I am new to CBus, toolkit, etc having just got wireless lighting. But I am experienced in programming my Pronto.

    I can now switch the lights on and off using the Pronto and am trying to get feedback back to it on current light status. I can acquire various feedback strings but none of them seem to help. More specifically, the same eight strings are returned whatever my light status actually is. The strings are:

    050AAC0036010108FF000006
    050AAC0001012F010140FF000000D3
    050ACB0002020121
    050A73000201007B
    050AAC000501010808002E
    F907380000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000C8
    F907380B00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000BD
    F70738160000000000000000000000000000000000000000B4

    The first five of these make no sense to me. The last three appear to be MMI messages stating that all lights are off (even when some are on).

    The Pronto actually (I think) talks to the CBus wired network which in turn talks to the CBus wireless network. Given this, one possible explanation of the above is that the wireless network is not providing feedback to the wired network and therefore there are no relevant PCI messages sent from the wired network to the Pronto and the MMI messages are set to 'all off'.

    Any advice on how to move forward would be gratefully appreciated. In particular, is there any parameter in the toolkit to turn feedback on or off?
     
    Guy Palmer, Aug 19, 2009
    #1
  2. Guy Palmer

    ashleigh Moderator

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    Two points here, addressing them in reverse order.

    MMIs run on a wired network, and are always confined only to the network segment in which they run - in other words MMI's never cross bridges (they don't like the trolls). Gateways and bridges are functionally identical.

    Now, assume for arguments sake that we have 2 wired networks linked by a bridge. The bridge is set in Connect Mode (in toolkit I think its a checkbox "Forward messages to other side" or something like that.)

    Now, further suppose I have lighting groups 1 and 2 on side A of the bridge, and lighting groups 3 and 4 on side B of the bridge.

    Because the bridge is in connect mode, I can issue into my local network (which is attached to side A of the bridge) a command "turn on group 3".

    Nothing in my local network responds (as we expect). The bridge happily grabs the the command on side A, and pushes it out side B. So group 3 (on the other network) goes on - everybody happy.

    But if I run an MMI in the local network (on bridge side A) - group 3 will always be reported as OFF. That's because group 3 is not present in that network.

    Now, wireless on the other side of the gateway behaves like that distant network on the other side of the bridge. This is why you don't see anything in the MMIs.

    It's even more complex than that because in wireless there are no MMI's - but there is a system used to report status and detect and correct state errors (just like MMIs), it's a wireless equivalent to the MMI but considerably slower, this is required for all sorts of gruesome technical reasons.

    So the gateway talks wireless-land on its wireless side, and MMI's on its other side, and magically translates between the two formats.

    In this case, what you probably want to do is the next piece in the puzzle, and again this works for bridges and gateways. You can issue a "remote mmi request". This is a command you send to a bridge or gateway saying "hey you, can you please run an MMI on my behalf and when done tell me the results". This allows you to get the state of the far side of a bridge or gateway.

    The Serial Interface Users Guide describes this in more detail.

    --------

    The second part of this is:

    050AAC0036010108FF000006
    050AAC0001012F010140FF000000D3
    050ACB0002020121
    050A73000201007B
    050AAC000501010808002E

    And - what the heck is this lot. Again, the Serial Interface Users Guide is your friend. I'd take a guess that you have a C-Bus Thermostat, and these are messages coming from that where it is telling other thermostats or cbus devices what it's current state is. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out how I know this, and what the messages mean :)
     
    ashleigh, Aug 20, 2009
    #2
  3. Guy Palmer

    Darren Senior Member

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    There is a mixture of HVAC, Enable and HVAC Actuator Control.

    These are MMI messages from the local network.

    You need to send an MMI request to the network of interest, in this case the Wireless network. Refer to the Serial Interface User Guide for details. Section 4.2.9.3 describes the construction of a message, including the network routing.

    The MMI reply you get will contain the network route, so the format will be slightly different. See section 8 of the above document.
     
    Darren, Aug 20, 2009
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  4. Guy Palmer

    Guy Palmer

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    Thanks for your extremely helpful responses, both. I've now got it working!
     
    Guy Palmer, Aug 20, 2009
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