Scene ALL OFF

Hi,

I am having trouble with setting all lights off to a scene button.

I have created a scene in PICED (Wiser CNI) which sets all lights in a zone to 0%. This is assigned to a button on my Saturn Key input unit. It is triggered by a Trigger Control Group with an action selector.

My problem is that whilst this works with both Wiser and the iPhone app, it doesn't work with the actual key unit! I have tried setting the action selector to both ON and OFF. It works when the key function is set to ON/OFF toggle mode but not when either ON or OFF is set. It also works when I set the same function as a local scene (with no trigger action set) but this leaves the indicator light on.

What I want to achieve is for all lights in a bedroom that have been set by any other function to be turned off by one button which will effectively blackout the room ready for sleep.

I can think of several ways of achieving what I want using logic but feel sure I must be missing something obvious, and would rather keep things simple.

Similarly I want a button by the front door which will switch off all lights in the house. Clearly I don't want the reverse action. Can anyone tell me how to go about it as I know it can be done but I am getting tied up in knots trying various options, none of which work.

Many thanks, guys.

Duncan

 

Doing this with Scenes is the right way to go.

On the Saturn unit configure the button you wish to use to remotely trigger the scene as a scene key. Assign the appropriate Trigger Group and Action Selector to the Scene key and select an empty Scene in the unit. If you never want the indicator to turn on, change the indicator style for that key to Always Off.

This doesn't work because a key unit does not send out a message on C-Bus if the key is configured only as an Off Key and the group is already Off, and vice versa for the On Key. You could have made this work by changing the key function to use a Recall instead, but configuring the key as an empty Scene key is the proper way to do it.

 

Thanks Newman

That is what I shall do, then.

Regarding the whole house OFF scene. This can't be done on the unit, I don't think, because there is a maximum of ten (?) groups per scene. I have 40 groups to control OFF.

How would you achieve this?

 

Key units with firmware 1.6.00 or newer have up to 40 groups available for use in Scenes, in any combination (1 scene of 40 groups, 4 scenes of 10 groups each etc) so you could just make it, with no room to expand.

You said earlier that you created the Scene in PICED and you were looking for advice on how to remotely trigger it. Now are you wanting to move the Scene out of the PICED-programmed unit and put it in the key unit? If you already have a Wiser or other PICED-programmed device, then it's probably easier to just leave the scene there.

 

I think I was referring to the fact that you can't set the scene OFF only by remote trigger action, so when you confirmed that this is not possible and that it was better done in the unit I wondered how I would achieve this with a 40 group scene.

Perhaps the best way to do it would be to leave it in the CNI and use a Preset or Recall function to trigger all lights OFF - as you alluded to in your first post.

I hope I am understanding you right?

 

Ah, I think what you're saying is that you want one press of the button to set the scene and a second press of the button to turn all groups in the scene off. Is that right?

If so, the topic has been done to death on the forums previously and various solutions are available. The forum search function is your friend.

The quick version of a typical implementation is that you need to use 2 separate scenes, one for On and one for Off, where the only difference is the level of the groups being all Off in the second scene. These scenes are stored in a unit on your network, e.g. Wiser/C-Touch/etc. You configure these two scenes to use Action Selectors 255 and 0 respectively. You put the button on the switch on the Trigger Control application and assign it to the relevant Trigger Group with a function of Toggle.

 

Sorry Newman

No that's not what I mean

You are right, the scene toggling scenario has been well covered and I have used it extensively. Both you and Darren have been very helpful there.

What I am now up against is the situation where you only want an OFF scene. As you mentioned, it is best to do this in the scene function of the unit but where you are controlling (say 95) groups all to OFF, such as when you leave the property you cannot achieve that within a single unit. My last question was how to do this. I am imagining using the scenes within PICED to set all these groups to OFF by use of a scene trigger. As you have stated, it is not possible to do this with an OFF function from the Key unit. I think it can be done with a Preset function and you mentioned the Recall function. In this instance, which is best?

Sorry if I am being obtuse, and thanks for your thoughts on this and many other threads.

Duncan

 

You imagine this correctly.

You store the All Off scene in the Wiser/C-Touch/etc device. To remotely trigger the scene stored in the Wiser/C-Touch/etc you configure the key on the Saturn unit as a Scene key, but you leave the scene empty. You assign the same Trigger Group and Action Selector in both the Scene in the Wiser/C-Touch/etc and for the scene key on the Saturn unit. When you press the button on the Saturn unit, the scene trigger will be sent to the network. The Wiser/C-Touch/etc will see this trigger and then set the scene.