Setting C-Bus Date and Time from C-Gate with a PAC Present

Hi Guys,

I'm having a problem whereby the date and time on DLTs is being set from the PAC's clock which drifts slower over several weeks. In an attempt to correct this I have a PC running C-Gate full-time and have configured it to broadcast the time periodically as a time master by changing settings in the config file but the PAC doesn't seem to want to receive date and time updates and basically ignores the correct time from C-Gate on the PC.

What do I need to do to configure the PAC and C-Gate so C-Gate is the time master and the PAC is not?

Currently I connect to the PAC with PICED, and set the time manually to set the PAC and all the DLTs to the correct time.

Regards

Alex Shepherd

 

Can someone at Clipsal Support respond to this please?

Perhaps my question should have been "How to make an always running C-Gate instance a Time Master?"

 

Code:

Here are the settings from the C-GateConfig.txt file:

#### clock.master:
# Operate the clock application in master mode
# Default Value: no
# Scope:         network
# Effective on:  closeopen
###
clock.master=yes

#### clock.mastermode:
# Selects primary or secondard master mode
# Default Value: secondary
# Scope:         network
# Effective on:  closeopen
###
clock.mastermode=primary

#### clock.update-interval:
# Interval in minutes between clock and timekeeping messages
# Default Value: 30
# Scope:         network
# Effective on:  closeopen
###
clock.update-interval=30

Yes Clock messages are being sent from the PC onto C-Bus and the above is what I have had configured for months - years even.

In desperation I recently commented out the last line and restarted C-Gate and things have suddenly started working much better.

Code:

# clock.update-interval=30

So either there is a problem with setting clock.update-interval or it causes some other bug to manifest or the default is NOT 30 and commenting it out actually changes the clock.update-interval value to another value that works with the PAC Clock primary/secondary logic.

I get a daily indication of the difference between the clocks as my blinds open via the PAC Schedule at 7:00AM and my Alarm on my iPhone is set for 7:00 AM and they are now only a few seconds apart. Previously they could drift to be 5 or more minutes apart over the period of 1-2 months.

So for now I think I'm running ok again but I think there is a bug or something deeper going on here than meets the eye.

Regards

Alex Shepherd

 

Hi Alex,

The PAC will accept time keeping messages and stop sending them.
Here are the rules for which unit becomes the time master:

In the past I have seen circumstances where clocks jump around, this was a symptom of network comms problems. One way to verify that all units are communicating happily is to use the 'reliability test' feature in the C-Bus Diagnostics Utility available from the cis downloads page. This utility will also show you which unit is broadcasting time messages and will indicate whether C-Gate is/isn't sending messages when its expected to.

Regards,

Matty

 

Ok, yes that was what I was expecting

Ah huh! I'll take a look at that and see if I can track down the issue.

Alex