Shade control

To All,
I am working on my first job with shade control. I know only the basics and have them working now with 2 button bell presses with one for up and one for down on a 12channel relay and a Somfy multilink interface. However I have multiple rooms with multiple shades and drapes. I am trying to control them in room groups to save button space on my DLT's and just need a little insight on how to get started. I also would like to include them in some of the other scenes I have already in place through a pac and some logic. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

FJD

 

If you have multiple blinds that are always controlled simultaneously then the easiest way to link them together is to assign the corresponding relay channels to the same group address. They will always operate at the same time this way.

If you want to control the blinds from within your PAC scenes, the best way would be to pulse the groups as part of the scene. Within the PAC you can configure groups to do more than just go to set levels. You can configure a group to turn on, wait a couple seconds, and then turn off, just like you get from the Bell Press configuration of the DLT.

To do this, you add the group to your Scene like normal. You then select that group and edit it. Part way down the form you will see a radio button selection for Ramp Group or Pulse Group. Set this to Pulse Group. The lower section of the edit form contains a gropbox called Pulse with the required configuration items.

There is no need to use the logic engine to achieve this functionality. The PAC, and all other PICED-programmed devices, can pulse their scene elements in this way.

There are some other configurations you can create by using output unit logic, e.g. a master group that controls all the blinds or groups of blinds, but the above should get you started.

PS: Since you are using a mains-voltage C-Bus relay unit to interface to a low-voltage system (the Somfy interface) then I assume that you are not using any of the other relay channels for mains-voltage purposes? If this is all that this relay unit is doing, then you could save some money by using a C-Bus ELV relay unit, which has low-voltage contacts and is powered directly from C-Bus.

 

Newman,
Thanks for the info. However I tried to pulse groups and it made the shades jog up and down. I am not sure why as I thought this should work as well. When I use a bell press it sets the contact closure in the down mode fine, then a second bell press of the same down button stops the shade, then a third bell press continues the shade going down. The up button works in the same manner. I am trying to get the same effect as a scene to do all the shades in the room. I tried to pulse the group of shades for one second and the result was as previously mentioned. I need to be able to send a momentary signal I guess instead of a pulse to prevent a jogging effect. Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

FJD

 

You're going to need to perform a couple of experiments to determine exactly how the Somfy controller responds to the opening/closing of the relay contacts. You can do this using the Bell Press key configuration that you already have set up. Press and hold the button down for different lengths of time and inspect how the behaviour changes. For example, you may find that a very short press-release results in the motor only moving a small amount and it needs to be held down for longer than 1 second to run all the way to the travel stop.

Also, make sure you're not operating the Up and Down relays/groups as part of the same scene.

Whenever making these sorts of tests, it's imperative that you have the Diagnostic Utility logging the network traffic so that you can correlate the correct C-Bus traffic with the correct behaviour.

 

Thank you for your response. I expirmented with this a little today. I am now able to run a group of shades up and down with logic but still can not stop and restart with out the jogging scenerio. I have DLT button still set as a bell press, and the scene groups set as a 1 second pulse. Here is what I have so far.

once getlighting state master shades =on then
set scene master shades down
delay 1 second
set scene master shades off
end

 

I would change your scene so that it pulses the group for the 'shades down' group 2 seconds or so and then change your logic to the following:

I assume that the 'master shades' group is a logical group and not associated directly with any of the relay channels.

 

Newman,
Thank you for your response. Yes your assumption of master shades is correct. I will give this a try.
FJD