Toolkit : how find out the TRUE status of a load ?

In the Groups listings in Toolkit, you can see what Group Addresses are On/Off (levels column). The problem is that this doesn't "actually" tell you the true status of the Output Device. It seems to only advise the status of the GA that is directly controlling that particular Output.

I found this out recently on a domestic project I was reprogramming - a light was responding to a Area Address instruction, there was no TagName on the GA assigned for that channel of the Output Unit. I knew that the light worked and was connected to something, but I couldn't find what !

I think that a similar thing happens with Scenes. You could set a scene that turned on 5 Groups, yet in Toolkit those particular GAs wouldn't necessarily show as being switched on because the scene had a separate GA as a trigger (is that correct?).

Further - when an output is switched on by something other than a direct GA instruction, it seems to me that you cannot determine WHAT switched it on. I get reports of "lights turning on by themselves", yet there is no GA activity - could I assume that there might be scenes or Area Addresses switching on/off (perhaps in a Ctouch etc) that Toolkit won't detect?

Consider finding out what devices / loads actually respond to a Area Address GA command instruction. Is the only way is to open every single device and see what Area it's set to (easy on a house, but a huge job on a commercial project) ?

Is it only GAs that report back their Level to the network? Can Output Units (channels) report back status as well? Can they be queried?

For debugging and testing on-site, it would be exceptionally handy to be able to find out the TRUE load status, and also WHAT instruction switched on that load. Is this possible?

Thanks, John

PS: Could we please have an AREA ADDRESS column added to Toolkit's "Units" listing? That would at least mean you could find out what Units respond to which Areas, which would save HEAPS of time working on large projects. I can see "Application" column but I never use those - am I the only person who actually uses Area Addresses?

PPS: Also, I'd REALLY love the ability to re-order the Toolkit columns because I never use some of them

 

Toolkit doesnt track area address changes.. it also doesnt do an initial sync of a network to determine the correct state of each group, it merely tracks group activity after its connected. I do see some value in that being improved.

Yes you could assume that.

Yes output units can be queried, we just havent done the work in Toolkit yet to expose that.

Its not possible to historically identify what turned on a load.. the Application Log will grow in sophistication over time. We just have other pressing priorities at the moment

You might the only person.. Area Addresses produce bad karma. Its like smoking, if you're already smoking you need to stop, if you're not smoking there's no good reason to start.

Thats already been logged in our change management system, we'll get around to it.

Great post! lots of good ideas and real life challenges, thanks John!

 

LOL - but seriously, is there a problem with Area Addresses? How else can you do "all-off" or "panic" buttons, where you want to switch on or off a large number of loads at once?

You can't use scenes within Key Inputs, as there's not enough storage space (10 GA's per scene on a Reflection?) for any decent sized project...

Of course, bad karma does happen if you are using Area GAs and you can't work out what they are connected to (like my previous post) - I spent 3 visits, probably 4 hours in total trying to find what Output unit controllled that that Pool Light (that was only switchable by a Area GA) !

JC

 

Yes, they cause lung cancer.

Seriously.. I think CIS regrets ever introducing Areas into output units etc.. it causes no end of funny problems and perculiarities, much better to remote trigger scenes in Neo's, C-Touch or a PAC etc. (yes the cost is higher). Don, Ashleigh, Newman any further comment?

 

Don alludes to some of the problems with Areas in this thread : http://www.cbusforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=879

 

The concept of "very big group control" (eg: All-Off) is probably the main (initial) selling reason for using a control system. So much easier than using Contactors Yeah, I realise that Area Addresses were probably considered a kind of stop gap measure because Scene functionality seemed to take forever to come... the problem is that the memory of Switches is far too small to handle a scene for even an average sized house...

In every project that I've "inherited" there's Area Addresses used for grouping of controls. Usually there's at least an "All-Interior-Off" (exit mode) and a "All-Exterior" (baddie outside) mode somewhere. Scenes also aren't really that easy to maintain (especially if spread across multiple Switches and triggered remotely). So much easier to send out one command for "all exterior lights to ON" (where they are all wired to a couple of 12ch relays with a common Area Address).

In our own showrooms we have at least 300-400 loads in each, and they're wired into Area Addresses. At the end of a trading day a B&W Ctouch runs a scene that switches all those Areas off - even that scene is still 30-40 instructions long... Imagine writing a single scene (or scenes within scenes) to switch off 400 loads! And consider that the showrooms are always being changed - we can't be re-writing scenes every time we add a couple of relays or something.

I would have thought that Areas Addresses were the easy way to deal with this - but it would appear that their development ended about the same time as the Neo started development ?

It is a pity that such basic functionality as an "All-Off" requires the use of a Touchscreen, PAC, etc and complex scene programming - and then the considerable traffic and delay of sending heaps (hundreds in a decent-sized house) of individual commands out onto the Network to individually switch off each load !

Would you consider it reasonable that a Ctouch or PAC is mandatory to do a simple operation like "All-Lights-Off" in a domestic application ? Perhaps all that is required is that a bit of effort be done to fix the Area Address functionality, or introduction of some better way of controlling a pre-defined groups of outputs?

Perhaps it could be as simple as having the output unit issue corresponding "what happened to each channel" message back to the Network, for the Input's LEDs etc to respond to. OK, I know it's more complex than that - but you have almost got Scenes working properly, so how about dealing with a (triggered) Area Address as a "inbuilt scene" that is issued by an Output Unit rather than an Input Unit (that make sense) ?

Cheers, John

 

Components of a Scene can be distributed across multiple input units using Action Selectors so the entire Scene need not have to live inside a single unit..

Future functionality in Toolkit will allow Scenes to be managed in a more Network-centric fashion.