BIG Home Automation Project 2011

[NewZealandHome]

Microcontrolled Switches: Vantage KeyPad Station $230NZD and Clipsal Saturn Glass 5084NL,GF-680 $235NZD

Very nice Vantage ipad and iphone apps, has a cool SDcard slot, but no WiFi (needs to plug via network cable into the Ethernet port)
Apple Appstore - Vantage Home Control (iPhone)
Apple Appstore - Vantage EMEA Home Control (iPad)

Clipsal "Wiser" is an OpenSource Linux Wireless-N router with an inline ethernet to cbus attached.
Wiser only has 1 iPhone app. (no ipad app yet) looks quite nice though
Apple Appstore - Wiser

Control4 Dimmers: http://www.edincontrols.com/technical.html

Some really nice Clear pics of the units here:
http://www.letsautomate.com/11159.cfm?&

 

[NewZealandHome]

why is Cbus only 9600bps? thats crazy slow. thats so 1990s. why doesn't someone invent something better?

 

[NewZealandHome]

These Clipsal Dimmer ramp rate commands are cool:

0000 = instantaneous
0001 = 4s ramp rate from off to on, or on to off.
0010 = 8seconds ramp rate
0011 = 12seconds ramp rate
0100 = 20seconds ramp rate
30s, 40s, 1min, 90s, 2min, 3min, 5min, 7min, 10min, 15min, 17min.

 

[Dean Roddey]

why is Cbus only 9600bps? thats crazy slow. thats so 1990s. why doesn't someone invent something better?

You mean their own on the wire control bus speed, or the speed at which the automation controller communicates with their controller? If it's the former, it might not need any more than that. It doesn't take much data to turn lights off and on or send simple commands, and the low speed increases reliability over long runs. Not that they might not speed it up if they were doing it all over again from scratch, but it doesn't necessarily mean it can't do its job well at that speed. Z-Wave and UPB are effectively considerably slower than that. It may also contribute to keeping the prices of the individual devices on the serial bus lower or something as well, I dunno.

 

[NewZealandHome]

yeah, I factored long runs and reliability into my evaluation C-Bus is still too slow.. imagine trying to turn off all lights in the building.. 100 lights at 50ms with a 20ms inter-message delay + (100lights * 3leds * 70ms response )response to up to 3 leds. = total 28 seconds!
Anybody got any real experience of C-Bus timing, on doing a state scan on all devices in the network?

 

[NewZealandHome]

Just ask "Bing" how many hits they get compared to Google.. milliseconds count.

 

[NewZealandHome]

.

 

[nzspark]

Dont know how you did your maths but i have a small test setup and i can switch all loads on/off with no noticeable delay
4x 4way switches
2x 4way dimmer
1x 12way relay
1x 5500cn

Your maths is way out. please remember you are scanning units not loads
I dont no the math and dont care for it but what does the speed of the bus have to do with anything? its a star topo

How fast do you want a button press at point A to tell point B (switch all loads) to be?

The problem with the bus is you have tobe carefull with your logic.
You dont want a sensor sending commands every 1 second this will grind the whole setup.

A 12 channel relay is only one unit not 12
All the info is in the CIS technical site on pdf for all their products please read.
You can download the cbus toolkit and have a play around its free too.
http://www2.clipsal.com/cis/technical/
http://www2.clipsal.com/cis/technical/technical_support/training2/cbus_control_and_management_system/basic
http://www2.clipsal.com/cis/technical/technical_support/training2/cbus_control_and_management_system/intermediate
http://www2.clipsal.com/cis/technical/technical_support/training2/cbus_control_and_management_system/advanced
http://www2.clipsal.com/cis/technical/product_groups/cbus
http://www2.clipsal.com/cis/technical/downloads

 

[NewZealandHome]

ok, I interfaced a 5000SM module to the dimmers and relays, and then on the other side put a TTL to Android, and then the Android interfaces via WiFi router to my ipad2. I don't have any sliders on my ipad app yet, just images and buttons, but I can program that in later.. Anybody seen some really nice ipad interfaces they like? I was thinking of designing it something like this... what do you think?

also I'm going to interface in about 20 of these units: I'll most likely just interface them via usb. they seem to just be some sort of 12volt PIR system, I'll figure that out next..

do these just send a signal when motion is detected? are there different voltage levels for differing levels of movement? or does it need a smart controller to interface with them? This model seems its a DRO micro radar and dual element PIR, I think thats good. The manufacturer said it was good.

 

[NewZealandHome]

You dont want a sensor sending commands every 1 second this will grind the whole setup.
A 12 channel relay is only one unit not 12

Are you sure? if I need to set 12 relays on, I can't send 1 packet, i have to send 12? Then I have to wait for the 12 relays to send 12 packets to the LEDs at the other end to switch themselves on/off.

Whats this thing about a Cbus Timer Clock I keep reading? is that just so that the DLTs can initiate a command at a set time of the day? or is it more the physical bus clock so that the signals will remain in sync?

I wonder if its better to just directly interface to the Vantage or Mode eDin Dimmers/Relays than Cbus, they might operate faster.

 

[NewZealandHome]

CBus to TTL =      5000SM2 $165NZD (trade exgst)
CBus to ADC =      5104BCL $205NZD (trade exgst)
CBus to RS232(COM) 5500PC  $510NZD (trade exgst)
CBus to USB =      5500PCU $510NZD (trade exgst)
CBus to Ethernet = 5500CN  $686NZD (trade exgst)

Source: Clipsal iPad2 Catalog Click here

 

[NewZealandHome]

If you are searching for iPad apps.. go to App Store, and search keywords "Home Control" it will pick up 90% of the Home Automation apps.

 

[Dean Roddey]

It doesn't require a separate message to turn off every light, at least not in most systems. They will support groups and multi-cast messages that are seen by any unit in a given group (where all devices are generally in some 'All' group.) So it would generally only take one message to turn off all the lights. It's sometimes the case that multi-casts are sent out two or three times with a short pause between then, to make sure everyone sees them, since you don't want positive acknowledgements necesarily from all the units that respond to a multi-cast message. But still, it wouldn't be anything like sending a hundred separate messages or anything.

 

[NewZealandHome]

Gotya, so you tell each relay what multicast Identifiers to keep an eye out for? So each relay keeps a list? very smart.
also each LED on the Bus will have a list of multicast Identifiers to keep an eye out for? so you send one command on the Bus, and the LEDs and the Relays programmed to respond to that multicast ID(aka command) will activate/deactivate. nice.

 

[Dean Roddey]

Well, I wasn't saying specifically that C-Bus acts like that, I'm just saying it's common for such systems to work that way. It's usually done by way of 'groups'. So you tell each unit it's in one or more groups and you send out multi-cast messages that address a given group, and each unit looks at it and sees if it's for a group they belong to.

AFIAK, C-Bus supports a grouping mechanism, so one would assume that they support a similar mechanism on the wire, particularly given that it clearly doesn't take minutes to turn off all the lights.

Z-Wave doesn't support a formal group mechanism, but it supports multi-casting so an application or controller can send a single messages to multiple units at the same time. Probably UPB does something similar since it's a low data rate system as well.