HAI, UPB, and status

[Mr Spock]

Question. If I use a OP II panel with Simply Automated UPB switches (the US11-40-W in particular) will the panel keep proper track of the light switches? Note I'm not planning on using any scenes since my needs are relatively simple in this regard; just individual on/off/dim/bright. But if someone locally turns a switch on/off or dims it will the switch and panel stay in sync?

 

[JonW]

They'll stay in sync just fine if you use them in HLC mode (not UPB mode). Read up on HLC, it is just a device ID, scene ID allocation that HAI uses. Any UPB device can do HLC.

 

[Frunple]

They'll stay in sync just fine in any mode. The only way a light will be out of sync is if you turn them on/off by a link. Individual switches won't report their status when operated by links.

 

[Ranger Digital]

Turn them on/off by a "link"? I dont understand what that means, link?

 

[JonW]

They'll stay in sync just fine in any mode. The only way a light will be out of sync is if you turn them on/off by a link. Individual switches won't report their status when operated by links.

Most room control is done by links, not individual switches, so you will end up with things out of sync. If you do it via HLC, the HAI panel will poll the switches within a room immediately after a link from that room is seen so that the status is always updated.

 

[Mr Spock]

Cool. Thanks.

 

[tmbrown97]

I can't say I completely agree - if you replace a regular switch with an automated switch, and only ever directly control that switch (either locally or through automation), then it'll stay in sync. Scenes/Links come into play when you want a single command to affect multiple switches, or if you want one switch to control another.

In my first automated house, I almost never used links, so it was able to keep track.

There's a tidbit in my article in my signature about why UPB doesn't do status well if you're ever curious... but since you're going HAI, as mentioned above, you can follow the HLC standards and then you can keep track even with scenes.

 

[cornutt]

You can also write code to trigger on links and do a REQUEST STATUS on the units effected by the link.

 

[McKinneySmart]

I also have programmed my Omni to REQUEST STATUS on every device about every 8 to 10 minutes. That way if I have turned a light ON of OFF via a Link (from another device), the Omni will be in sync.

 

[fcwilt]

There's a tidbit in my article in my signature about why UPB doesn't do status well if you're ever curious..

OK my eyes don't work - where is the bit of information? I read the article twice and I cannot see it.

 

[tmbrown97]

OK - I thought it was in there - but I just scanned and didn't see it either! Guess I need to do some edits.

Anyways - I believe I originally got this from Elk's web-site, but can't find it now - so here's the basic gist:

UPB is a peer-to-peer technology. There is no master controller; each device is capable of sending links, and each device is capable of responding to up to 16 different links. The problem with the status is that I can have a link that's "All Off" which in theory could affect up to the max 250 devices. When you activate a link from a switch, that switch has no idea how many others are programmed to respond to that link; likewise, each switch that responds knows what it's supposed to do, but has no idea how many others are supposed to respond as well. If they were to all try to send their status after an activation, with say even 20+ devices, there'd just be no way for them to all communicate at once; they'd just pollute the power lines and no reliable signals would get through. UPB as a protocol doesn't have much in the way of collision prevention. It's for this reason that no switch will send its status after it has responded to a link.

Many of the better controllers have gotten around this by learning which switches respond to a link, then polling them individually after they see a link activate; I know Elve does this; and HAI does this via their own HLC protocol. Elk unfortunately has made no provisions to accommodate this.

 

[fcwilt]

Many of the better controllers have gotten around this by learning which switches respond to a link, then polling them individually after they see a link activate; I know Elve does this; and HAI does this via their own HLC protocol. Elk unfortunately has made no provisions to accommodate this.

What I find so annoying about the range of support for UPB is that UPStart can export a simple-to-parse file that provides all the information any system would need to understand what UPB devices do what.

All any controller would need to do would be to import this file and it would now be able to know what links should affect what devices and thus make it relatively easy to insure that everything stays in sync.

So who uses this approach? Not HAI. Not ELK.

Yes HAI has their own scheme but it has it limits.

Elan g! oddly enough keeps track of all the information about the UPB configuration but it gets it through a complete scan of the UPB network rather then via the export file from UPStart - a complete scan of a large system can take quite a while and the Elan g! system doesn't always get it right.

Is there any system out there that uses the export file that UPB has gone to the trouble to provide?

 

[tmbrown97]

Elve will go either way; if you don't provide an import, it'll scan; but if you give the import it'll use that, and that provides a lot more data.

The elk uses the import for the names, but not for remembering links. Somewhere on their website they made a comment that the M1 just doesn't have the processing power to handle something like that.

 

[jmorris644]

I also have programmed my Omni to REQUEST STATUS on every device about every 8 to 10 minutes. That way if I have turned a light ON of OFF via a Link (from another device), the Omni will be in sync.

Sorry for the OT post but how do you do this? I tried to figure it out in PCAccess but could not find a way to make it happen.

Thanks

Joe

 

[fcwilt]

Elve will go either way; if you don't provide an import, it'll scan; but if you give the import it'll use that, and that provides a lot more data.

The elk uses the import for the names, but not for remembering links. Somewhere on their website they made a comment that the M1 just doesn't have the processing power to handle something like that.

Thanks for the info. I keep wondering when ELK is going to come out with the "M2" (or whatever they call it).