zone / sensor polling frequency

[btrvalik]

I have a couple of question regarding how often you can poll from an OMNI IIe

1) Are there any rules of thumb as to how often zones can be polled using every (x) command? Is it O.K. to poll a number of zones / sensors a the minimum (30 s) interval?
2) If I have multiple lines that check a sensor every n seconds / minuts and then executes different conditions, are the sensors polled repeatedly?
3) Does the control loop wait for a response before moving to the next command? Could polling a number of UPB devices slow the system down - particularly if there is a noise problem?

 

[HAI_fjh]

The "Every" event does not physically poll devices, rather it looks at the current status in memory. The rate at which devices/zones are physically polled is dependant on the interface and number of devices. The minimum "Every" time is 5 seconds.

In general polling for status with "Every" is far less efficient than using event triggers. Perhaps if you could elaborate on what you are trying to accomplish?

 

[btrvalik]

I'm trying to monitor an RC80-B thermostat. It does not seem to change the state of the zone to not-ready when it is heating. Ideally, I'd like it to operate like my PESMs do. So the only thing I've been able to come up with was polling the system state and logging when it is set to heating. I have the thermostat configured as heat only and the zone configured as a temperature zone. I've tried changing the thermostat to setpoint, but that did not make any difference. Should the zone be set differently? I experimented with other zone types, but it did not seem to make any difference.

 

[HAI_fjh]

Thanks for the additional info.

First thermostats aren't mapped to zones so it doesn't matter what you set the zone to as long as it is not a temperature sensor zone. Thermostats get their address by the thermostat number, temperature devices get their address from the zone they are attached to. This means that if thermostat #1 is in use, and you put a temperature sensor on zone 1, you would have two temperature devices with the same address. This is a problem. However having thermostat 1 in use and using zone 1 for the front door is perfectly legitimate and is in fact commonly done.

There is no trigger for when a thermostat goes into heating or cooling so you will have to poll. Something like this might work:

every minute
    and if thermostat system status is equal to heating
    and if heating flag off
        then Log thermostat is heating
        then heating flag on

every minute
    and if thermostat system status is not not equal to heating
        then heating flag off

Ok this is very rough but hopefully you get the idea. The flag is used so that it does not repeatedly log "thermostat is heating" for every minute that it is heating. You could even log not heating in the second every so you could see when it stopped heating.

I hope this helps.

 

[btrvalik]

This is what I'm already doing, hence the reason for the initial question. You clarified the fact that this is actually just an memory read. I'm checking it and setting the flag every 5 minutes like you suggest.

My thermostat is physically connected on Zone 16 and output 8. Should the zone be set to the default type of Aux? Zone 16 is show as SECURE and the system reports it as Thermostat 1.

I would feel more comfortable if there was a good way to check the system load. In another post, someone mentioned that the system can be polled via SNMP. Does HAI publish the MIB for it? I haven't tried a MIB walk yet, but I want to check that what is reported is actually the status of the Omni II and not just the ethernet chip.

Thanks
Bruce

 

[HAI_fjh]

Actually this is something different entirely. Typically when you have OmniStat thermostats connected you would leave zone 16 set to "auxiliary", but that is because it is no longer acting as a zone. Zones are inputs, outputs are of course outputs so what the Omni is doing is using these inputs/outputs as the transmit/receive of a specialized serial port that is the thermostat bus. You can connect up to 64 thermostats to zone 16/output 8.

Before I thought you were referring to the limitation about temp sensors zones not being at the same address as thermostats and thinking that the thermostats were in some way linked to the zones...

Anyway when zone 16 is used for the thermostat bus, the normal zone status is meaningless and thermostat addresses are determined by the address setting in the thermostat itself.

I have no idea how the SNMP stuff got started as the Omni does not support SNMP.

I would not get to hung up on the Omni CPU load.