RE: C_Bus

["Kevin Hawkins" <lists@xxxxxxx>]

Hi Frank,



            Your
going to love it - but beware it's addictive and your
system will expand rapidly, somewhat inversely to you bank balance.



            On the
'Minder' issue I haven't got one or played with one,
so I am not sure what it's like to program. C-Bus itself has inbuilt
capabilities to link any switch to any lamp , many to one or one to
many. Dimming and preset levels as well as ramp times On and OFF can
all
be done without a central controller. This is partly what makes C-Bus
so
resilient. Some of the fancier switches e.g. the Neo's have the ability
to store 'scenes' within them and there is also a small wall mounting
scene controller available. For a lot of people no central controller
is
needed. However more complex 'logical events' or particularly timed
events do require a controller, perhaps the Minder or a C-Touch panel.



            Re the
serial connection - as I mentioned the RS232
interface is somewhat expensive (particularly in the UK) but currently
that or the even more expensive Ethernet interface is required to
program the system using Clipsal's software.  The C-Bus SIM is
effectively a very low cost 'OEM' interface board to C-Bus providing
the
serial interface capability and is what I am using in the xAP gateway
allowing bi-directional control and reporting of all the C-Bus units.
Initially I am developing the xAP gateway as a PC application that
connects directly to the RS232 interface. Later it will become a PC
application that connects directly to the C-Bus SIM module and then
finally (all being well) I will code it to a PIC creating a small plug
in 'hardware' gateway that has two or three interfaces on it . These
will be C-Bus / xAP RS232 or RS485 / and possibly Ethernet. 



            I
currently control all my Clipsal loads via xAP and all the
state change events are relayed back to xAP. Once in xAP of course it
makes it really easy to link to any other xAP capable device. Quite
what
people will use as their HA controller/scheduler with xAP is their
choice. For some it will be HomeVision with a  xAP connector or
perhaps
Homeseer , ACE or Autom8it.  Whilst say HV will not include support
for
C-Bus within its firmware (it is already a squeeze to get everything
in)
it is very easy using xAP to 'map' phantom X10 devices to C-Bus
devices,
so you could include control of C-Bus loads from HV. This will require
a
PC to be running to do the mapping but as initially my gateway also
requires this it is already available.



           
Kevin



-----Original Message-----
From: Mark McCall [mailto:Mark@xxxxxxx] 
Sent: 11 January 2003 10:33
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ukha_d] C_Bus



> HomeVision is a gem to program dont you think???

Yes! :)

> Maybe Kevin Hawkins or Rob Mouser have played with the software??

OK..thanks

M.