FW: [HOMEVIS] CBUS lights

["Mark McCall" <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>From the HV list.

M.


_____

From: homevision-users@xxxxxxx
[mailto:homevision-users@xxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Glen Ferguson
Sent: 14 November 2006 10:45
To: homevision-users@xxxxxxx
Subject: [HOMEVIS] CBUS lights



Hi all,



Thanks to some help from Craig, Schelte and Frank I have now manage to
fully
integrate CBUS lights into HV including status tracking. I think some
others
have done this using xPl etc but I am not sure if it has been fully done
totally inside HV. If so, ah well, but I am pretty happy with my results.



What I did was use the 3.44 PROM with the update capability to keep track
of
the status and a new custom lighting macro to control the lights. The
initial problem I ran into was that the CBUS protocol requires a checksum
for each command if you activate the status reporting. Ie with an old macro
you can either have status reporting or the ability to control the lights.
This meant I had to re-write the macro and embed all the checksum values
into the commands.



Each command has a different checksum so rather than implementing every
single possibility I implemented "set at" commands for 0%,
20%,40%, 60%, 80%
and 100%. Then by knowing the current status tracked through the
UPDATELIGHTS table when I send a Bright command it sets the level to the
one
above the current one and visa versa for Dim. (They all have different
checksums as a function of light number and command type.) So now I can
command a level to one of the values or brt/dim in those increments.



When a light is changed at the switch it reports its status on the serial
port. I then read these messages and decode them to update the light table.



I have 48 separate lights in my house and it manages to keep track of all
of
them without a speed change. The only compromises were:

*	I did not implement ramp rates as I was not interested (but it could
be done)

*	My Brt/Dim levels are in 20% increments (this could be less but is
all I required)

*	On the odd occasion when you set a light to a dim level at the
switch the status is reported as "unknown level" and consequently
set to on.
Therefore a dim will dim to 80% but it is then corrected



On top of this I control it all through Schelte's excellent control screen
and it displays status, dim level etc graphically as well as allowing
control. See below.



Anyway, thanks to all those who have helped. I am sure there is probably a
more efficient way of doing this but I am pretty happy with the results as
I
am finally PC independent in tracking levels.





Cheers

Glen








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