Welcome

[Duncan]

Hi,

Welcome to the C-Bus Hardware Forum. This forum is provided and maintained by Clipsal Integrated Systems.

The forum is dedicated to the discussion of C-Bus Hardware Products such as:


Input Units
Dimmers
Relays
Sensors
Power Supplies


We encourage you to browse the forum and become involved.

[Newman]

This is going to be really good. I hope lots of positive discussion is held in relation to C-Bus products.

[sean]

having problems with light switches which are requiring replacing as they always seem to be defective - any suggestion

[Don]

... Don't know if this thread belongs here or not, but is worth answering.

I should be able to help here, but will need a bit more information about the nature of your problem. There is a good chance that there are one or two units on your network which have failed for whatever reason ranging from component failures to external stresses (has your installation ever been hit with lightning?)

I have had a C-Bus installation in my home for 7 years, and must admit that there were a couple of switch units which failed after about 2 years. The problem in these stemmed from faulty surface mount transistors, which were in the unit's power regulation system, They failed for whatever reason semiconductors sometines do in their early life, but the product continued to work for several months with the characteristic that it would stop controlling, but the leds were weakly illuminated. When the unit was taken off the network and allowed to cool, it would return to normal operation when it was returned to the system. Getting the transistor replaced fixed the problem for good. If you have a problem like this, it can also affect communication from other units, as the fault (in my case) caused the unit to disconnect from the network intermittently, and this looked like communication on the two-wire bus, so sometimes other units would flash (indication of communication error) when I tried to control the loads. This made one problem look like many problems.

Early C-Bus output units had a limited temperature rating, which made them unsuitable for mounting in the ceiling space of homes in hot areas, like North Queensland. The symptoms here can also affect the communication, and hence the overall network performance.

If you could outline your installation history and the problems you are having now, we might be able to narrow down the root causes. I'm confident that the system can be made to work reliably.

Don