Aligning Unit Addresses

Aligning Unit Addresses

  1. Duncan
    If your normal work-flow is to first create a Database of a planned Installation you will at some point need to ensure that the Units installed at a site matches the Database you have carefully planned out.

    You have a number of choices about how you ensure this happens.

    1. You could address the units before they go to the site for installation. This means taking the units out of the package and installing them onto a test/bench Network for re-addressing. Then send the correctly addressed units out to the site.

    2. You could just send the units out to the site without getting them out of the box after first recording the unit's serial number.

    If you have chosen option 2, the C-Bus Toolkit has some really nifty little functions to help you quickly align your Network with your Database so that you can download your programming successfully. This methodology is the recommended one.

    So, as you can see below I have created a little demonstration Database of 6 units and I have collected the serial numbers of the units. If you dont know how to add units to a Database check out the Tutorial on "Adding a unit to the Database" found here.

    5UntisAddedWithSerialNumbers.jpg

    So, now we send the 5 units out to the site after we've labelled them with their intended installation location.

    We complete the programming of the units at our leisure. At some point we attend the site in order to download the programming, we scan the Network and let the C-Bus Toolkit do its unravelling of address 255 (see the thread on Unravelling for an explanation of this process).

    We will see an unravelled Network of 5 units (plus our PCI), but unless we're blessed with unbelievable good luck, the addresses of the Physical units will not match the addresses of the Database units. As you can see below, Tookit flags this problem for our attention:

    MismatchedUnits.jpg

    The important things to note here are:

    The column in the "Units on Network" view titled "Exists in Database" shows that the 5 units we sent out to site have a "Partial" match and the system note says "Serial Number Matches, Address wrong". We will now invoke the magical spell in Toolkit to fix these 5 units on the Network for us.

    Press the "Match Serials" button highlighted below:

    MatchSerial.jpg

    The Toolkit will show you this dialog:

    MatchSerialsDialog.jpg

    You can finetune the operation that will take place by deselecting units that you do NOT want matched. Press the "Readdress" button. Toolkit will readdress each of the Units on the Network to match the Unit Address that you specified in the database. If the destination address is occupied, Toolkit will move the offending unit aside and place your intended unit at that address.

    The completed readdress dialog would look like this:

    SerialsReaddressed.jpg

    Dismiss this dialog by pressing the Close button and you'll see your Networks and Database View in perfect address harmony, ready for you to download your programming:

    AddressHarmony.jpg