5500PCU or dimmer broken?

After the last year of using a CNI for my work projects I have been forced to use a 5500PCU interface for testing my current job - not happy jan..

This is where it gets really annoying I have connected teh following
5500PCU, 8Channel Dimmer L5508D1a, a DLT and 2 neo 8 button switch's.

Now one of the 8 Button Neos has a button that glows orange till pressed and then flickers orange/blue till pressed again, and both the DLT and the Dimmer refuse to fetch serial numbers and will not transfer between the DB and network and then give me errors when trying to update them something about not being able to transfer programming - i dont care as i want to program them with a new setup.

I have the latest Toolkit software installed 1.10.1 and am running Vista Premium SP1 ( if that makes a difference)

I have removed all switchs so its just the 5500PCU and Dimmer and tried all combinations of rj45 plugs and still have not been able to get this to work. According to the lights and the software i have comms between all items and cbus clock and burden is running ( software as i cant find my hardware one)

So should i just purchase my own CNI (as i want one anyway as i prefer to use network for connection rather than usb) or try getting another Dimmer to see if the problems goes away before i stress out.

Also one other question does it matter how the network is laid out for cbus components - CNI - DImmer - Dimmer- Switches or could it be setup like this
CNI - Dimmer - Switch - Switch - Switch - Dimmer - Dimmer - Switch
My current job install has items in 3 seperate areas of the house with cbus hardware (dimmer and relays) located in each area but joined on one run with switchs as above inbetween ( if that makes sense)

 

Never mind, Stole, um borrowed the 5500CNI from work and got my home network up and running - all items found on the network serials came accross fine with no dramas and all items are working properly, cept for the buzzing from the dimmer channels when on load which i dont think is normal...

Also with the speed difference using the 5500CNI why would anyone use a usb based Interface!!!!

 

Based on your original description, you have a basic communication problem on your network.

Remember your C-Bus Basic Training (which I assume you've done) and go through the usual checks of network voltage, clock and burden. 99% of network problems turn out to be something very basic, that has been covered in the training sessions.

Your most likely problem is that you don't have a network burden on your network. The orange/blue flashing of the Neo indicators tells you that it can't communicate for some reason. A network that small will definitely require a burden. The easiest way to put a network burden on your network is to go searching in the box that the 5500PCU came in for an RJ-45 plug with some pink heat shrink on one end and plug that into one of the spare RJ-45 sockets on either your PC Interface or the Dimmer.

As to why it works with the CNI and not the USB PCI, it's most likely that you've got the software burden (software controlled version of the pink RJ-45 plug) turned on in your CNI and off in your USB PCI.

As for speed, the limiting factor is the communication rate of the network itself. USB and Ethernet are both much faster than C-Bus, so there's no logical reason why there would be a speed difference.

C-Bus is essentially Topology free, so it doesn't matter in which order the devices are connected.

 

Cheers Newman, i had gone back through the training manuals i have and turned on teh clock in the dimmer only - had semi forgotten about the burden being a necessary component and could not find it when i went looking, which means i may have left it either at work or the last place i did....or my daughter has put it somewhere in the house = lost for good

From memory when i checked the voltages with the 5500PCU only the dimmer had voltage now that i think about it, (at the time i was a bit frustrated and didnt follow up the lack of voltage anywhere else) , and the easiest item to get was the CNI from work which points me to having to find a/the burden at work and see if the PCU works or its getting swapped.

Funnily enough after re-reading the training manuals this is also in there .
I seem to be averaging about 1 Cbus install a year at work, so there is months between installs and apparently I need to work on retaining info