Another Scene / Indicator issue...

I am taking over an existing network/project, with a PAC and mostly 6 Gang Saturn Key Input Units (with firmware 1.6 recently updated).

My problem is: I have keys that turn whole scenes on and off (same key); some other keys operate only one of the components of that scene. I want the indicator of the scene key to go off as soon as any component level changes. I understand that the "Use Indicator Kill..." box should be ticked in PICED for that. There is no Logic that operates with these groups.

First question: when I tick that box in the PICED project, how do I "send" this to the PAC. Do I have to Transfer the whole project to the Unit? I have done that but it does not seem to change the behaviour of the keys, but maybe something else needs to be done to update that option in the network?

Second question(s): maybe the Saturn Units are not properly setup for these scenes. Currently, scenes are defined through the Scenes Manager in the PAC. Two Scenes Trigger are defined ("Kitchen On" and "Kitchen Off") using the Trigger Selectors "ON" and "OFF" respectively. The Saturn Units are programmed with the Secondary Application set to Trigger Control, Key 1 set on the Secondary Application to a Trigger Group named ?Kitchen ON/OFF?, the function set to ?On/Off?, no Scenes programmed in the Scenes tab (because they are managed by the PAC), no ?Trigger Group? selected in at the bootom of the ?Scenes Tab?either. Is that setup correct?

I am VERY sorry if these questions have been asked again and again, but I have checked extensively the forums and could not find anything that addresses those points. And I am even more sorry if I did not look long enough...

Thanks for your help.

 

First Answer: What you have done is correct. Once you change the option to 'Use Indicator Kill' all you have to do is transfer the project to the PAC and you're done.

Second Answer: The way the units have been programmed is correct. Saturn key input units don't natively support toggling between two different scenes on a single key, so what has been done is a work-around to make it toggle between two scenes, but it has the side effect that the indicator doesn't get extinguished when the scene gets broken.

A Saturn unit won't extinguish the indicator if the key when it receives the 'Indicator Kill' message if the key is not configured as a Scene key. In your case, the keys are configured as On/Off keys using the Trigger Control application, not Scene keys, and the levels of On and Off correlate with Action Selector 255 and 0 respectively, but that means that the indicator will only change state when the user presses the button, not when the scene gets broken.

To work around this limitation, you will need to write a little logic in the PAC that turns off the indicator whenever the Scene gets broken. An example of how to do it is in this post.

 

Thanks.

If I understand well the other post, I have to:

in the Toolkit
- create another Trigger Group that will take care only about the indicator state;
- assign a virtual key (say Key 7) to this Trigger Group;
- uncheck the LED Assignment box for Key 1 and check the one for Key 7 on Column 1 in the Blocks Tab;

in PICED
- write some additional logic to make sure the indicator group is in the state that I want when "things" happen.

Is that correct? Is that what Virtual keys are for?

 

Exactly right in what you need to do, and mostly right in your understanding of what's happening. If you do exactly what you describe, it will work, but the actual behaviour going on is a bit more subtle than that.

On the Blocks tab, there is not a 1:1 relationship between Group Addresses and the keys. The rows 1-8 represent 8 different Blocks, and one of the properties of a block is a Group Address. It's the 'Keys using block' section of that table that connects a Key with a particular Block, and therefore a Group Address.

So, when you add a new Group Address to row 7 in the Blocks table, you're not actually assigning a group address to key 7 as such, you're assigning a new Group Address to Block 7. It just so happens that, by default, the virtual keys are assigned to these blocks and this makes the new Group Address show up in the Virtual Key 7 Group in Toolkit.

Virtual Keys in Saturn units are only really useful for storing extra Scenes that you want to remotely trigger from some other unit.

 

Thank you very much Newman.
I will give it a try (need to figure the Logic right). Hopefully you won't hear from me anymore on this subject.