C-Bus development

Hi,
I'm an electronic engineer. Our company has a number of products that we want to make C-Bus enabled. In other words we would like our products to be connected native to C-Bus network. I'm talking about HVAC VRV/VRF controller, communicating thermostats and I/O controllers.

So far we can not found any information about C-Bus network itself. There is some documentation about RS232 gateway as well as upper layer interfaces. But no peace of information about network physical layer and low layer of interface. Am I missing something? Is it possible at all to develop third party C-Bus enabled devices without being Clipsal or it's affiliate? Are there any references?

Thanks a lot.

 

Hi Ella,

Have a look at http://www.cbus-enabled.com/.

You should be able to find most of the information you're after there, as well as how to have your product/s tested by CIS for conformity and compliance.

You can also purchase cbus interface modules for third party devices, for direct connection to a cbus network. Part number is 5000SM/2.
Have a look at http://www.cbusforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5022 for a better explanation of what it is.

If you just want the raw documentation, without speaking to Clipsal (I'm not sure why you would want to do that though...), have a look at:
http://www.cbus-enabled.com/cbus-open.htm

I'm not 100% sure, but I think that you need to be a C-Bus enabled partner to have access to some of the network information that you may be after.

Hope this helps,

Darpa

 

Thanks for your answers

We have already license agreement with Clipsal. I will study this link

I'm not sure what this kit is mostly for. All it's documentation mention controlling system only. I.e. if you want to contol C-Bus network from your PC or from your device you can take our SIM adapter. But what if I want to be controlled (slave device). Can I still use the SIM? SIM imposes RS232 interface. But it is master oriented and not vice versa. You can send request via it and get reply. I want to receive request and send reply. Not sure I can do it with SIM.

Not sure it is possible. But will try.
Just in case do you happens to know what is the physical layer of C-Bus netwrok?

 

a little more detail

As Ashleigh says, the SIM provides a neutral RS-232 interface, that is; it takes care of the lower layers ( PHysical and Media ACcess) of communication protocol over the C-Bus network. The SIM presents a serial interface which can be used to either issue commands on to C-Bus or to receive commands from C-Bus. The serial interface is designed to isolate user applications from the strict requirements of the C-bus protocol, and also provides an appropriate point to provide electrical (optical) isolation to preserve the characteristics of the bus. In short - it saves you a lot of hard work!

The SIM can be configured to pass messages from the C-Bus network to your application, so for example, if a message is sent on the bus from a keyswitch to turn on a light, your application can also see the same message. Your application can then model the state of the light in real time if desired. The messages that are passed can be filtered to reduce the workload of your application.

If the SIM is configured to pass all messages through the serial port, as long as your application can keep up, the serial transmission rate is sufficient to guarantee that no messages on the C-Bus network will get lost. The quality of the connection provided is very high.

I hope this helps!

 

Thanks for your help.
Now I'm looking how to buy development kits. It turns out that Clipsal has no representative in our country - Israel. Do you know any place it can be ordered on-line?
Thanks.

 

Hi,
It's already two week since I'm trying to put my hand on C-Bus development kit (http://www.cbus-enabled.com/pdf/C-Bus Developers kit.pdf).

I was forwarded between different Clipsal offices around the world and currently Middle East office is my last hope. I'm close to give up. I must say Clipsal is most bureaucratic company I ever worked with. Our product - CoolMaster http://www.xdimax.com/cool/cool.html for VRV,VRF HVAC systems control was successfully integrated with most popular home automation interfaces like ModBus, InstraBus and others. I never had such treatment. I'm starting to think that C-Bus integration may not be so interesting for us as if Clipsal is such a heavy company it's market will not be big in future and it's only a spend of time working with them.

 

Yes.
Here is their answer:
Good morning,
Unfortunately I am not able to assist you directly.
Our Clipsal Middle East office should be able to assist you.

It is U.A.E office
I'm not sure they will talk to us at all. But I know for sure there is no postage between Israel and U.A.E

Yes. That's why I'm here.

Thanks for support. I also thought about this option. Do you know about any on-line source for 5500PC ?

 

As I told you. Here is the reply from U.A.E.

Thanks for your enquiry and showing interest in our company however we won't be able to help you directly due to terrritorial restrictions but we can forward you to our distributor details in Cyprus who will help you.

At least they are trying to help. After all my troubles I really appreciate it.

 

Clipsal in Israel

Hi ella,

I've just sent all details you need on your private mail.
Please contact.

Dovi Engler

 

Development with SIM module

Hi,
I have SIM module connected to my PC RS232 port and I can work via it with C-Bus software.
Now I want to pass to manual mode and send C-Bus commands myself. I have a SIM protocol document. But so far I can see how to send any command with RS232 terminal.
Can you help please.

 

The serial interface user guide contains lots of examples of commands to send to the C-Bus network. Can you please be more specific about what you're trying to do, what you've done so far, and what result you're trying to achieve?

The SIM and PCI products can only have one connection open to them at a given time. Is it possible you're trying to send commands to the SIM whilst C-Gate is running on your PC?

 

The C-Bus Protocol documents can be obtained from the C-Bus Enabled web site:

http://training.clipsal.com/downloads/OpenCBus/OpenCBusProtocolDownloads.html

Connect the SIM to your PC. Set the serial port to:

• 9600 Baud
• 8 Data bits
• 1 Stop bit
• No flow control
• No parity

To initialise the SIM, type

~~~<CR>
A3300051<CR>

( <CR> is a Carriage Return, or the Enter key )


The full details of setting the SIM mode can be found in the C-Bus Interface Requirements document, section 8.2.4.

To switch on lighting group address 1, you would type in:

\0538007901<CR>

Refer to the Lighting Application document for full details.

 

Hi,
Thanks for your answers.


Darren, I had wrong "flow control" serial port setting, and I did not run Reset (~~~) command.
Thank you.
I've succeded to switch on/off different lighting groups,
sending commands from Host PC via RS-232 and SIM to Relay unit.


Newman, yes, it is possible that I'm trying to send commands to the SIM
whilst C-Gate is running on my PC.
I've sent interleaved commands using C-Bus Toolkit and telnet to C-Gate.
For example, I've set group 1 On using C-Bus Toolkit and group 1 Off using telnet to C-Gate.


Newman, Ashleigh, you've asked me:
what you're trying to do?
what you've done so far?
what result you're trying to achieve?
do you want some kind of software driver?
what kind of processor do you want to run your application on?

Here are my answers:
I'm going to run my air conditioners' controller application on 8-bit ATmega128 microcontroller.

I don't think that I need some kind of software driver at this stage. Maybe later.
I've downloaded C-Bus driver for Linux, but I did not see the source code yet.

So far, I've created simple C-Bus network setup that includes:
5500CN CNI, L5504RVFC Relay, and SIM-to-RS232 card, and looks like:


......Ethernet....+---------+..RS-232
..........+-------| Host PC |---------+
..........|..........+---------+............|
..........|......................................|
..........|......................................|
......+----+........+------+........+-----+
......| CNI |........| Relay |........| SIM |
......+----+........+------+........+-----+
..........|..................|...................|
..........|..................|...................|
..........|..................|...................|
..........+------------+--------------+
........................C-Bus

Dots in the picture are white spaces. It's difficult to draw in post.

CNI, Relay, and SIM are connected via C-Bus.
Host PC and CNI are cross-connected with Ethernet cable, whilst Host PC runs local DHCP server.
Host PC and SIM are connected through RS-232.
I use C-Bus Toolkit, C-Gate, C-Bus IP Utility, C-Bus Diagnostic Utility, and HyperTerminal tools.

I'm building comfortable and flexible environment to debug my air conditioners' controller application.
I've succeded (thanks to Darren) to send C-Bus messages in "RS-232 => C-Bus" direction.
Now, I want to send C-Bus messages in the opposite direction (from C-Bus to RS-232).

How can I do it ? Can I issue any C-Bus message from Host PC through CNI and SIM to Host PC ?
How can I configure SIM to pass through to Host PC all the commands sent to SIM, unchanged ?

The result, I'm going to achieve, is a design and implementation of a device
that will simulate a number of HVAC C-Bus units.

Regards,
ella.

 

Any messages that appear on C-Bus will appear on the serial port of the SIM. There is nothing else you need to do.

Yes

The commands I posted previously put the SIM in a mode where all C-Bus messages are reported.