C-Bus to Minder

Discussion in 'C-Bus Toolkit and C-Gate Software' started by UK Household Automation, Aug 12, 2004.

  1. UK Household Automation

    UK Household Automation

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    Having had extensive hands on experience of Minder i would be interested to know if anybody has had experience of CBus commnicating with Minder (rather than Minder communicating with C Bus) I'm told that two way communication is possible but dont want to be a gineapig yet again!

    Has anybody had experience of the Minder GSM module?
     
    UK Household Automation, Aug 12, 2004
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  2. UK Household Automation

    Ashley W

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    What do you want to do? I use C-Bus to control a few things with minder. The main one being I have a security mode that is activated by one of my key input units and I also use the security feature on one of the C-bus PIR's (not for security but for 'traffic' logging). Theres not all tha much too it really.

    If I had the money I would buy a touch screen to provide a better interface to my garden sprinklers that are controlled by minder, but at $1000 a pop its a lot of money and in my house at the moment I cannot justify it. Also not sure if what I want to do would work. Pitty you need to buy the screen to get the software!

    As for getting it to work what I've done is my security function (called night mode), I've created a group in the C-BUS config software called night_mode. When I first installed minder it found all my groups and put them in but I've not managed to find a way to get them in after the inital project start so the trick is to note the group address of the device you want to minder to know about. You get the address from the project manager. In minder configure it up using that address, the name can be completly different. Then any change in state on the C-BUS side of things is reflected in minder and any change in minder is reflected in C-BUS. In my system pressing the night mode key (long press) makes minder switch to a semi armed state (all doors, no PIR's). Turning it off makes the system at home. Any alarm or change of state in minder automaticaly causes the C-BUS group to switch off.

    Really if you can get minder to control C-BUS you can get C-BUS to control minder, the principle is much the same. The only thing you cannot seem to do is base a comparison in minder on the ramp level of a C-BUS group. Ie if a group is set to 50% minder cannot tell, I guess it just assumes that if it isn't 0% its on. There may be a way, but never played with it.

    Now I hope this isn't OT!
     
    Ashley W, Aug 13, 2004
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  3. UK Household Automation

    Tonyo

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    I am not quite sure what you are talking about - but I have decoupled my inslab heating with minder. My temperature gauges send value to minder and minder turns in the slab heating in various rooms depending on the time of day and day of the week. This way I don't heat the slab when I am not going to be home but don't have to adjust the temperature gauges. My minder also counts button presses on some of my keys so I can get it to do scenarios.

    Is that what you have in mind?
    Tony
     
    Tonyo, Aug 13, 2004
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  4. UK Household Automation

    Advantex

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    the tag database is the method that controls all functions. Each device, Home-Minder, C-Bus, C-Touch etc. can manipulate the status of the tags. Home-minder can read the status and make a decision based on that and if required, alter or issue change of this or any other tag based on your program logic. Thus communication is possible both ways.
     
    Advantex, Aug 14, 2004
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  5. UK Household Automation

    Darren Senior Member

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    The Tag database doesn't control anything. Neither do you control tags as such.

    Group Addresses are used for control within the lighting applications. A Group Address provides a virtual "connection" between input units and output units.

    The tag database is used to provide names for the group addresses. Instead of referring to "group address 15", you can use a descriptive "tag", such as "kitchen light".
     
    Darren, Aug 16, 2004
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  6. UK Household Automation

    Gavin Nation

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    I have one very large project with CBus controlling Minder and Minder contorlling CBus on differing tasks.
    I have found a few things to be careful of. If you set a scene in CBus, Minder will not necessarily track all of the group addresses if they do not physically exist. I was using a scene from a CTouch to send flags to Minder, they did not always work. I did find however that Minder would always send commands back to CBus if it ran a 'Scene'. The best way I can think of it is Minder has a sort of output buffer but not an input buffer for phantom groups.

    Gavin
     
    Gavin Nation, Aug 18, 2004
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  7. UK Household Automation

    Tonyo

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    Lost flags

    On my system I have some keys set as press rather than toggle. If I press one say 3 times I should get 3 on/off sequences in minder. This does not happen if I press relatively quickly. I was not sure whether the lost on/off pairs where because of delays in the c-bus network or minder.

    I don't have a touch pad. Can you put delays between flag sends? This might help.
    Tonyo
     
    Tonyo, Aug 19, 2004
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  8. UK Household Automation

    Advantex

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    I did achieve something similar to what you appear to be trying to do a long time ago. If I remember correctly I set the key input as a timer (thus sending a short pulse with each push). I remember having trouble with minders logic to drive a counter from this as it would double count on occasion - maybe I ran a separate scenario with self exclusion to do the counting, can't remember. Food for thought.
     
    Advantex, Aug 19, 2004
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  9. UK Household Automation

    Clinton's Electrical

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    Minder Telephone? GSM

    The Minder GSM module??????
    Is There A GSM Telephone interface? Also Can Anyone Tell Me What Other Stuff is Avail For my Trusty minder Mk2 ?...
    I Know This Is A Old Post But Iv's Just Seen it Now, Any help And Minder Software Links Greatly Appreciated.. Thanks:D
     
    Clinton's Electrical, Mar 28, 2006
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  10. UK Household Automation

    rhamer

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    rhamer, Mar 29, 2006
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