Controlling my Channel Shutter Relay with my Pronto

I use a Pronto 9400 to control my Cbus. I've successfully programmed it to control both my lights (wireless) and my thermostat (wired). I now want to program it to control a newly acquired shutter relay.

On the advice of the Cbus installation firm that I bought the relay from, I have set it up as a lighting application. I can now choose it to be in either 'level translation' or 'proportional' mode.

In proportional mode: I can fully open or close it with my Pronto but cannot seem to be able to stop the opening or closing halfway (which is something that I really need to do as it is controlling a Vergola). Ditto my wall switches. I had assumed that this could potentially be done using preset dimmer levels, but the shutter relay does not seem to accept these (note that none of my switches are dimmable ones).

In level translation mode: I can issue open/stop/close commands from my wall switches but have no idea how to construct the corresponding Pronto commands. This is because there is no lighting command to mimic the shutter functions in Toolkit.

One obvious potential possibility would be to use some application other than the lighting one but (unlike my thermostat) I can't see one that would be suitable.

Any thoughts?

 

If you can send preset dimmer levels onto the C-Bus network, the shutter relay should be able to partially open or close your blinds.

The way that the shutter relay keeps track of the position of the blinds, is through timing/
In order to judge how long to leave the motors running to reach some intermediate position, the shutter relay must be configured with a 'failsafe' time close to the full time it takes the motors to run from open to fully closed or vice-versa.

It may be that you have set a 'failsafe' time too long for your vergola.

 

Don,

Thanks for the reply.

My failsafe time is set at 00:03, which I assume is 3 seconds. The Vergola takes 2.5 seconds to fully open or close.

Your comments seem to relate to 'proportional mode'. In this mode, if I use Toolkit to set a button to on/off then it works fine (fully opening/closing). If, however, I set the button to a preset or increment, then pressing the button has no effect. Is this because my buttons/switches are not dimmable ones? Are you saying that if I do the same thing with my Pronto then it should work ok?

 

Yes, Sorry.. I was referring to 'Proportional' mode. However if you issue a command to set a group level to 50%, this will work in either mode, and it works the same way in each mode.

All buttons / switches in C-Bus are capable of issuing commands to set groups to any level. The distinction between what happens with this level is in the output device (relay, dimmer, shutter relay, etc. (the shutter relay DOES respond to levels so is in some ways similar to a dimmer).
You can configure any C-Bus button or switch to issue a recall level command by using Toolkit (and you can define the level freely), even if that button / switch is used to control a relay. When you are in Toolkit, you can select the key 'microfunction' to use in the advanced tab.

Note: The functions 'Upkey' or 'Downkey', will start a ramp to either 100% or minimum, and will not stop half way unless you use an 'Endramp' command. These are NOT appropriate commands for controlling the shutter relay.

The most appropriate commands for controlling a shutter relay are the 'Recall' commands. You can see in Toolkit what happens when you use a level translation setup for the key - it will select a Recall command and set the recalled level to either minimum, maximum, or a level close to one of the extremes (the Shutter relay reacts to levels near the limits of travel in level translation mode to achieve some special behaviours).

If your pronto can trigger scenes, you can also use scene levels to control shutter relays in proportional mode.

It should all be there.

 

Don,

Again thanks for the helpful reply.

At the moment, I'm trying to get things working using Cbus buttons rather than the Pronto (if I can do the former then I can probably do the latter).

As per earlier in the thread, programming a button to on/off works fine. However, if I program the button to any preset/dimmer things then pressing the button usually simply has no effect. About one in ten times, it does do something but that something appears to be random in terms of opening/closing.

My current configuration is:

In the 'block' tab of the unit:
Recall 1: set to 30%.
Recall 2: set to 70%.

In the 'key functions' tab of the unit:
Short press: set to idle.
Short release: set to Recall 1.
Long press: set to Recall 2.
Long release: set to idle.
Double press: set to idle.

I presume that the Recall percentages are proportions of the fail safe time(?).

 

It sounds like you're using an older version of Toolkit. To make this clearer, Toolkit 1.11.x now just has a checkbox to turn on the Level Translation Mode, as the non-translated levels are always used to calculate a proportional position for the blinds, regardless of whether the Level Translation Mode checkbox is ticked.

With your current setup, when the Shutter Relay receives a "set to 30%" command, it will try and put the blinds in the "30% open" position. To do this, it will be doing the following:

• taking the Fail-safe time (3 seconds in your case),
• working out how long it needs to run the blinds from closed to get there (30% of 3s = 0.9 seconds),
• comparing that to it's current position (which could be anywhere)
• calculating the direction and duration of run-time to get there
• running the blinds for that duration of time

Given the very short run-times you're expecting, the change-over delay may be coming into effect here. Say the blinds are at 40% and you send a "set to 30%". The calculated run-time required for the blinds would be 10% of 3 seconds, so 0.3 seconds. The Shutter Relay change-over delay of 0.5 seconds would mean that the unit can't successfully run the blinds for such a short interval.

As Nick says, I would get the Diagnostic Utility. Try sending messages to the unit until you achieve your desired behaviour. Then, you just need to program your pronto or key units to generate the same messages. One step at a time.

 

The resolution of the failsafe time when failsafe timer is set to under 32 seconds is 125 milliseconds. When the failsafe timer is set to over 32 seconds, the resolution is 1 second.

Change-over delay does not affect the timing of the contact close time - only affects the time between changes in direction

What you are trying to do should be possible.

 

Thank you both for your replies - this really is a very good forum.

I downloaded the diagnostic tool and the ramp commands work fine (subject to the caveat below). I then used the button and it now works fine! Maybe the diagnostic tool, or the 'random' commands that I sent using it, somehow initialised the 0% and 100% levels.

The one caveat is that the Vergola position of any particular X% varies over time. In other words, if I toggle between, say, 30% and 70% then the corresponding Vergola positions move (by around 20%) each toggle. I assume that this is because of the difference between the fail safe time (3 seconds) and the actual time that it takes for the Vergola to fully open (2.5 seconds). Is there any way of setting the fail safe to 2.5 seconds (Toolkit only offers levels in whole seconds)?

 

Excellent that you are making some progress!

And thanks for the positive comment on the forum.
We appreciate hearing about these issues, becuse I suppose in part we are defending our designs, but also some of the applications show up areas that we could improve upon.

I'm afraid the failsafe time resolution is limited to seconds. Most blinds / curtains, etc. we played with in developing this product were pretty slow in spanning their range. I might be able to suggest an improvement with a bit more thought, but in the mean time I do know one thing that may help:

Each time the group controlling the shutter relay is set to either OFF (0%) or 100%, and the failsafe time is reached, the relay resets its internal reference, so that any level adjustment from that point on is as accurate as possible. If you are issuing commands from something with a bit of processing ability, you could issue a command to either fully open or fully close the vergola (pick one so that the reference is always the same), then after waiting ample time for the failsafe to be reached, issue a command to your desired final level. Not ideal, I know, but it should be better than what you are seeing now.

 

Thanks again Don.

Yes, I had realised that the way to get everything back in sync was to fully close the Vergola. With your assistance I've now got the button working as I want it (short press to open to my ideal position and long press to fully close).

A final question if I may, which relates to getting my Pronto controlling things. The way I got my (wireless) buttons communicating with my (wired) relay was to set up a 'dummy' group on the wireless network with the same address as the 'real' group on the wired network (a bit odd but someone told me that this was the way to do it). In principle, it seems to me that my Pronto could now work by either utilising the dummy group or the real group. Is this right? I ask because the way that the Pronto communicates with wired applications is (I think) rather different than the way it communicates with wireless applications, and I am much more familiar with the latter.

 

I don't know a great deal about the Pronto, but I may be able to shed some light here.

The way you were told to configure the 'dummy' group is right. The C-Bus wireless gateway is the interface between wired and wireless networks, and each network can operate independently or as one big network. When configured as one big network, simple messages sent on the wireless side are received by the gateway, and forwarded on to the wired network by the gateway. Likewise, messages on the wired network are forwarded to the wireless side. Because the gateway does no interpretation of the message data payload, the group affected by the message will the same on both the wired and wireless media.The 'dummy' groups in this case are not really dummies - they are THE SAME group when the two networks are operating as one big network.

If your pronto is connected to the wired side (Via a CNI, I presume?), and the pronto (and the CNI) is configured to send simple messages of the same form as C-Bus key units, the wireless gateway will forward the messages to the wireless side. If you can configure the pronto to send internetwork messages (specify the wireless network as part of the message), then you can force messages to appear ONLY on the wireless network. Toolkit always uses internetwork messages when you configure wireless units, but it is unusual to use such messages for simple lighting / shutter control.

I expect you will be able to send simple messages on the wired network and rely on the wireless gateway to forward.

 

Don,

Once more, thanks.

I've now got it all working on the Pronto, including feedback. The same commands as for the wireless lights worked fine and, after a bit of reading, I got the script working to process the feedback 'nibbles'.

Yes, I am using CNI.