Dymanic DLT label modification

Been messing around with my DLT and using a button to send commands to my sonos audio system ()

I would like to display on the DLT the track name.

Right now, in cbus toolkit, I made the button an on/off toggle and gave it a group (group 94 actually) called "music", when I assigned it this group, it label was set to "music". Good enough.

Now, I am trying to modify that label using cgate. The docs seem to imply that something like this should work:
lighting label //WEBB/254/56 94 2 - text helloworld

I get a 200ok back from that command, however the DLT text does not change.
(I will note that c-gate sends a "status" message to me that looks like: lighting label //WEBB/254/56 94 2 - F0 0 68656C6C6F #sourceunit=1 OID=8dca58f0-2c5d-102f-bc8a-886e220fedb0 sessionId=cmd35 commandId={none})

Any idea what I am doing wrong?

 

The C-Gate command to label group 94, Variant 0 (referred to as Variant 1 in Toolkit) in English with the text "Hello World" is:

lighting label //PROJECT/254/56 1 94 - 0 48656C6C6F20576F726C64

The string of characters at the end is the Hexadecimal ASCII text for "Hello World".

For reference, the Pascal logic to do this is:

Code:

SetStringIBSystemIO("Label Group Text", 254, 56, 94, Variant1, 'Hello World');

 

Thanks Darren! Your example worked like a charm.

I will also note here that if you dont want to convert stuff over to HEX, you can also just use something like:
lighting label //WEBB/254/56 1 94 - text hello

Which will print "hello" on the button. Any disadvantage to doing it in this manner?

Thanks.

 

This seems like a great way to communicate the status of other systems.

Is there any implications with continuously writing to the non-volatile storage of the DLT's? ie. Can I change the labels every hour without concerns for the longevity of the DLT?

 

@andy, I'd like to know this as well, for instance if I update the outside temperature on a dlt label every 5 minutes or so is that bad?

 

The labels on DLTs are stored in non-volatile memory. That memory has a stated minimum lifetime of 100,000 writes. If you are changing the DLT label hourly this will cause the memory to wear out in 11.4 years. If you are changing the label every 5 minutes this will wear out the memory in 347 days, so this is definitely a bad idea.

 

If you have 2.1 version DLT's they are about to spontaneously combust....their flash is only rated around 10,000 write cycles. As Newman pointed out not smart using DLT's for a lot of dynamically changing labels.

 

The 10,000 cycles probably came from the earliest C-Bus microcontroller. Back then, we were limited to a small memory array rated at 10,000 erase - write cycles. Not a problem for storing static parameters like group addresses, etc., and saving levels for power recovery was handled in various ways to ensure a product life of at least 20 years under the most demanding conditions.
This early microcontroller was used in DLT at one stage, but DLT labels were never stored in the 10,000 cycle memory. The labels were in fact managed by a second microcontroller and stored in a different memory.

 

Hi Ashleigh,

10,000 was what I was told the 2.1 version DLT write cycles were rated at. 100,000 when 3.0 was released.

Now have 10 out of 23 2.1 DLT failed here, stop working and won't hold their programming (and hour, a day a week, a month and they fail again). Started failing over 2 years ago when they were only 15 months in service and they just keep dropping off the perch. Suspected is the write cycles exhausted but not yet confirmed.

Clispal system expert spent half a day going a complete system check here and it passed 100%. There is nothing erroneous on log either after a few days of monitoring.

So the 10,000 cycles I referred to came from Clipsal only reporting back what I was told.

Regards,

Fleetz