Enable Control application and state?

I hope someone could explain a situation that could arise when using the Enable Control application.

From the protocol documentation it is clear that each device needs to preserve the state of the Enable Control values over a power failure and that there is no query command to determine the state of a EC variable.

Here is a scenario I am thinking about and trying to find an answer for.

The network consists of two segments with a bridge in the middle. Segment 1 is the House network and segment 2 is a Shed network. From the House I want to disable all keypad input in the Shed network so I use the Enable Control application to disable all keypads in the shed.

Here comes the gotcha... I set the Enable Control group and value from segment 1 and all is well, the keypads in the shed are disabled to prevent someone toying around there. Next, the power goes down in the Shed and all keypads disconnect from the network. Later the day I get home and Enable the keypads again just to realise later that the Shed power has failed. I restore the power and bring the network back online.

The question is: With the keypads restoring the Enable Control values, will the Keypads still be in a Disabled state and if so how would I know that unless I walk there to test them?

Thanks,
Ingo

 

Hi Ingo,

Well, the answer depends on a couple of things:

If your Shed network is powered from a power supply inside the shed, and the ON-state of your Enable group enables the switches, then your switches will be disabled after a PF in the shed.
If, however, you have one of the touch screen models in the shed as well, and set it to recover Enable groups (set it for Colour Touch / default on B&W) then all is as it was before the PF.

If the power to your house goes down, then all should be fine, depending on your Touch Screen set-up, and on your Bridge set-up.

If you have no Touch Screen in the shed, but a logic capable device on the core network, then you can write a small logic code to set the relevant Enable group at regular intervals, based on the state it is in on the core network. That simply ensures that it's state is transmitted to the Shed network at regular intervals, which would take care of the desired setting a short while after power is restored to the shed.

Hope that this makes sense and helps.

 

Thanks Thomas, it's exactly as I thought.

There is no 'intelligence' on the Shed network apart from a few keypads so my only option is to use your suggestion of sending the state of the Enable Control variable periodically from the Core network.

Ingo