Environment Tab, Corridor Linking and Join Mode

A brief explanation might help (I'm hoping updates to help files will come soon...)

Join

Used where you have things like a room with a split / divider down the middle. When the divider is open you have one large room and want the key unit to control everything in there. And when the divider is closed, you have 2 smaller rooms. In that case you want the ket unit to control only those lights in the (new, smaller) room in the immediate vicinity.

Join allows you to have something like a microswitch in the track of the split / divider so you can sense when the divider is opened or closed. You hook it up to a bus coupler. Then you can change the personality of the key unit depending on the state of the divider, by appropriate programming of the bus coupler.

The way that joint works, under the hood, is much the same as the way KEYSETS work on cbus wireless units.

Think of a 4 key NEO, for example, being made up of two separate 4 key switches: a set of 4 that applies when the divider is open, and another set that applies when the divider is closed. Each set can be programmed separately.

Through the magic of having 8 blocks in a 4 key switch, all you are doing is changing the offset (keys map to block 0..3 or 4..7) depending on the state of the divider.

TYPICALLY you will set this up by putting the bus coupler in the ENABLE CONTROL application, then picking an enable group, and setting it to switch between ON and OFF depending on the state of the microswitch.

THEN you key to you key unit and set the Join function to use ENABLE CONTROL as well, and the same enable group number. You will notice when you do this that a bunch of extra keys and blocks appear in the TK simple view, and in the blocks tab. You then set up your CLOSE / OPEN operations.

Seeing as I have not opened up this part of TK in ages, I can't give the gory details in tutorial form, but this is the principle. From here you should know enough to go have a play.

Corridor Linking

Suppose you have a corridor with a bunch of offices going off it (or rooms in your house, whatever).

Now if I enter through the corridor and turn its lights on, ideally, if I just leave we want them to turn off again after some timeout. So we can put a timer on the corridor ON button to achieve this, alls well.

Now suppose I go into an office, off that corridor, and turn its lights on. THEN IN THAT CASE, I want to keep the corridor lights on indefinitely. If I have multiple offices off that corridor (and it could be any number), then when ANY office is occupied (and lights are on) we want to keep the corridor lights on. In other words, we want the state of the office lights to override the timer-off function of the corridor lighting. Remember also that the corridors and offices are all using different groups.

Corridor Linking allows you to set this scenario up, through the magic of all those units playing around in a LINK GROUP.

Again, I've not been through the gory detail in TK for some time so I can't give you the chapter and verse, but again, there should be enough from that above description to get you heading in the right direction. (This one IS a bit more obscure) Go play!

Note that not all units support Join and Corridor Linking. Everything shipped in the last 12-18 months should. The features have been dormant for some time and we have finally had the time and ability to finish the last piece of the puzzle with TK support. Look like help files got missed, though.

 

NP.

Yes. You are very unlikely these days to purchase a unit without secondary application, and in fact most of those that support the secondary app will support Corridor Linking and Join.

Running changes are periodically made and released into the market, usually without any great fanfare. It can take a *long* time in some cases for existing stock to flush through the supply pipeline (factory-> distribution centre -> wholesaler -> installer -> found in the back of the van -> installed).

In some cases a new feature will be introduced but not announced until 6-12 months later, this to allow the supply pipeline to flush through. It's still easy get caught by this with wholesalers or distribution centres that don't use FIFO, and then we find customers buying stock that was manufactured 2-3 years earlier. That part is out of our hands, and disappointing.