Heritage switches

Hello.

Is there ever a chance that there will be a Heritage Range of C-bus developed for us ?behind the times? Queenslanders. Have had one instance where a customer was half heartedly enquiring about C-bus products but decided against it because they were building a Queenslander style home and wanted to keep it authentic. I suspect that they were just playing with me anyway because they were not showing a lot of interest in the alternatives, but it got me thinking about how I could make this work in a wireless for existing homes of this type. Is there a wireless Bus Coupler in production or in the pipeline? I am assuming that someone has had this type of Heritage requirement situation. Is there a way of making it work?

Also, if I can ask a brain dead style question, I have just started using Tool Kit and am wondering why the B&W touch screen can?t seem to see any wireless groups. I haven?t really had a decent play with it yet but is there something I am overlooking? I have vague recollections of new software??????

 

Currenlty the updated C-Touch software that supports accessing the Toolkit database is in BETA. To get a copy (and make sure you read the beta conditions) go here.

http://www.cbusforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=634

 

Use a bus coupler to connect up a heritage switch

If you want to keep the heritage look and still use C-Bus then one way to do it is to use the Bus Coupler. It's a C-Bus switch manufactured to be crammed into the space behind a normal switch. You could have any old switch on the wall and this is then connected to a Bus Coupler in behind it. The user sees an authentic 19th century brass switch on the wall but it's all C-Bus behind the scenes.

 

Fair enough. I guess a Bus Coupler connected to a Gateway would be the best solution. Would this work if there was enough space?

 

Why wouldn't you use a L5504AUX unit? That way you will be able to utilise all 4 channels as opposed to only using one on a bus coupler. It also makes fault finding easier if all the control equipment is in a cabinet as opposed to hidden behind a switch. Someone else may be able to tell you how far the switches can be from an AUX unit, I don't have the literature with me at the moment. I've used several of them so that I could use the architrave switches that were already installed in my house. I hope one day Clipsal will manufacture a tactile switch in an architrave style and then interface to a L5504AUX or bus coupler. Someone may already be achieving this by other means??

 

Hmmmm! I guess that would be useful! Sorry, wasn't thinking. Glad I didn't try it though.

 

We just rewired a 10,000 sq ft home using heritage switches and bus couplers. I agree it seems a waste (and expensive!) to use just 1 or 2 of the inputs on each coupler. Needless to say in the whole place there was just one opportunity to share a coupler between 2 back-to-back switches!

Clipsal said there simply isn't enough interest to justify a C-Bus heritage option.

Interesting that people say you can use any switch with bus couplers. We went bellpress all the way having heard anecdotal stories about possibly needing to switch twice if some other toggle has changed the group's state. Obviously we needed bellpress for the dimmers but can we use normal toggles for relays, even if there are 5 switches per group?

 

Using bus couplers with "toggle" switches (ones that can sit in either the ON or OFF state... I call them bistable switches) should not be a problem. I haven't tried this recently, but if you make the Just Pressed function (in the advanced tab), as well as the Short Release and also the Long Release functions ALL "toggle", then any change of state of the switch will change the state of the load. If the switch is left in either state and another unit on the same group issues a toggle, everything will work just fine, and the indicator will show the correct state of the load. The only dicey aspect of this arrangement is during power-up, where all the switches which were in the "on" state will issue a command to change the state of the group.. resulting in flashing .. despite setting all groups to power-up in the OFF state.

Some work is going on at this very moment toward improvements to the bus coupler which will take into account this particular problem, and will allow you to use C-Bus wherever you would normally use two-pole and intermediate switches in a conventional multi-way switched installation.

Don

 

Yes, you can use normal toggle switches on the Bus Coupler but you must understand the behaviour.

The group address will be at the state of the last switch to be thrown. For example, if you have 5 toggle switches and you turn switch number 4 off then the group address will be off, even though switches 1, 2, 3 and 5 are mechanically in the on state.

The double-switching you're referring to is probably for the situation where someone is at switch 2 (for example) and they want to turn the light on (because it has been turned off elsewhere) yet the switch is in the on position. They need to turn the switch off (which turns off the group address again) and then turn the switch on.

To work around this problem you can change the programming in the Bus Couplers by changing the key microfunctions so that you get a toggle of the load state when ANY switch changes state. It will then work in much the same way 2-way switching works except that you can have theoretically up to 400-way switching (100 bus couplers x 4 inputs each)!

Change your key microfunctions in the bus coupler to TOGGLE TOGGLE IDLE TOGGLE. The group address will then change it's state whenever any of the switches is flicked.

This will work irrespective of whether the toggle switches controlling the one group are on the same or different bus coupler units.

 

Heritage switches...

Thanks for the response.

FWIW the bellpress switches aren't a problem- even technophobes seem to enjoy dimming the lights up and down with a switch and they soon catch on about short pushes.
IMHO it is smart to use bellpress for a new heritage install because then it is easy to implement or change dimmer vs relay etc when people change their minds. Bellpress is slightly cheaper than toggle as well... so that's great news about the bus couplers, but whatever you don't increase the cost ;-)