How does it all work

I built a new house almost 5 years ago and had a full Clipsal C-bus/Minder system installed. They are controlled from 4 keypads and about a year ago I had a touch screen installed.

My problem is I don't know how any of it works! The lights are OK - they turn on and off when you walk into and out of rooms etc. The smoke alarm just went off and I had know idea how to turn it off. Having spent a small fortune having all this gear installed, I feel it should do more.

Is there such a thing as a "dummies" book for C-Bus/Minder users? I have both programmes set up on my laptop - I come home, plug the cable into the laptop and then just look at the thing. Surely there must be a really user friendly instruction book for simple buggers like me!

Can anyone help?

 

Bill

We are all dummies here . No seriously, I feel for your statement. When I first installed a system, I was guided by the sales rep for CIS by phone and some basic 'this is what you can do' concept drawings. I was scheduled for the training courses, however, due to lack of numbers, they were postponed. Unfortunately, the owner of the house wanted the system programmed and commissioned so they could move in.

This was a Home-Minder, telephone card, keypad, many dimmers, relay units, sensors and light level detector and some relay interface to a separate security alarm. I KNEW NOTHING! I had the manuals, read and played for hours upon hours, days upon days. Phoned Australia often (they musta thought I was a really thick) for help, got some, but in some ways got answers I could not understand - didn't gell if ya know what I mean.

Anyway, cut a long story short, I experiemented, tried, failed, failed again and occassionally successed my way to some insite into how it all works. I come from a PLC background and these devices are by no means PLC's. I had trouble understanding the terminology, the structure, the logic, the program scanning, the network the 'everything'.

Now, I am no expert by any stretch of the imagination, but from thousands of trial and error attempts, I do understand what this system cannot do (or at least I have been unable to do efficiently). So I feel for where you are comming from. In this forum, there are a lot of good minds.

THIS TOPIC COULD BE WORTH PERSUING GUYS!!! If Bill was to pose the questions, are we skilled enough to teach a non trained person based on our own experiences in 'non technical terms' (thus showing where the "HELP" is lacking)? Next, in doing so, we will share our own discoveries, clarify the vague and enlighten others etc.

The best way is to go on the installer courses, however I have proved that you can learn without these (because by the time I got to go, I already knew - by trial and error - all of the stuff they taught me bar a few points).

Can we do this? I for one will try to answer any question Bill poses.

 

Bill, it sounds like you have two problems. In the first instance if you don't know how to react when something like your fire alarm goes off, then frankly that is a problem between yourself and who ever set up your system. They should of told you or left instructions on what to do in that event. It all depends upon how they set it up to what you can do. Same too for the issue of it needing to do more. What do you want it to do? If you don't know what you want it to do, the system will not tell you. Sorry if it sounds rude!

As for the programming side of thing something like C-Bus isn't the kind of thing most users would need to get into the programing of. In theory it should be not much different to a standard house in that its set-up by a professional to do what the client wants, and if it doesn't do what the client wants then they get the pro to come back in to fix it. How many people really care about how standard light switches work, and imagine if they had just a little amount of knowledge the damage they could to to themselves and their system if they tried to change things! Same deal for C-Bus and minder too.

That being said there will be people such as yourself who might want to 'play' I taught myself minder and C-Bus just by reading the manuals with the software. I'm not an integrator or sparkie, I'm a communications tech with some software experiance and it was easy for me to pick up, but without a back ground like that or some other technical and software experiance it may well have been hard. I learnt through trial and error, C-Bus was easy but Minder not so easy. The biggest thing with minder was the principle of all lines being executed at once and not sequentaly! But I think I've got it worked out now, it does what I want and is stable. The programming may not be ideal but it does work. I would imagine it would be difficult for anyone to write a C-Bus for dummies book, the market wouldn't be there for it, it is assumed I guess that anyone fiddling with C-Bus and Minder would at least have a technical background, so everything is aimed at them.

 

Forum as Help

Hi Bill,
I am like Ashley. I am a technical programmer but know little about the hardware. I wanted a system that I could change around by software and have learnt things by trial and error. I feel the object of these forums is to share knowledge because products like Clipsal will not be general market for a while yet. I don't expect you will see "dummy" guides. So pose a problem and we will see what we can do.

 

Have a look here

http://www.clipsal.com/cis/lit_installtraining_trainmanuals.php3

Bill,

There are quite a few training manuals provided on the CIS website above.....

Michael