How to connect laptop to configure lighting

Hi,

I have moved into a house that has Clipsail CBUS lighting installed. I have downloaded the CBUS toolkit and have plugged my laptop into the LAN cable shown in the picture but seems to short the CBUS as the CBUS lights go out and none of the light switches work, plus I am unable to open the network on the toolkit.
What do I need to do differently please?

Many thanks

 

Hi,

you need a cbus interface to connect your laptop to the cbus network. The most common one would be USB.
Once you do connect you will need to find out what each cbus group does.
If you need any onsite help let us know as we cover the whole of the uk.

 

Further to Ben's comments, don't ever just plug in a device because the plugs fit. While Cbus uses RJ45 connectors it is not an ethernet network and you can potientially break things. Lots of devices uses these RJ45 plugs these days because they are cheap and convenient and easy to install. You can do serious damage if you don't understand what you are doing. The same goes for any type of plug. Just because they fit together, doesn't mean they are elctrically compatible.

In addition to the USB interface mentioned, you can also get a serial interface used in conjunction with a good quality USB to serial converter. These often appear cheaply on Ebay.