Linking 1 dimmer output to multiple relay outputs

I am struggling a bit with this...

pre c-bus - I have one rotary dimmer and five rocker switches in a grid. The five switches control five zones in a room and the dimmer operates all the zones together.

How do I replicate this behaviour using a single c-bus dimmer output and multiple relay outputs? I am happy for the channels to be grouped so that dimming any of them will dim the others but they each need to be switched separately. I don't want 5 seperate dimmer channels. The "on" lights should always all be at the same brightness.

Thanks

 

So you physically wire the output of the dimmer to the 5 relay inputs then have a separate group address for the dimmer and each of the 5 relays.

 

Thanks Ashley. The main problem then is if someone switches off the dimmer group then none of the inputs to control the relay groups will work. So I'm really looking for a way to hide the dimmer group completely and link it to all the relay groups. Or some other user-friendly way to ensure the relay group inputs always work. Does that make sense?

 

But if someone turns off the dimmer you want the lights to be off surely? Isn't that the whole point of the dimmer? And if the dimmer is off, the relay outputs will still work, but the lights will be off since the dimmer is at zero. If you then raise the dimmer level the lights for the relays turned on will come up.

If you always want a minimum dimming level for the lights turned on via the relays, just set a minimum level in the dimmer.

 

I want the dimmer to always be somewhere between a minimum (say 5%) and a maximum (say 100%) just like a conventional rotary dimmer (i.e. one without the push on/off feature) and then the switches/relays to always turn the zoned lights off or on to whatever level the dimmer is set. I did try setting the minimum dimming level but it was still possible to switch the dimmer group off completely which leads to a complaint that the 5 zone on/off switches have "stopped working".

 

If it's being turned off, something is doing that, so figure out what it is and disable it. You can set the channel to auto restore to 5% on startup in case of power failures.

Alternatively, you could set all the relay ga's to go on to 5% instead of 100% (the relays will turn on from anything not 0), then in the dimmer logic add the relay ga's and select max. So when any relay is on the dimmer will be at least 5%. Unfortunately you can only have 4 logic entries so this would only work with 4 of the switches. If you have spare block in the switch you could have another ga that gets set to 5% when any switch is on and just use that one in the logic.

If you have a logic unit, just test the dimmer ga and if it's less than 5%, set it to 5%.

 

Thanks again Ashley. That makes sense and is really helpful.