NESS D16x Reports Wrong Zone Numbers

I have a NESS D16x V7.8 and a MiniCentral V1.1 C-Bus interface.

I am writing an interface to it using the C-Bus security application and I have found what I believe to be a bug (by NESS) and wanted to get others opinions.

The Security Application protocol has several messages that can be sent from the panel onto the C-Bus network that contain an argument called Zone Number.
An example is as follows;

05 64 D0 00 0A 86 16 21

This is a zone unsealed message for zone ?

According to the protocol documents it should be Zone 22 i.e. 16 hex = 22 dec, and this is how it is reported using the C-Bus diagnostic utility.

However it was generated from the D16x by unsealing zone 16.

Further experiments reveal the obvious, NESS are reporting their zones as ASCII coded Decimal instead of ASCII coded Hex which is used in every other part of C-Bus communications.

Now this presents a problem, as I can easily write code to handle this, but then it is not universal C-Bus Security Application code, and other manufactures probably do the right thing.

I'm even more concerned about the different versions C-Bus interface in earlier D16's (before MiniCentral) and even the M1 from the same manufacturer.

As far as I'm aware there is no way of querying the device to try and figure out what sort of panel it is, and therefore what encoding system it uses.

So my questions are;

1. Does anybody actually think what they are doing is correct?
2. Does anybody have a D16 or HomeSafe with the early C-Bus interface that they can do a test for me? (watch the output on the C-Bus diagnostics utility and unseal zone 16 and post the message).
3. Do the same thing on an M1 and any other panel that supposedly supports the C-Bus Security Application.

Any help would be gratefully appreciated.

Oh, and I know this is not a C-Bus bug, but I wanted to solicit comments from some of the old timers here if I can, as well as the usually very helpful community, before talking to NESS.

Cheers

Rohan

 

Well I have tried explaining the problem to NESS, but unfortunately I got the guy who's first words were "I know nothing about MiniCentral".

Fortunately I was aware of a firmware update (V1.2)for Mini central, and the NESS guy was helpful in getting that to me. Unfortunately it didn't make any difference, the bug remains.

I have detailed it all in an email to them, but so far, no response. There is however a security expo on at the moment that NESS are exhibiting at, so they might be a bit light on resources right now. I'll give them a bit longer, but I'm not holding my breath.

It does pose the question though, is the D16x with MiniCentral a C-Bus Enabled & Certified product?

Cheers

Rohan

 

And yet there is more;

I have discovered if you set up event notifications in MiniCentral to manipulate C-Bus group addresses when Zones change, it too suffers the same Decimal/Hex problem.

i.e. if you want a C-Bus group address to change when zone 16 becomes unsealed (for example) then you have to set it up for Zone 22.

This is definitely a BUG!

Cheers

Rohan

 

I will run this up the ladder at Ness Corp, they had committed to re-certificating the Mini-Central interface but it never took place.
Thanks for providing the info.

 

I was going to test it before I posted here, but so you know, they have just emailed me with a Beta fix to try.

I'll test it first thing tomorrow.

Thanks for pushing it along Don.

Cheers

Rohan

 

Hi All,

Thanks to DonB for bringing this to my attention that there was a post re this.

One of our new service support staff brought this to my attention last week while we were all tied up at the Security Expo, however we did raise this to our software engineers for them to review and fix if required while we were at the show

As a result when MiniCentral was released back in 2011 it read the D8 zone fine. However between then and now there was a slight change in the D8x/D16X protocols that was not changed in MiniCentral to comply with the change, that is now causing this issue.

The good news is we have now made a firmware update to fix this issue that we are now testing.

Rohan, I am presuming it was you who contacted our support staff, making us aware of this issue. I have requested our support staff to make a beta firmware update for the MiniCentral available to you should you wish to test it before we release it. It can be firmware update onsite.

Thanks for your understanding with this slip up.

Regards,

Greg Kingsley
Product Manager
Ness Corporation.

 

Yep it was me that reported it to your tech support.

I have the Beta version, and I'll let you know how it goes.

Thank you for the quick response.

Cheers

Rohan

 

I can confirm that the Beta version has fixed the two issues.

I assume when released it will have a different version number, as mine is still reporting V1.2 which is the same as the previous version

Cheers

Rohan