Ness M1 C-Bus Interface as Time Master

Hi,

There has been a long standing issue with the "Ness M1 C-Bus Interface" where it can generate clock messages but it doesn't play by the "Who should be the Time Master" rules and assumes it is the Time Master and messes things up as it gets the time wrong during daylight saving...

The upgrade at the time was to disable the sending of time messages to C-Bus but does anyone know if this has ever been corrected?

Alex Shepherd

 

Yeah, except I figured there would be people on this list who have banged their heads on this issue for a while and may already know the answer.

Given the lack of attention to detail that Ness have applied to this already I'm not confident they will even know what an interface to C-Bus is...

 

There has been no updates to the Ness M1 Cbus interface. The latest (V3) has the time bug as well as a number of limitations with the security protocol implementation.

 

See, I knew someone on this list would probably know the answer...

I've submitted a support request on their website - will post back here if I get an answer.

Alex

 

Well, I got a phone call from their National Customer Service Engineer this morning and he told me that the Daylight Saving issue has already been sorted in a M1 G main unit firmware update and he gave me the URL's to download the update tools.

However the other issues of "not playing by the C-Bus rules etc" he has not been able to resolve/clarify yet...

So probably enough progress for me to upgrade the M1 Gold main unit and try the C-Bus Time updates from the Ness again...

Alex

 

Just be aware that the M1 will broadcast it's time onto CBus every 5 hours (or whatever you set up) and will not listen to CBus time requests, so if someone changes the time via a CBus device the M1 will clobber it shortly after. I assume you have a ethernet interface on the M1 and have set it up to sync to internet time, otherwise using the M1 as a time master is pointless.

 

Yes, I do have the Ethernet interface and was syncing the time via that interface and it had been working ok during standard time, but screwed up when daylight saving started.

Alex