New User Guidance needed

I think perhaps you are both right. I will look in to having C-BUS removed from my house and replacing it with an alternative product.

My thanks to everyone for the lively discussion. It has been a real eye opener. Your comments have convinced me that this is not really a product designed for home use.

 

Many many many installations say otherwise. You just need to know what you are doing or pay someone who knows what they are doing. You don't seem to want to do either. But it is the products fault. Right?

 

It is not a question of 'fault'. No one is looking for any blame here? It is merely a question of product fit. I have been told over and over in this thread that my two choices are either:

1. Go on all the CLIPSAL training courses and spend hours a hours becoming an expert. However, I have been told that it is very complicated and this may take years to master.
2. Pay an expert to come to my house every time I want to change my lighting levels etc

Neither of these options strike me as options for a product targeted at the home market.

I have tried to highlight in this thread some of what I see as product short comings but it seems that no one else agrees. That is perfectly fine; everyone is entitled to their opinion.

I am delighted to hear that C-BUS has many happy customers but I don't think I want to be one of them. However, I wish you all every success.

 

really...

I spent 2 years a dev some years ago before I moved onward and upward. It literally took me a weekend of playing and reading (much of the training documents can be found online) before I was confident enough to make extensive changes to my system. The toolkit software certainly isn't aimed at your average mum&dad but it's not particular hard either - cbus/cgate pretty much logs everything so with a bit of patience the answer can usually be found. I'm struggling to believe someone with 30 years dev experience can't get their head around this but perhaps that's where the problem is. 30 years is a long time ago. Apologies if my response isn't as polite as everyone else's has been maybe I just find technology easier because 30 years ago I was just a twinkle in my father's eye.

 

The cost to remove the entire CBus network and replace it with something else would be absurd.

For your sake I recommend you get someone out to set up the home to your liking.
Maybe get them to walk you through some of the programming.
Maybe you should consider having the Wiser disconnected.
Even that is not a straight forward task.

There should be no doubt that having a Wiser at the premises massively increases the CBus learning curve.

My own background is much less tech orientated than yours.
Until you know how the system works I think it is very hard to understand why things are done the way they are.
CBus is not so simple and I don't know if anything like it could be.
The basic architecture was designed in mind with high reliability and I think the products do that well.

CBus is not cheap, it's not simple and it's not for every home but I think it will be cheapest for you to work with what you have.

 

Totaly agree

Totaly agree with last comment , and if there is another system that would tick requirements fully please let us all know.

 

I don't quite follow this comment. Take a TV for example. It is designed for a user to use it, just like C-bus, but when it breaks do you expect the user to be able to fix it? No.

Yet you seem to think because you cannot fix c-bus yourself it is not suitable for the home market. Though of course if you were to actually listen and learn from people on here you might have a fighting chance with c-bus. Would love to see you get advice on fixing a TV on the net.

 

Are you deliberately trying to miss the point or is this really how you feel? I find it difficult to believe that you are really comparing the usability of C-BUS with that of a television.

Let me try again. The main point is this. My C-BUS is not broken. It is working as designed. In fact it is not only working but it is already installed and set up. All I want to do is change some of the lighting settings. If one was to use your analogy what I want to do is change the brightness setting on my TV. Surely you would agree that a TV that requires you to call out an engineer at $100/hr to change your brightness setting is a TV that is not designed for the home market. I can't help thinking that such a TV would not be popular.

 

Ashley W makes a very good point.
If you want someone to help you make some changes all you have to do is ask.
If you find it all a bit too hard and don't want to try or pay someone to do it there is nothing anyone here can do to change that.
Can't you see that?

 

I can assure you complaining that you wish it was all done some other way is not going to help.
That should really be quite obvious by now.

 

TV analogy your not trying to change the brightness your trying to change the underlying code.

C-bus is not designed to be user changed. It is designed to do what it is programmed to do, with some units proving some level of user interaction, schedules etc through wse for example. But if you want to change it, you need to reprogram it. But reprogramming is NOT a user function, unless you invest time (like I have) in learning the system. Note I am not an integrator, nor a sparky, I am a communications tech who just happens to have an interest in the system and have invested the time to understand how it works so I can do it myself. It isn't a 5 minute job.

So for the umpeenth time you either need to invest time in learning or hire someone.

 

What about changing the colour temp and individual RGB levels to ensure the TV is displaying a calibrated picture - that's not a user friendly process..... (Ever herd of service menu's - not there for the public to use and often not that user friendly - and just like C-Bus toolkit, is not meant for the general public - at least Clipsal allow the general public access to do it if they choose to, they could have gone down the path of approved installers only - which would have stopped you in your tracks straight away and there would be no such complaints at all)

C-Bus is not built for the back-end to be changed by the user - but consideration was given to this with learn mode being added (not indicating that it was successful though).

Just as with the TV analogy, C-bus has features that are presented to the user in a simplistic fashion so that dumb public (DP) can manage to use it (e.g. dimming). More involved configuration/setup requires a certain degree of knowledge and understanding and is not so user friendly. As you can appreciate, no manufacturer is going to spend time in creating a DP interface for something that 95% of them wont use and that is for an experience users.

Stop and think, who are the various layers of C-Bus aimed at?

 

'Stop and think' ? Really? Have you tried taking your own advice?

The principal job of C-BUS in the home is to switch the lights on. You make it sound as though I am trying to do something really complicated. I appreciate that C-BUS does allow you to do really complicated things - I haven't seen it do that since I live in a house - but I am willing to take your word for it. What I want to do couldn't really be simpler. I want to press a button and have the lights in my lounge come on at 30%. I appreciate that if I wanted my lights to flash alternative colours at 5 second intervals that there would probably need to be some programming involved. But luckily I don't want that; I just want them to act like a normal light switch.

However, some how you think the TV analogy to this is 'changing the colour temp and individual RGB levels' of my TV screen.

I agree that service menus tend to be more complicated than the normal interface but they are there for when you want to do something that is not 'normal' operation.

I would argue that wanting to set the lighting levels at a button press would be a normal operation for an automation system designed for the home. Since in order to do this I need to install the toolkit and PICED, install configurations files, and everything else I can only conclude that this product isn't really designed for home use.

Naturally you are going to disagree with me since you all seem totally entrenched in the C-BUS way of doing things but surely you can concede that my argument has some logic.

 

Your first post you said you want to change scenes, not just dim a light to 30%.

Now if you want to dim to 30% then that is simple, but again needs tool kit and you need to know what you are doing.

You want to change scenes stored in a wiser and triggered from your keypads, not so simple, that requires code.

And speaking of scenes the whole idea is the owner tells the installer what they want to achieve, they program it to achieve that goal. They are not designed to be user changed.

And good luck getting other products to do what you want in a user friendly manner.

 

Hi MqGuy,

I have tried to keep an open mind to the logic of your ongoing arguments, but lately you seem (to me anyway) to be purposely trolling a highly technical and experienced group of people who are only here in their own time to help you and other users. Why is that??? To save possibly $200-$300 paying someone who knows what they are doing customising your home C-Bus network for you exactly the way you want it and at the same time giving you some obviously needed skills transfer?

The collective time wasted for the engineers on this forum watching your thread is alarming and far exceeds the $200 value of fixing your problem.

You suggest you will consider removing C-Bus and replacing it with something else. Does the $30k-$50K likely spent to do that seem like a smart option for you to avoid the odd $200 house call? or to avoid learning a small and I think relatively easy tool that a very large number of my clients from similar technical backgrounds to yours have mastered in a few hours and use frequently? I have clients who are bankers, accountants, IT guys, plumbers etc all able to use it. Why not you?

The quote above is different from your first requests which were about changing a room scene. What you have asked now seems a digression from your earlier argument and is simply accomplished with Toolkit.....one button-one light preset level (takes 30 seconds once network is open in Toolkit). Just assign a 'preset' level to the button. I have added JPGs below (relating to your stated DLT switch) to help you through that straightforward procedure.

Also, you mentioned you have a Wiser, though didn't mention the model, but if it is a Wiser 2, (as you would have seen from the brochure in my earlier post) scenes are editable by the user directly from the iPhone/iPad/PC/Android GUI menu. I have added some images here below also to help you find them. They look pretty easy to set to me (??) even for non-technical people, eg. the youngest and oldest in my family can use them.

So I hope I have helped assist in your C-Bus customisation and also shown you that it is easy to do what you are wanting to do from either the Wiser GUI or the more skill required, installer specific 'Toolkit'.

All the best with your Smart Home systems,

Brad

????

 

Hi Brad,

Thank you for the information. Yet again it sounds as though I have to apologise and yet I'm not really sure what for. People keep asking me questions and I answer them. I am not trolling and I am not trying to 'waste anyone's time'. I'm not really sure I understand the concept of wasting peoples time on a public forum anyway. If someone asks a question it seems rude not to answer. However, if one does ask someone's opinion then you have to be prepared for that opinion to be different from yours and yet be equally valid.

Speaking of questions, you have asked some so let me take them in turn.

I have not changed my request. What I want to do is switch the lights in my lounge to 30% at the push of a button. That is the user requirement. My limited understanding of C-BUS was that it was implemented as a 'Scene' which is why I asked the questions about scenes. The lounge has two sets of lights - an inner ring and an outer ring which are independently turn-onable. There is a 'Movie' button which dims these but it dims them far too much. So, the requirement is just to push a button, the C-BUS implementation is the thing that brings in Scenes but if I could achieve it without scenes that would be fine.

If anyone has changed their tune I would say it was the responders. At the start of this thread I was being told that programming C-BUS was extremely complicated and required to go on courses and years of experience. Now everyone seems to be saying that it is easy and can be picked up in a few hours.

I am not 100% certain whether I have a Wiser 1 or Wiser 2 but I think it is Wiser 1 which is why I chose this particular forum. The user manual doesn't seem to mention 1 or 2 it seems to say model 5200PG dated March 2009.

Thank-you for the screen shots. We have indeed noticed that on our Android phone there is a scenes panel and in the 'Movie' scene we can change the light levels. And, sure enough, as we change the setting the lights in the lounge do change. However, no matter how many times we hit the save button the settings are not stored and pressing the button on the wall reverts to the old behaviour.

Anyway, I think we all have to agree to disagree. No matter what I say someone seems to get annoyed and that was not my intention. Nor was I trying to waste anyone's time, my apologies for ever raising the issue. I am happy for this thread to be closed, deleted or whatever. Feel free to also delete my user id.

 

Agree completely

I covered this requirement in my post

Setting a preset level of a single light group on a single button is a simple job as per my post, but there are literally dozens of ways to accomplish the same in a far more advanced approach including many that are used to great effect by the trained installers (or advanced users). You seem to have a remotely triggered scene stored within your Wiser that is being actuated by the switch. This is where the 'simple' becomes 'advanced-user/ intermediate installer level skill recommended' to initially program it, but as per my last post, not to vary it.

The Toolkit has hard parts and easy parts, like most software. Look at MS Word, or Photoshop etc and tell me that everyone who uses it knows intuitively what all those buttons do!! I don't but I still use both packages a lot.

Mqguy, you have a Wiser 1. Interestingly this unit was Home Automation product of the year in 2010, when iPhones were new, not many had them and the C-Bus GUI interface running a waterfront home was almost rocket science. Android Phones/tablets weren't even around or supported then. The Wiser on iPhone or iPad made your home easy to control. Now alas, your Wiser 1 has been superceded twice (w1, W1A, now W2) and just like Apple has really stopped supporting enhancement of the iPhone 2 that was out at that same time, the Wiser 1 is also of that vintage and suffering the same deprecation.

That being said, you can still get the latest firmware and update the project file with the newest version of PICED which may enhance the functionality for you. My Wiser 1 at home is still chugging along nicely doing what it has always done. If you were a user with experience, I would just say 'upgrade your PICED, upgrade the firmware in your Wiser and re-save your project back to it', but in your case, an installer would be best to do that for you and perhaps initially set your PC up for you and do some skills transfer'

Of course, I would strongly suggest you consider purchasing a Wiser 2 and having an installer put it in for you. As you can see from my earlier post, the GUI ease of use has progressed greatly since Wiser 1 and is a quite stable and easy to use platform, even to set scenes from.

You seem to have missed the 'hard parts' and 'easy parts' message that has been constantly reiterated throughout the thread by many posters. I hope my analogy above of the software helps you better understand what many seem to have been trying to communicate over the imprecise, abrupt and non-helpful web post / forum text based medium.

As I said before, all the best with your Smart Home systems,

Brad

 

- Open the project in PICED (assuming the project it up to date)
- Click on SCENES
- Find the movie scene (depends how the original programmer named and programmed it) and edit it
- Changed the levels of each group to what what you want it to be
- Transfer the project to the unit and wait for it to restart (~3-4 minutes)
- Test

You might want to take a backup of whats on the unit first in case the old company sent you an older file. There should be details how to do this in the literature.

OR pay a professional

 

I think it is about time that this thread was closed. There is nothing of value here anymore. It needs to be stopped before it gets too heated.

If the original poster has a question, then it should be raised in a new thread with appropriate information in an appropriate manner so that many of us here can help as required.

Mick