Newbie & (naturally) a few questions

Second attempt at typing this, my login timed out last time I posted and I lost the lot.

Hi, I'm Ben and I'm in the UK looking at maybe buying some cbus kit.

To give you some background, in summer 2006 we were fortunate enough to buy a new build 4-bed detached house. It's all brand new, all magnolia and all rooms have ceiling inset lighting with cheap OEM dimmer switches.

I have a few electrical areas I'd like to improve on and I'm wondering whether cbus is a better option compared to rewiring.

Some examples:

A) We have outside externally mounted lanterns on all 4 sides of the house. The builder wired all of these to local (to the lamp) switches. The lights on the front of the house are controlled in the hallfway. The lights on the west side are controlled from inside the detached garage. The lights on the east of the house are controlled from the utility room and a switch in the breakfast room controls lights at the rear. It's not uncommon to go to bed and find one or more outside lights is still on. It would be nice to be able to control these lights from a single switch, or remote, from upstairs.

B) Some of the kitchen lights are only controllable from one end of the kitchen/breakfast area. It would be good to have full control from all switch panels.

C) We changed the downstairs toilet door around and the switch is now behind the door. It would be good to control this light from elsewhere.

D) Some of the lights, like hallway and landing, are often left on unnecessarily and waste power.

I'm not too keen on doing any redecorating or rewiring so I'm looking towards a full wireless deployment, probably with Saturn range faceplates. Thanks to Ashleigh for the excellent wireless intro. This will also enable me to easily put the OEM swithchplates back on when I move house protecting my investment somewhat.

I believe cbus could do all the above but I have some questions:

*1) I believe a standard on/off switch is known as a load. How many total local loads can a single Saturn unit control?

2) How many remote loads can be controlled from these devices? In my example above, I have 4 external lighting circuits I'd like to switch in one button push. Is this easy?

3) Is there any range on the wireless kit? What is it? Will the system you other devices in range as a mesh/pass-thru to get to units that are out of range.

4) It seems very expensive to put saturn style switches in areas like the garage where looks don't matter. Is there a really cheap option to control that light switch?

5) In many areas, like the landing, we have a 2 or even 3-way switch setup. If you want to control these using cbus, must all the faceplates be replaced? Obviously this increases the cost dramatically.

6) In areas like the cloakroom example, could I just remove the switch altogether and control the load remotely?

*7) Can we put a time-out on lights so they go off after a minute or so?

8) How do I program all this? I'm pretty technical but don't wanna spend a lot of time writing scripts or hacking code.

9) Can I control wall sockets, like floor lamps, using cbus? What do i need?

10) Am I likely to get a discount for buying in bulk. I've looked at cbus-shop and none of this seems cheap and it may be cheaper just to call a sparky in for some wiring. Are there any cheaper suppliers? Do the UK models carry any extra certification for Europe or anything?

Any responses appreciated.

Thanks,

Ben

 

done some research

I've done a bit of research and answered some of the questions myself, i marked them with a *.

One critical outstanding question is how to handle a 2-way switch setup.

I have 2 internal doors in my living room. They each have a switch next to them which control the same lights. One of them is a dimmer for convenience, or inconvenience if you're at the wrong end of the room.

Clealy I can replace the dimmer unit with a cbus single channel switch to control that single load, but what do I put on the second switch panel?

I obviously need to control the first switch load remotely on the second, but how do I do that? And how do I power it? Remember I'm going for a full wireless setup.

Also, can one of the load bearing buttons also trigger another remote load at the same time? e.g. can a single button switch turn on the local light and some remote ones at the same time?

 

Do you use Internet Explorer? Firefox is a much better browser and doesn't lose form contents allowing you to use the back button when timeouts occur. Internet Explorer is terrible with forms.

 

Thanks for the valuable contribution to the thread.

Can anybody help with my cbus query?

 

Each wireless unit can control 1 or 2 local loads, depending upon which unit you purchase. They are available in Relays (on/off 8 Amps), Leading Edge and Trailing Edge dimmers (2 Amps).

There is a 2 part answer to this.
- By linking buttons on one unit to buttons on another unit you can control as many remote loads as you have free buttons
- By using Scenes you can control up to 49 other loads from a single button. Scenes are perfect for when you want to do things like an All-Off function or you want to control groups of lights together.

The typical installed range is 20-25m. The performance varies from site to site depending upon the building contstruction, large metal objects, etc, etc. The units do not support meshing.

In the Wireless range the Saturn and Neo looks are the only ones available.

Every load that you want to control by C-Bus Wireless must be connected to a C-Bus Wireless unit. If, for example, you have 2 existing switches, each with 2-way switching, you buy 2 x 1-channel units and connect one load to one C-Bus Wireless unit and the other load to the other C-Bus Wireless unit. You then program them so that the button(s) not linked to their local load are linked to the load on the other unit. You can then control both loads from both switches. In fact, in C-Bus and C-Bus Wireless you can have 100 way switching if you really want it.

See my previous point.

The granualrity of timer configrations using Learn Mode is 5 minutes. The granularity of timer configurations using the Toolkit software is 1 second.

The units can be configured by either Learn Mode (sequences of button presses) or through the C-Bus Toolkit software. However, to use the Toolkit software you would need a C-Bus Wired network + a C-Bus Wireless gateway.

Socket outlet plug adaptors for this purpose are currently under development for the UK pin configuration. Please contact your local Clipsal/Schneider representative for information on when they will be available.

The C-Bus Wireless products are fully compliant with all the standards relevant to the product in the the UK market.

 

How about to control one load by two wireless switches?

Question was, if we have only ONE load and MANY wireless swithes, could we connect wireless swithes in parallel?

 

No.

You can not connect the wireless switches in parallel, as it will upset the (two wire) power supply for the units.

You need one (or two) load(s) for each wireless switch so that the switch can derive it's power from the mains / load connection.

All switches can communicate with all others, so all you have to do is assign the same code (group address) to each switch you want to control the same load, and it will all work. each load needs a unique code. The assignment of codes can be done by just pushing buttons, and is all automatically set up in the units, so you can have 1,2,or as Newman says, even 100 buttons on different units controlling any load or group of loads.

 

Thanks for the replies.

It seems cbus wireless isn't quite up to the task I need yet. If I can't even replace my landing light without rewiring then it's a bit overcomplex for the task.

Thanks again.

 

New product request

How about if we had a battery powered wireless switch. It would first of all solve the current two way switching issue and secondly could be installed anywhere that was void of existing cables e.g. next to bed heads or maybe in the carport.

I know there is probably issues with battery life, transmission range etc. but it is nice to dream sometimes.

While we are dreaming how about a remote that will talk directly to a wireless gateway without having to go through a plug adaptor.

Regards,

Peter Brown.

 

So you effectively want a cbus wireless remote that wall mounts and looks like an ordinary switch?

 

No. He is actually dreaming a RF remote control dedicated for wired network. I am also dreaming about.

 

Can you explain this statement? Based on the information that you've posted there's nothing to indicate what the problem/limitation is. A way around it may be available.

 

Seems that there is a LOT of misunderstanding happening in this thread.

jaffacake, you don't need to do "rewiring" as such, but you DO need to replace the switch that controls each load (light) with a C-Bus switchplate. Once there is a C-Bus switch or dimmer controlling a load (which is done by replacing the existing switch with a C-Bus one) then any OTHER C-Bus switch in the house can be used to control that first light.

What happens is that the 1st switch still "does the work", but any other C0-Bus switches in the house can communicate with that switch and te;ll it what to do. So every other switch in the house can end up being a kind of remote-control for every other switch. What does what and when is determined by programming, and NOT by any form of physical wiring.

For example, your 4 exterior lights... if each of the 4 switches that controls each of them is replaced with a C-Bus switch, then with a bit of programming all 4 switches can control any or all of the 4 lights.

The concept is easy once you can grasp the concept of how your conventional wiring works... ie: how switches, loads etc are connected and interact.

 

Yes please

Yes Please (in different styles and key configurations if that is not being too greedy). Oh, it must also talk directly to the wireless gateway.

Peter Brown.