No Toggle function on dimmers

Hey folks....just a quick one,

have wired a 4 ch 2 amp dimmer and 2 x 8 ch 1 amp dimmers, haven't connected them to cbus yet but there is no toggle function on the dimmer packs. All lights come on in the house but I am unable to toggle them from the dimmers. I am back at the job tommorrow (ran out of time to test anything tonight)........will simply connecting a switch and programming it resolve this issue......does anyone know.....has this happened to anyone else???

thanks in advance

JL

 

Each dimmer has 4 or 8 LEDs that are actually "local over-ride" buttons. These give manual control of the loads on their respective output channels.

I was fairly sure that these Over-ride Buttons will toggle the loads even if there is no Cbus Network available, but that might be wrong. The reason I don't know is that I always program the units off-site, and THEN install them on 240V...

Note that BOTH the dimmers and the switches must be programmed, before anything will work. If the C-Bus network is alive (read below) then you can use Learn Mode to do the basic programming, rather than using Toolkit software.

Some things to check :

You need to ensure that there is a dimmer or other unit with a Power Supply built in. That will make the "Unit" LED illuminate.

You need to ensure that one or 2 units have their Clock Generator turned on. That will make the "C-Bus" LED illuminate.

Depending on the network, you usually have to enable a Network Burden (in software) on one of the Output Units. But you should be able to get it working OK with the Hardware Burden (RJ45 with pink shrinkwrap) supplied with the PC Interface. Without a Burden of some kind, the C-Bus won't usually work at all.

Ummm - This comment makes no sense at all. If they come ON, then you must have switched them on at the dimmer! Because, if they are wired thru Cbus they will NOT come on any other way.... Please clarify what you mean by that statement, because I thought that you couldn't get them to toggle on...?

Cheers, John

 

Dimmer not reponding to local overrides

Hi,

Have you got both the mains connections wired up on the dimmers? It sounds to me like you may have the mains feed for the dimming connected (on the right), but not the feed for the unit's power supply (on the left).

If you don't have the power supply feed connected it would explain why presses on the local toggle buttons aren't working. I'm not 100% sure what the dimming side would do in this case tho...

Were any of the LEDs on the units working? The 'Unit' LED should be on if the power supply is connected.

C-Bus should not be needed to control the loads from the local toggles.

Good luck!

Cheers,
MArk.

 

Local Toggle can also be disabled by the units programming.. you'll find a CheckBox on the Global Tab for the unit titled "Enable Local Toggle" if this is checked off then the Local Override butons on the front of the unit wont work.

If these are brand new units that you've never programmed then this is unlikely to be the case as the factory default is that Local Toggle is enabled.

 

I have found some dimmers fresh out of the box will turn on all channels before a program is loaded into them. In fact I had one yesterday where I put power onto it for the first time on the bench with all channels off, then programmed it up. I powered it back down and then fired it up again and all channels came on. Even when I had the no change on power outage selected.
This may explain why all the lights come on and if Mark is right about having the dimming side 240v but not the power supply side, then this would explain it's behaviour.

 

Odd. When I built here, we ran all the cabling back to the 4 main boards (three 24M boards at each location) then came back and installed all the dimmer and relay modules and fitted them off, then installed all the MCBs, RCDs etc and hooked the modules up.

Although all the lights points were terminated in fan-bases attached to the underside of the "roof" (a concrete slab), we had few lights, and hadn't fitted off any of the switches because the wall were not lined at that time, however I WAS able to plug some light fittings into fan bases and manually turn them on at the relays and dimmers. At that stage, there was NONE of the c-bus control side wiring installed anywhere. NONE of the units came up "on" - and we were powering the site up and down daily (running on battery+inverter and genset).