Serial protocol help

Hi, currently I have a cbus din relay. My configuration is PC-PCI-Cbus Relay. I want to send string of Cbus protocol using Cbus Diagnostic Utility. Can anyone help me what string to send to read the Cbus relay address at each channel? What string of data should I send first? I appreciate your help.

 

The protocol for reading configuration data is not published. You can only get this information by running toolkit (or examining the xml tag file if you have it). What are you trying to accomplish?

 

What is xml tag file? Can you explain more. And also;

1) what more can I do with Cbus Diagnostic Utility?
2) Can I set the Cbus relay channel by sending string from Cbus Diagnostic Utility?
3) Is there any way to set/read Cbus relay channel without using toolkit? ie can I use the Cbus module ?

 

So are you trying to read the group address assigned to the relay channel, or are you trying to control the relay? If you just want to control a relay channel just set the group address assigned to it to 0 to turn it off and 255 to turn it on. You can do this from the diagnostic utility. It sounds like you are not that familiar with the way cbus works. You may want to go to CIS website and download and read the training material. Cbus is not a polled system so you don't ask a device what its current state is (you can but you shouldn't need to). Whenever a device issues a command to change a group address (like a switch), every device on the bus receives the command and if it is interested in that group address it stores the new state. If you want to control cbus via a serial pci and need to know the state of group addresses you need listen to status changes coming from the pci and update your own internal database.

You can monitor all activity on the bus, and you can control any device. You can't program a device or read its configuration.

Yes. You just need to know the group address assigned to the particular relay channel you want to control. Only toolkit can give you that (and the tag file but that's a lot more complex).

Yes. You control a relay channel by setting the group address assigned to that channel. If you want to do it directly via a pci to need to read the Serial Protocol Document. Be aware it is a complex process with a large learning curve. You can also use the Cbus module, but that is a major project. If you want to control Cbus from say a PC or other device you are better off to use Cgate. It uses simple english commands and maintains the current network state for you which you can interrogate whenever you like.

The tag file contains the definition of your network. It is created and maintained by toolkit. It is normally located under c:\clipsal\cgate\tag and is the name of your project. You can read it but don't ever change it.

 

Thank you for the info. Just to confirm my understanding, you are saying that if I want to send string to Cbus relay channel to turn it ON , I should set the group address of the relay channel by using Toolkit because Cbus Diagnostic cannot do that. Only Toolkit can program the cbus relay. So that means the first step that I should do is to set the group address of the channel CBus relay using Toolkit. Then only I can use the Cbus diagnostic utility to control the relay to turn it ON or OFF. Am I right? I'm still new to Cbus and still a lot to learn.

 

Yes. You need to use toolkit to first create a new group address and then assign it to a relay channel. You can do this in one go by opening up the relay (just double click on it in toolkit), then click on the pencil by the group address drop box and it will create a new group address and let you give it a name. Then you can use the diagnostic utility to set the group address and control the channel. You will need to exit toolkit before running the diagnostic utility since the pci only accepts a single connection. Note however that once you have assigned an address in toolkit you can also control it from toolkit by going to the application tree in the left pane, select lighting application, select your group address then a toolbar will appear with ON and OFF buttons.

I suggest you download and digest the training documents. They cover all this in great detail.