Timers.

Looking to create a Timer for a button.
When pressed it needs to wait for 3 hours before turning the group back off.
There no button timer function as in schedule plus. So looking to just do in lua.
What is the best way of doing this.
os.sleep() or another way

 

Just remember that with the PulseCBusLevel function any other change to the ga will cancel the timer. Usually this is what you want, but not always.

 

Thanks for that.
How can I show time remaining on the visualizations and also as a dynamic text on an eDLT.

 

On the good old logic engine you could get the time remaining on a running timer. Then you could broadcast it on the measurement app and use a measurement widget on the eDLT to display it. That appears to be another function missing on the new controller though.

 

Seems to be a lot of missing and useful bits gone.
Its like we gone forward with the software side of things by using LUA, but backwards with functionality.
That's what you get by taking a product from KNX and adapting it to C-Bus. Unfortunate, because C-Bus is an awful lot better than KNX

 

Perhaps for those with little programming experience, but Pascal if a far more robust language for anything serious.

 

Have to agree with you Ashley.

 

Good to know, Nick.
How about a few more handy features like:
Ability to pulse GA's within Scenes
Ability to enable and disable schedules

 

Hi Nick,

I have been setting up a few NACs and would like to add the following comments.

In the first place Schneider refers their ECO Experts to a site called Exchange. This is supposed to be the place where one posts queries and gets answers regarding the NAC. Unfortunately there is nothing to be found there, unless my nav skills are that shoddy.

Since I gather that you are in fact involved with the new controllers, I would like to supplement the other comments regarding lacking features, and also make the general comment that it is hard to believe that Schneider fully discontinues all touch screens practically over night without a proper, or nearly proper replacement being available.

On top of my list is the absolutely cumbersome GA selection for any object. The window is too narrow and can't be widened. Neither can one filter what is displayed, nor order according to the group description. Group description is the only good way to do it.
The effect of this shortcoming is that I now have to reference my TK files in TK, so I can see the GA number and thus have an idea where in the long list I might find the GA I am looking for. Doing a display now takes literally 5 times longer than before.

Then it seems I cannot edit GA descriptions inside NAC. This is a rare requirement, but should be simple.

I can't find Timer functions in object functionality, and bell press works only when it wants to.

Can scenes be user edited? Can't find how. There seems nothing similar to the Schedulers.

I can't find a Status function for an object.

There is no fall back page.

Images on a page cannot be ordered forward or back. So if I have one image, whatever other image I want on top of that doesn't show on the web display. I know about generic backgrounds and so on, but occasionally I would like several additional images in a page.

The opposite is true for text labels. Occasionally I would like to place a text label on a button. However, that text label obscures the button. So if button and text is almost the same size, you have little response from the button.

What cameras work with the controller? Having a hard time to get anything to display, whether I select the camera tab or a URL.

The unit doesn't keep up with GA level changes, be that ON/OFF or dim values. This doesn't happen a lot, but more than once a day is too much if you want to run conditional logic.

Having to go through a multi stage process to set up a simple thing such as a clock is quite something.


All in all, the only thing I appreciate about this product is that we can now use high quality displays. But everything else reminds me of the poor excuse of the KNX touch screens, in fact the whole of KNX.

C-Bus has received criticism in the past as well, but since Schneider has meddled with it, it is dropping to the level of HDL and other sub-standard automation systems.

Is there any change that we see a properly functioning automation controller, and that in the next month or two?
I am embarrassed having to make excuses for lacking functions and having to hack the system to get it working the way it did before.

 

Glad to see its not just me that's somewhat disappointed.

 

Well, we come from a good product set....

Another item: I thought it was me somehow, but the NAC doesn't keep time either. I got back to my house where I run one of them permanently, and the time was an hour and 14 minutes back. If it was a round hour or so, I would say something is resetting the locale, but an hour 14 min? On top of it, the C-Bus network itself was on the correct time, as shown by a table top Spectrum. So NAC doesn't even broadcast or listen to the network time....

The unit is set to take time off the NTP servers, and is permanently on the internet. So after forcing it to get the time off the "system" it set it correctly again. This is the third time I notice this.

Now how do you run time based logic, or even a "Scheduler" with something like that?

I'd say the time keeping and the failure to track GA's reliably are very serious defects, closely followed by the cumbersome GA selection.

Please fix this with urgency.