Which Application

Hi All,

I intend to de-commission my Mk-1 Minder to a point that it will only issue the status of its inputs/outputs, i.e., garage door up/down gate open/closed/locked, rain gauge status...etc

Before I start, everything is currently on the Lighting Application & I would like to move the above onto the correct Application, however which application would be considered the correct one? My option after reading the Application ID Numbers document, would be Trigger Control ($CA), however there is now & will remain the ability to open/close the garage door & the gate via mag lock, this is Access Control ($D5), it will be metering my rain tank after it is installed which is Measurement ($E4), it will be monitoring my spa pump status via the spa air switches which is Pool, spa pond and fountain control ($72)..... I can go on...

All of the Minder status/controls will need to be available to the CTC & Telephone interface, and I would like to get it right now & not have to make changes down the track.

After reading this back to myself maybe I should be using all applications as required.... QUESTION... Is all application addressing as detailed in the Application ID Numbers document available to all current hardware/software?

Hope this makes sense, it will be quite a lot of work & I would like to get it right the first time.

Thanks in advance.

 

The Applications as defined in the "Application ID Numbers document" refer to the different Application Protocols available on C-Bus. So if you want to use an Application that is not Lighting then you need to be able to issue commands on the bus in the correct format for that specific application.

For example the Telephony Application supports transmitting phone numbers and phone line state on the bus. To be able to do this from Minder then Minder would need to understand the byte structure of the Telephony Application on C-Bus to construct the messages correctly. However Minder (to the best of my knowledge) only knows the Lighting Application. So if you told Minder to send on the Telephony Application it would cause as invalid state on C-Bus and may introduce various problems with other devices that do understand and talk Telephony Application correctly.

This leads to the conclusion that you can only use Lighting Applications and Lighting Like Applications. Huh? Lighting Like what the hell is that I hear you ask. Lighting Like Applications are Applications whose message structure is identical to Lighting so devices that only understand Lighting can be shoe-horned to work safely on the alternate Application.

Trigger Control and Enable Control are Lighting Like. So this means you can use both of those and any number of the available Lighting Applications from within Minder safely.

The next limitation is how much needs to be accessed from a single key unit. By this I mean if you are using a 4 key 2000 series key input unit it only supports one application so everything you wanted to do from that one key input unit would need to exist on the one Application. If however you are using a Wireless Key Input Unit it supports multiple Applications so you can more correctly structure your Minder along the lines you describe (but within the limitations I outlined above).

Hope that helps.

 

Lighting Compatible

So just to spell it out, any of the applications that are lighting compatible as per Table 1, page 7 of the C-Bus Application ID Numbers doc will be safe to use with a Mark 1 Minder as I have previously described.

 

Just in case we are looking at different documents the following should be fine.

Code:

Application	Application ID
------------------------------
Lighting	$38 ($30 - $5F)
Trigger Control	$CA
Enable Control	$CB

There are more. I will dig up the concise docuemtnation and post here shortly the full supported list of Lighting Like Applications.

 

Full list of supported Lighting Like Applications:

Code:

Application	Application ID
------------------------------
Lighting	$38 ($30 - $5F)
Ventilation (dampers and fans)	$70
Irrigation Control	$71
Pool, spa, pond and fountain control	$72
Heating	$88
Trigger Control	$CA
Enable Control	$CB

You should never create an application outside of these, when required the other applications will be automatically created by C-Bus Toolkit. Future versions of Toolkit will prevent the user from creating Applications outside of this range.