Ness M1G to CBus interface

[fleetz]

I am hoping a Clipsal member might be able to shin some light.

The C-Bus interface for the Ness M1G home automation platform from my understanding is due any day and it would be good to get a thread happening on the interface.

I am doing the Clipsal BCB1 training course early in the new year. I have a full Ness M1G set up on a test bed waiting for the C-Bus interface which is on back order. I have a bunch of C-Bus bit due next week which I believe will be required for the test bed however I am second guessing what the minimum essential bits are.

Currently I have the following Clipsal items on order would be good to find out if I have any missing links so I can get them ordered. Especially before the Christmas break.

Ordered are

5500PC C-Bus serial interface
USB to 232 interface from Dontronics
L5512RVF 12 channel relay
L5508DIA 8 channel dimmer
2 X 5086NL 8 gang C-Bus key units
DIN housing, MCB and RCD etc

Do I require any of the Clipsal software to implement the C-Bus interface? I would have thought the firmware in the interface is talking directly to the C-Bus data bus. No sure about the setting of the addresses on the C-Bus devices, might require one of their packages to set them. Which I was able to get into the training course sooner than later! Is any required software part of the BCB1 course?

Is there any thing that I have missed that I should have ordered to get the basics up and going? What is the minimum C-Bus requirement to get the M1G via new C-Bus interface happening?

I have a Ness M1-XSP serial interface ready for the Ness C-Bus interface. The M1G is fully configured and operational.......l am most impessed with the robustness of the M1G system to date.

It would be good to get some dialog happening on how the unit interfaces and any issues that relate to how the C-Bus interface integrates to the M1G and C-Bus gear.

From the preliminary info I have on it to date it appears that the interface has fully implimenteed the C-Bus protocol. If my understanding is correct the M1G will a hard unit to beat from a home automation perspective. What limitations if any will exist in the implimentation of the new C-Bus interface?

Be good to get some feedback from someone who has had the opportunity to get the interface talking to the M1G.

Hope this gets some flow of Ness M1G C-Bus interface dialog happening just prior to the units hitting the decks.

Regards,

Fleetz

[Forumadmin]

Hi fleetz,
Do I require any of the Clipsal software to implement the C-Bus interface? I would have thought the firmware in the interface is talking directly to the C-Bus data bus. No sure about the setting of the addresses on the C-Bus devices, might require one of their packages to set them. Which I was able to get into the training course sooner than later! Is any required software part of the BCB1 course?
Yes download toolkit from Clipsal. Found here (http://www3.clipsal.com/cis/downloads.php3#Toolkit)
Is there any thing that I have missed Nope looks good.
It would be good to get some dialog happening Agreed
What limitations if any will exist in the implimentation of the new C-Bus interface? Quite a few I would imagine, time will tell. The panel is very good but it does have limitations. I guess we should wait and see how the new interfaces look and the level of C-Bus comms it will provide. It's off to a good start tho.

cheers

[fleetz]

Thanks Forumadmin for the feedback.

I hope that they have a reasonable amount of CBus functionality otherwise Clipsal and Ness/Elk have wasted their time. Neither will benefit from other than a very complete level of implementation and more importantly the end users will go in a different direction. If Clipsal want to add market penetration in the Oz market and the huge US market full integration is essential.

I am lead to believe that the CBus interface has a reasonable level of implementation and that it still has a few minor issues which would be fixed in release 2. As you said we will have to wait and see.

Interested in your comment "The panel is very good but it does have limitations" do you have one? Are you waiting for the interface too? What do you see as the limitations of the panel?

I will be active in reporting on the forum once I have it in my hot little hands.

What I won't be able to determine is for example if they have support in the interface for things like the IR and scenemaster.I don't have these devices anyway let see what the release note bring.

Cheers,

Fleetz

[Forumadmin]

Hi fleetz,
Interested in your comment "The panel is very good but it does have limitations" do you have one? Are you waiting for the interface too? What do you see as the limitations of the panel?
Well I do have an M1G and I like you, like what I see. Coming from the Minder world tho it doesn't do a lot of things I'm used to doing. The syntax side of things is very basic and does not provide some of the functionality I'm used to. Having said that, the more input elk receive the better for product development.
I will be active in reporting on the forum once I have it in my hot little hands.
Good to hear, we cannot have too much discussion on the M1.
What I won't be able to determine is for example if they have support in the interface for things like the IR and scenemaster.
Its supposed to be a high level interface, what we get however we shall see. I am betting it will develope into a widely accepted panel. Time will tell.
cheers

[chrism]

Hi Fleetz and Ross

We are planning an interface to both the M1 and C-Bus in 'The Beaver'. We already have protocols for a low level interface and are now tidying up some 'loose ends' so we can go to the next level. This will also give a web front end to both systems, although at this stage, limited for M1 as we have some SSL issues.

Ross, I'll contact you off-forum as I have some prelim pages I would like you to comment on for the Beaver front-end.

Cheers

Chris

[Forumadmin]

Hi Chris,
I'm looking forward to checking out the beaver, so to speak :)
cheers

[chrism]

I must be so careful how I word my posts. I read them back and they take on a whole new meaning :rolleyes:

[fleetz]

Nice to see that the M1 and M1G has their own special spot on this forum thanks to the Forum Admin for that. There now is a focus!

Good to hear there are are other M1G owners here and able to share our knowledge.

Chrism I am interested in "The Beaver" is there more info on it a link perhaps? Sounds like you are working on a product to get to market that involves M1 and CBus very interested to see what it is! If you ever get it to market you certainly will get peoples attention with the product name! (-:

I am told that in the first release that of CBus for the M1G that it will only support 100 lights and devices and that the second branch to 256 device will be in the second spin. Don't see a problem here.

My understanding is that in the first issue that is a if a light is turned on via a C-Bus Saturn / Neo type wall switch then it does not feed into the M1 to say if the light is on or off. Therefore if you go to the M1 keypad it may say the light is off when in fact it is on. If you then turn it on and then off again it will turn off.!! My understanding is this is more a limitation with C-Bus and that Ness are working on it, however not likely to see a fix in the first release. They are keen to get the CBus interface to market. I agree with that good to get it out and shaken down earlier than later.

This issue will need to be resolve in issue two for sure as the implications of that would be nasty when coming to write the rules in the M1G. The M1G will assume a certain state 180% out of phase is ugly. In my case where I am test bedding it for installation later next year I am not so stressed. If you were trying to integrate and get a sign off in the next month or so it could be kinda interesting!

I have moved forward and I don't see it as an big issue as it has been identified and the good people at Ness/ELK have said it is going to be worked on. With Ness and their close association with Clipsal I am confident will resolve this issue. Both Ness and Clipsal are well resourced companies, my dealing with Ness highlight they are very switched on and if they say they are going to deliver on something they will. Ness are likely the ones that will need to resolve the On I'm really Off issue but Clipsal will be there to help I feel sure if needed.

I suspect the primary hardware that will actual interface with CBus will be a Clipsal board and Ness probably have designed board that the Clipsal board plugs into. The Ness board will do the interpreting to and from the CBus protocol. It will then connect to a M1-XSP serial interface board. This is only my spin on what is likely I have do not know what we will actually be supplied. Interesting to see how far away I am from reality!

I am not sure we are going to see the interface prior to Christmas I was told this week next week....last week. We are well into the Christmas silly season and I don't expect to see it under the Christmas tree on Christmas Day (-:

Cheers,

Fleetz

[chrism]

Hi Fleetz & All

The Beaver is coming along but not as quickly as we would hope. After working with quite a number of the automation products (particularly Minder) for the last 10 years, we've come come to know this industry quite well.

The Beaver will include a fair bit of functionality in it's own right (it does irrigation control, climate and logic) as well as having a web server for local and remote access. The goal is to have it communicate with a lot of systems that either don't talk to each other or do at a low lever. We want serial comms between products and will be able to get any product/system connected to the Beaver, to be able to communicate with any other product. It will also give a web front end to all of the produtcs.

The M1 is quite a good product and can do a fair bit. There are a couple of bugs we've found in the latest release and there are a couple of things it won't do.... That's where we will use The Beaver. We've (to date) installed about 35 x M1 systems and they seem to be running ok. The support from Ness has been good.

An exciting snippet I can reveal is we are looking at a 15" touchscreen to go with The Beaver with a cost price of about $2,200 inc GST. This includes a fanless controller (AKA PC) running Linux with 35Gb free hard drive... Perfect for the kitchen servery. This is a very nice screen even for web Browsing, viewing cameras + we can squeeze a TV tuner card in. The eventual price might move a little, but not much. The RRP is a bit of an unknown but should be under 3K. Knowing what is available in the Home Automation arena (say from Crestron & AMX), this will be quite cost effective.

Anyway, I'm miroring most of the news here as well as our usergroup which you are welcome to join (I haven't posted the touchscreen info there yet).

Checkout http://groups.yahoo.com/group/amquad_developments/


Cheers

Chris

[rhamer]

My understanding is that in the first issue that is a if a light is turned on via a C-Bus Saturn / Neo type wall switch then it does not feed into the M1 to say if the light is on or off. Therefore if you go to the M1 keypad it may say the light is off when in fact it is on. If you then turn it on and then off again it will turn off.!! My understanding is this is more a limitation with C-Bus and that Ness are working on it

This dosen't sound right to me. I wrote the C-Bus driver for CQC and even the lowest level of the documented protocol has the facility to notify the device that a load has changed.

Even if it's a seperate hardware interface like the Minder Simm it would still have this functionality. Even the Minder Mk1 C-Bus interface did it.

I am also looking at the M1, but without this feature it would be useless.

Cheers

Rohan

[Forumadmin]

I am also looking at the M1, but without this feature it would be useless.

O so true Rohan, I'm sure it will be 2 way comms.

[chrism]

I think this issue of keeping the systems in sync is more to do with the C-Bus MMI and not (normal point to point )communications between the systems. This means, if you connect the M1 to a C-Bus system and the group address status' is unknown, the MMI generated by C-bus will correct the status on the M1. This will not occur on phantom group addresses regardless as the MMI status is based upon output units and not input units.

I should clarify what I mean here. A phantom group address is one which is in a key input unit, but not in an output unit. It triggers thrid party devices (such as Minder and the M1) into performing an action such as (lets say in Minder), changing to an armed Scenario when a key is pressed. If the group address on this key input unit is on and the group address is not present in an output unit, the MMI will not update this address (in devices such as Minder and M1).

Maybe this is what is missing in the M1 Interface?

I do remember reading that this (MMI) is a requirement when using the C-Bus enabled program. There are quite strict guidelines. I'll look into it a little more and report back what I find.

Cheers

Chris

[fleetz]

I believe this issue exists if you use the XSP serial interface instead of Port 0. The XSP will issue commands via the C-Bus adaptor but won't listen, Port 0 will do both! I suspect there is a limitation due to C-Bus and normal M1 data traffic if you use the XSP which has a max data rate of 38.4k Port 0 supports 115k.

See this as an issue as a lot of users will want to use the XEP ethernet adaptor which ties up Port 0. Well I do and am for one!

Cheers,

Fleetz

[Aeolius]

Granted, don't tell your ELK installer that you use a Macintosh and want to integrate the ELK M1 INSTEON beta with Mac OS X.

from ELK:
"RP software was written for PC. In our website forum, an installer reported in 2004 that he got ElkRP to run on a Mac using a Windows emulator and provided his email address with the offer to help others interested in doing the same. However, there are currently no plans to port ElkRP to the Mac. Our goal is to have 100% satisfaction, so if we know there is a potential problem for you, we would rather lose the sale."

from a local ELK installer:
"I appreciate you contacting (COMPANY NAME) concerning you new home. As much as I would like to help you and your family with all the systems that you would want; after talking to technical support at Elk and to my V.P. here, I have to say that we would not be able to fully satisfy your needs. We would not want to install anything that you would not be 100% happy with or that we were not 100% sure of. I do apologize, and I hope that you can find someone to fulfill your requests. I will contact some other security vendors that I know and see if I can help in that reguard. Again thank you for contacting us and I am sorry that we are not able to help you at this time."