Radia Lighting System Issues
fogled@mizzou
Posts: 549
I have a lighting system that uses 3 RDC-DC/120 boards to control a total of 15 circuits. I have an NI3100 and an NI700, with the NI3100 as the main controller doing all the work and the NI700 as a sub-master in the electrical closet hooked up to the Radia boards via AXLink.
Right now I have all 3 of the boards set to the same AXLink address, and the PROLink dip switches set to address the boards as 1, 2, and 3. I control the boards with:
SEND_STRING dvlights,"'(circuits 1-18)L(percent)T(ramptime)',$0D" which works OK. I have responses turned off right now so I get no feedback from the cards.
I tried to convert the whole mess over to driving and reading device levels on the AXLink chain, but discovered that doesn't work the way I've got the addressing set up. It appears that all 3 boards will use levels 1-6 for everything, and only PROLink can address the circuits as 1-18 the way I've got it configured.
The Radia boards also keep dropping offline 10-20 times a day, usually for 6 seconds at a time. It can be anywhere from a minute to a few hours between offline events. That's driving me nuts.
Recommendations? Should I re-address the cards as separate AXLink devices so I can use the levels and perhaps get a better idea of which of the 3 cards is causing me trouble? Should I turn on PROLink responses and parse the feedback from there? Any other tips on keeping the cards from dropping offline sporadically?
Thanks for any tips or suggestions!
Right now I have all 3 of the boards set to the same AXLink address, and the PROLink dip switches set to address the boards as 1, 2, and 3. I control the boards with:
SEND_STRING dvlights,"'(circuits 1-18)L(percent)T(ramptime)',$0D" which works OK. I have responses turned off right now so I get no feedback from the cards.
I tried to convert the whole mess over to driving and reading device levels on the AXLink chain, but discovered that doesn't work the way I've got the addressing set up. It appears that all 3 boards will use levels 1-6 for everything, and only PROLink can address the circuits as 1-18 the way I've got it configured.
The Radia boards also keep dropping offline 10-20 times a day, usually for 6 seconds at a time. It can be anywhere from a minute to a few hours between offline events. That's driving me nuts.
Recommendations? Should I re-address the cards as separate AXLink devices so I can use the levels and perhaps get a better idea of which of the 3 cards is causing me trouble? Should I turn on PROLink responses and parse the feedback from there? Any other tips on keeping the cards from dropping offline sporadically?
Thanks for any tips or suggestions!
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Anyway, I have completely re-configured the device addressing, using discreet AXLink addresses for each Radia card, and all PROLink addresses set to 1. Almost everything works great! I don't see any of the boards going offline anymore, as opposed to when I had the 'grouped' Radia boards, I saw the set of them go offline rather often.
The only problem I can't seem to solve is the "Zero Level" problem: The system sends a
SEND_LEVEL dev,level,0
to the card, and I get 2 level events back: the first a Level=0 event, then a Level=1 event. The circuit does NOT shut off.
If I send the ASCII-based PROLink command (SEND_STRING dev,"'1L0T0',$0D" it DOES shut off the circuit.
So I apparently have to hack in a PROLink ASCII command when I hit zero. Wonderful.... NOT.
Anyone know a workaround for this? I found another post where someone was asking about this and no responses. Can anyone comment?
Thanks,
I just wanted to follow up with the resolution on this issue:
I did re-address the Radia RDC-DC/120 boards so that each had a separate AXLink address and the same ProLink address, and changed the system programming to talk to each card individually. This has made a tremendous improvement in system stability. A few notes about the new configuration:
The cards are no longer going offline at all - none of them (I figured one would still be acting up).
Send_Level and Level_Events are working correctly now, although Define_Connect_Level is still spotty (the virtual device sometimes fails to be given a level change).
Sending Level 0 to the non-dimmable circuits still does not cause them to turn off. I must still use the ProLink command to get the level to true zero and turn the non-dimmable circuits off.
I still must use a slow-down buffer (1/10th of a second works for me) for ProLink commands to each board. If I just send_string as fast as I can, the Radia boards lose some commands.
So, success, with caveats. All in all, a vastly improved experience!