KNX To Trigger Control4 ?

[Anthony Mckay]

Hi,

 

I'm hoping someone here can offer me some advice. I have a Control4 system running version 2.9.1 I have a lot of devices controlled by KNX modules. The KNX has an IP interface and my installer has put in the TISCO KNX driver into Control4 so that we can control lights etc from the Control4 system. It's driver version 3.2.04. I also have Composer Home Edition which I have been successfully using to implement some additional functionality.

I have come across what I am told is a limitation and I'd be grateful if anyone could confirm this or suggest a workaround. We have various relay contacts in the house that close upon various events. For example, we have a contact closure in the event of a sewage pump alarm. Ideally we wanted to connect this relay directly to a KNX input device and then pick up the event in the Control4 system.  This would give us the flexibility of having visualisation of the status on our various KNX screens as well as allowing us to program various things in the Control4 system such as sending out push notifications to our mobiles. We already have one such relay connected to a binary input port on a KNX device and this is used to open all the blinds in the event of a fire. My understanding is that the TISCO driver only uses KNX for (a) sending a KNX message to command a KNX device to do something or (b) to read the status of a KNX device in order to display it on a Control4 user interface such as a touch panel or app. I am informed that you cannot use a KNX message to trigger a Control4 piece of code in Composer. Is this correct? If so I'm a little puzzled as under the programming tab in Composer there are all manner of Control4 device variables on lights and blinds that can be used as triggers - for example for a given KNX light : "When LIGHT_LEVEL changes".

I'd be really grateful if someone could give me a little more information on this as I'd like to gain a better understanding of the Control4/KNX integration possibilities.

 

Thanks in advance,

Anthony

 

 

[RyanE]

Anthony,

Unfortunately, I don't know specifically about Tisco's KNX drivers, but I know that if you were using the Control4 KNX drivers, you could likely use the KNX Generic driver, which would let you set the KNX Contact input status group address to the generic driver's 'Channel 1 Address' field (if the Group Address is a DPT_1, DPT_5, or DPT_9 data type).

If you were to do that, and the KNX Contact input setup was set with the proper bits set (i.e. the KNX 'Transmit Flag', which would cause the group address value to be sent on the KNX bus when the contact changes), you could fire events based on the state of the contact.

As an alternative, if you weren't to switch to the Control4 drivers, you could possibly use the Tisco light driver (as a switch), and set the switch driver's "on/off status address" (could be named something else) to the KNX Contact group address, and then code on the light status being on/off, although you'd probably have to hide the 'fake lights' in your project.

It's difficult to know the proper course without knowing a *lot* more about your project setup (and about Tisco's KNX offerings).

Good luck with your project,

RyanE