Changing zigbee channel on 6 button keypad - Problem/Solution

[davec4]

After following steps on Control4 Service Document "Changing Zigbee channel" the keypad still sticks to it's zigbee channel 14 setting - trying to change to channel 8 .... (I have a good reason to require the channel change :-)

Steps

1. Disable director on HTC

2. Telnet into 6 Button Keypad

3. Issue command

uni "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" "0s1234 c4.emrc nn"

where "x'"s are MAC address and "nn" zigbee ch in hex

Expect to have to try several times to get this to work.

I would be interested to know whether anyone else has had this experience???? ...... and can they tell me why when the EXACT procedure is adhered to ... I mostly fail to get the desired result and only sometimes can actually get the zigbee channel of the device changed.

N.B Control4 say that at this stage changing the zigbee channel on zigbee nodes is "currently not an officially supported feature of the C4 products"

[RyanE]

Dave,

The reason it is not supported is that this is not a terribly user-friendly way to change channels, and all but Channel 14 are overlapped by Wi-Fi, so the likely 'best' channel is 14.

Your instructions have a slight error in them as well. Step 2 is to telnet into the zserver port on the controller running zserver, not to telnet to the 6 button keypad, since it doesn't run telnet. I'm sure that's what you meant.

I just double-checked, and you also have an error in your command. It should look like this:

uni "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" "0s1234 c4.em.rc nn"

You have no period between the em and the rc... That's likely your problem.

When I do it, I find I have the most success if I telnet in, identify the device with 4 taps, so I can ensure it's MAC is right, then I copy the channel change code to notepad, make about 5-10 copies, then paste them into the telnet session. This ensures that you've got the right code to change the channel.

When you do this, the device itself changes to the channel, and you'll get an error, because the device won't reply to the change channel command (it actually *does* reply, but it does it in the other channel).

Also, if you happen to be a Control4 dealer, you'll have more success finding these sorts of things on the official Control4 Dealer Forums.

Cheers.

RyanE

[davec4]

Thanks for the help Ryan ... sorry for the typos I made in the posting and yes I will follow up on your advice re:Dealers forum

Dave

[davec4]

As I said in the first posting I was able to change the zigbee channel successfully in the office on a test setup ... Unfortunately this problem is still persisting out on the job. The complicating factor is out there is that we have 2 Controllers and the 6 button keypad is the only zigbee device off the slave controller.

The datagram timeout message we get everytime we try to issue the multiple telnet command discussed earlier seems to indicate that the field situation is not practical for changing the channel this way and we will need to have a device already set to the required channel before we introduce it to the system out there.

The instructions we have been given are:

- Where 2 Controllers one is master the other slave

- zigbee networks connected to these 2 Controllers need to be on separate channels

- the Director (presumably of master) needs to be disabled when changing channel

I am assuming that the slave zigbee server is being instructed by the telnet command (using its IP address) to change the channel on its 1 only keypad

Any ideas offered on this matter would be much appreciated