Clipsal / C-Bus

[amigo]

How popular is this protocol?.

What is its infilteration/usage rate in different countries?

[Ausccn]

How popular is this protocol?.

What is its infilteration/usage rate in different countries?

In Australia they use it a bit, more so in home automation than in commercial. As far as I know ALC & Honeywell have interfaces for it!!:D

[kontrolphreak]

I did a large school project in Las Vegas 2 years ago. Great product. Open (software is free). Sold over the counter to electricians in Australia. Has huge market in the southern hemisphere (Asia, Australia and South Africa).

We meet the guys from Down Under in 2005 and visited the factory down in Australia in 2006. What a great company and bunch of guys. Very receptive and wanting feedback from a HVAC guy. They were the first ones to tell me it was not a HVAC product. Visited a bunch of of jobsites and dealers in Adelaide and went to a trade show on the Gold Coast. WHAT a great time!

Software is easy to configure and installation is suited for HVAC guys (distributed control). Americans are used to centralized lighting control and changing the view of how it "is" done can be hard with electricians.
US Tech support out of TN is great. Greg and his guys are really on top of their game.

kontrol out

[cool_tech]

c bus is massive here in aus easy to use, wont be long untill it goes really big

[Jace]

Excuse my ignorance, but are we talking about the same c-bus protocol that is used in Honeywell’s Xl500 product line.

[cool_tech]

it sounds like the same thing maybe honeywell is markeying the clipsal cbus product in the USA. can control a wide range of thing home/ commercial automation.

[kontrolphreak]

cool_tech you are incorrect. C-Bus/Clipsal (owned by Schnieder Electirc) is being marketed by SquareD/TAC (both also owned by SE).The protocol is not Honeywell C-Bus (2nd person who has thought this when talking about Clipsal). We purchased our devices from TAC as we were a TAC VAR.
It is open, the configuration software is free and from what I gather Clipsal will release the code if you are seriously interested in making an interface. Currently I know that ALC and TAC have respectively gateways to BACnet and Lon.

Once again I can't say how much I like the product for it's application (LIGHTING). We were using it for daylight harvesting with Solartubes with electrical lighting as a backup/support source. The system was for a school, so there were multiple modes (scenes) for showing videos/movies, regular classroom, tied to alarm system in school etc. I had a lot of fun on the project and can't thank the guys in TN and down under for all the help and support.

Disclaimer........................................ ...................My opinion is skewed as I'm an Aussie and want to push my kins product.

kontrol out