UCM a PC and Rako

[jmwhooper]

My plan:

A PC with Charmed Quark (CQC) to control home automation via PC\'s and touchscreens in the home.  Connected to this is a Comfort with UCM, a CQC driver would provide commands to control the Comfort and CQC would also control the lights via a Rako interface.

However, if the Rako interface is connected to the PC not the UCM, would Comfort be able to send responses to the PC (e.g. turn on lights when alarm is activated), which through CQC would relay those to the Rako interface to actually turn on the lights?

Or would the alternative be to connect the Rako interface to the UCM and then have CQC pass commands for the lights via the UCM and relay those to Rako?  Does Comfort control allow commands to be sent to the Rako device from a PC?

I would prefer to connect the Rako interface to the PC as CQC already has a driver to control the Rako lights so it may involve less customisation than controlling them via the UCM.

Is this possible?

Thanks

[adlim]

Hi,

How does the CQC work? Does it respond to RS232 command string? If so it could be possible to send commands to the UCM to the PC to trigger the sending of RAKO commands.

Definitely the other method (where the RAKO is connected to the UCM) will work but you would probably need to use 2 UCMs - one connected between PC and Comfort, the other between Comfort and RAKO. See the application guide at http://www.cytech-technology.com/temp/manuals/Rako%20Application%20Note.pdf  for more details.

Regards

[garym999]

Comfort is a powerful home automation system in its own right. In many ways it should be considered as this first but with a very capable security system onboard. Because of its hardwired and programmed nature it is also very reliable and not suseptable to the usual PC glitches.

The first consideration is that you need a \"RAKO RAV232 Plus\" module to talk to comfort.

If Comfort is only going to provide basic lighting control then it would probably be easier to get CQC to react to Comfort RS232 triggers (It is very easy to issue free form RS232 strings).

As both setup\'s will need programming I guess you need to take a step back and consider the easiest route v\'s long term reliability.