Rako Lighting interface issues.

[Ian Clarke]

Has anyone interfaced Comfort to the rako blind control units.?

The Rako blind control units work perfectly from there own RF control ,  or from the rako one way 9600 baud interface when I send the commands via hyperterminal.

These are excellent units.  Because of the feature of the channel 0 and room 0 feature off there protocol all the blinds  all go up and down together in perfect syncronisation,  there is no delay caused by the sequential issuing of commands.

Anyway this is not the problem.  When I use a Comfort UCM to control the blinds,  that control is not consistent, somes the blinds go in different directions and some times together.  The same commands get different behavours. 

What I suspect is one of two things, and I am hopeing someone has walked down this road before to save ne having to test see which is correct,  or find both are wrong.

Suspected cause 1.

=============

The Rako interface response to a comfort command, is not a legal Comfort protocol so the UCM to sends \"N/A\"  back to rako.   N/A is not a Rako command so it sends \"unknown command\"  back to Comfort, and they argue at full speed over this filling up buffers and causing the reall commands to be dropped and corrupted.  The fix for this is simple,  CUT the receive wire into theComfort Serial  interface.

 

Suspected cause 2

==============

The string of discrete commands in an ALL BLIND down sequence is too much for Comfort or Rako\'s buffers, so data loss occurs, giving the inconsistent results.

FIX.  Put delays between serial  

Has anyone else tried rako control of lights or blinds.  I suspect that this could happen in either case.

Just in case you are thinking the one way Rako is only 1200 baud,  the old one was.  They have a new verion that can do BOTH 1200 and 9600 software selectable.

Works very well.

 

Perhaps we need a new category in the forum for interfacing to Rako.

Regards  Ian  Clarke

 

 

 

[adlim]

Hi Ian,

I have another suspicion: The 03H character used by Comfort as the STX character. Perhaps that is rejected/misunderstood by RAKO? There is a simple fix to this - shunt SW8-G. Could this be the fix you need?

[Ian Clarke]

Hi Adrian, I wish it was that easy. I am aware of the function of the G shunt, and it should already be in place.   This requirement is mentioned in the Rako interfacing manual,  which is good.   I will check that it  is in place.

Regards  Ian

[Ian Clarke]

This is an update on the problem that I posted a couple of weeks ago.

The problem has been solved, thanks to some excellent help from the Guys are Rako.

The problem was not Rako,  Comfort, the UCM or anything else but my own lack of knowledge of the product,  as is the case with most problems.

I was using the Dim Up and Dim Down functions of the Rako wall switches to control the rako blind control unit.  This neat feature was used because it gives you the ability to control switching of the interlinked relays.  i,e should relay A open and B close  or A close and B open.  This allowed us a workaround to the problem that the blind motors were wired consistently but we did not notice that the motors wiring was at different ends of the two blinds.  Thus for the same command from a button press,  sent one blind up and the other down. 

Rather than get into the ceiling and do a rewire we choose to use the function of the dim up and dim down commands, rather than the scene buttons which also control the motors.

So much for the pre-amble,  so why did they not work as expected.

It may have been the cable,  but that was not the main reason which was this.

When you press a rako Dim up or down button it produces a dim Up or down command when the button is pressed and a STOP command when the button was released.  From Comfort I was only sending the DIM up  for blind UP and Dim down for Blind down.   I was not sending the STOP command after either of these.  Hense the controller, after a few commands got really confused as it would be seeing effectively both buttons being held down without any release.

After I put in the STOP command the two blinds in each room work perfectly.

The rako system produces a very impressive control effect.  There were two rooms with two blinds in each room.  It was possible to see all blinds from several locations in either room.  Because of the abilty of the Rako wirless system to send the Channel 0  ( all channels in the room ) or room 0  ( all rooms in the house ) it was possible to have the two blinds in one room move in perfect syncronisation,  or have all four blinds move in perfect syncronisation.  This looks much better than having a delay between each blind movement.  Of course it is possible to have individual control over each separate blind.

The cable I used is shown below.

Comfort  END                                 Rako RS232 to RF end

DB9 Male                                        DB9 Male

Pin 2  ----------------------------------- Pin 3

Pin 5 ------------------------------------- Pin 5

Note that the cable is connection end specific.

A sample of the code for this control is shown below.

Response Living Blind Down
-------------------------------------
Do R-Room-6 [Rako Room 6 Living]
Do R-Channel-0 [Rako Channel 0]
Do R-Down [Rako DOWN Button - Blind DOWN]
Do R-Stop [Rako Stop ramp ( Release Button)]


Response Living Blind Up
---------------------------------
Do R-Room-6 [Rako Room 6 Living]
Do R-Channel-0 [Rako Channel 0]
Do R-Up [Rako UP Button - Blind UP]
Do R-Stop [Rako Stop ramp ( Release Button)]


Response Living Blind Stop
-----------------------------------
Do R-Room-6 [Rako Room 6 Living]
Do R-Channel-0 [Rako Channel 0]
Do R-Off [Rako Off  Blind Stop]

The following responses have the single actions to send each element of the full Rako command.  The elements are called to build up the complete RaKo command seqence required.  Not all are shown  but the pattern is the same for the other commands.

.
Send Channel Zero
Send RS232 4 43,48,3A,30,0D

Send Dim Down command
Send RS232 4 43,4F,3A,32,0D

Send Stop command  ( ie release the dim button)
Send RS232 4 43,4F,3A,31,35,0D

In summary,  this provided a very good reliable fast control solution, with a cool all blinds down/up/stop in total syncronisation,  plus complete individual control.

The buffer in the rs232 to RF inteface was large enough so that no delays were required to be inserted between commands.

I can recommned this gear to anyone thinking of using it.

Regards  Ian  Clarke