Please forgive me if this has been discussed before but I have had a search and drawn a blank.
I am using a PLC for my home automation and would like to control a series of Niko 6-fold light switches. I am looking at controlling the VMB6PBN PUSH-BUTTON INTERFACE using Canopen; has anyone tried before?
Another option open to me is modbus?
I think I will be hard wiring the switches in the end but this will take a lot of I/O.
Any thoughts greatly appreciated.
OK seeing that there may not be a simple answer to my dilemma, I have found the ‘Velbus DIN-Rail RS232/USB’ and ‘Velbus Serial InterfaceInterface’ in my quest and was wondering if I can use the RS232 port to receive switch pushes through the ‘VMB6PBN PUSH-BUTTON INTERFACE’ and transmit levels to a ‘Velbus 4-Channel 0-10V Controller’?
Found the protocol at velleman.eu/downloads/0/velb … vmb1rs.pdf
I think I may just buy a couple of bits and have a play.
hi Jimee,
I don’t think that you can interface the rs232 from your plc to the rs232 interface of velbus. Velbus uses a special protocol.
I don’t think that you can program the plc to simulate the velbus protocol. Most of the users of velbus uses a pc for remote control of velbus relays, blinds and dimers.
Download the velbuslink software and all the module protocols to see how they work.
If i was you i would buy a low power pc like Fitpc or so and write a program to talk to velbus.
stis
Programming a plc to receive the protocol isn’t a good idea, you will end up with a giagantic program.
Like Stiss said, you could use a minipc (like fitpc). If you want it to be very cheap, you could use for example an embedded board like hte Olinuxino, but than you 'll have to learn a bit of linux (wich isn’t that hard after all).
If you’ve got time to decide, I’d wait a few weeks (maybe months?) because olimex is developping a new version of their a13 board (in mini format), this could then be interresting to use it in combination with domogik (which doenst run on the imx233 board due the lack of memory).
Thanks for the replies, as usual I appear to be trying to achieve something different from the standard model.
I have a few ideas yet to explore but I don’t think that using Velbus is one of them, thanks again for the posts Jeroends and Stis, I appreciate the feedback.
As they say “Nothing ventured, nothing gained”.