Lighting Applications
In most installations, a single Lighting Application is sufficient, and this setting will not need to be changed from the default. In larger installations, it might be necessary to change the Primary Lighting Application address and/or add additional Lighting Applications.
If using more than one Lighting Application on any one C-Bus network, it is important to review the Status Report setting on all Input units on that network.
Status Report
The Status Report (also known as the “MMI”) is a key part of the reliability of the C-Bus System.
It is a system message which is generated by one Input Unit per Lighting Application, per network, and is used to ensure that the states of all the Lighting Groups on that Application are kept in sync between input and output units.
The Status Report message occurs regularly at an interval set by the “Status Report” parameter, which is set by default to once every 3 seconds. All input units are capable of initiating the Status Report, however at any one time, only one unit assumes the role any given Lighting Application on that network.
With the default Status Report setting of 3 seconds, the Status Report messages use approximately 5% of the network bandwidth. If multiple Lighting Applications are used on a single network, the Status Request setting on all Input Units on that network should be increased to a value which is at least 3 times the number of Lighting Applications in use on that network, in order to ensure that the Status Report Messages do not utilize too much network bandwidth, which may result in reduced responsiveness.