Good Morning, Hockey Dad here… we have a NCD relay controller that turn on three electrical circuits at our complex–two lighting circuits and a scoreboard circuit. The system is off manually and all three circuits are turned on by a 4- button FOB, with three of the buttons operating each of the three circuits. All circuits (used to) go off at 10pm 7 days a week.
I accessed the NCD board via USB and ran the base station software. I was able to see that the board supports ProXR, reactor, and fusion. The time on the board was off by three hours and there were no events in the fusion taralist when in the run mode.
I read all of the documentation on the base station, reactor and taralist. Put teh board in program mode and attempted to program taralist to shut off each relay at 10pm 7 days a week. Now I lost the function of the FOB and the taralist does not work either. When I look at the board, I can see the FOB control light up when the FOB is pressed–so the signal is being received, but I must have screwed the programming up.
I also assume that the Reactor sensor software portion of the controller is the FOB. Is that correct?
In terms of the relays, I understand ProXR takes priority–the PC-- after that it is the reactor and the taralist. Since the lights are in a state of contstant off, and the taralist would run events once a day at 10p, does the program have each relay taralist controlled and the FOB just acts as a “manual overide” when we need the circuits on? or do the relays need to be “taralist or reactor.”
Any other help or guidance is appreciated. I am located 12 miles from Center City Philadelphia in South Jersey. If there are any contractors on the forum who specialize in this programming, please reach out , as I have a sneaky suspicion we will need to call in the pros.
After storing events in Taralist, you also need to store them in your computer. Base Station is not able to read events out of Taralist as this is not a file that is being transported. So saving your events to the controller and the computer is a necessary step. Just because the list is empty does not mean the events are not being processed. It is more likely the events cannot process because of higher priority events such as Key Fob or Reactor. Key Fob events typically occur at the ProXR level, which is the highest level of priority. Once a key fob has taken control of the relays, Taralist will no longer have control of the affected relays. It will be necessary to return control of the relays back to Taralist for the time schedule to function. The color coding in Base Station helps define which relay is controlled by Taralist, Reactor, or ProXR. Reactor functions are typically triggered using onboard inputs. It is possible to send Reactor commands using the Key Fob, but it is not likely that you have done this unless you have made some very specific changes to the commands the key fob receiver is sending to the fusion controller.
Our updated WiFi module will connect Taralist to the internet and update the time for you to prevent time drift if you have a wifi connection available.
Hope this helps point you in the right direction.
Thanks,
Ryan
The FOB works again to control our three relays-- 4 button FOB controls three relays manually on and off.
I also successfully added taralist events and go the controller to follow them. Relays on, relays off, disable reactor, enable reactor. But I was not able to get the following scenario to work: we want our coaches to turn the lights on manually with the FOB, so relay 1 2 and 3 will be reactor controlled. We want the timer to automatically turn the lights off at 10pm 7 days a week. The relays would not go on at all unless manually by the FOB.
I tried the following taralist commands but could not get the taralist to override the reactor enabled relay:
disable reactor
clear reactor priorities
make taralist control all relays
turn off all relays
enable reactor
I tried these commands when the taralist had control of all reactors, manually turned on relay 1, and then waited until taralist ran the above functions… the key fob disabled and enabled as instructed (i tested it to make sure my taralist commands were working), but the turn lights off command would not work. I also tried these same commands when I had all relays set to light pink–taralist OR reactor have control
and as a note, the relay turns red indicating that it is reactor controlled when it is activated on or off with the key fob. I just wanted to add that.
When a function does not appear to work, you will need to use Base Station to determine which controller has command of the relays. It would seem your application only needs Taralist and ProXR, so it would be better to leave out all Reactor functions (remove them from Taralist entirely). Make Sure PROXR and Taralist have control of relays, not reactor. Again, Reactor is for use with the on-board inputs ONLY, it is not for use with computers or time scheduling. The KFX Key Fob module simulates a computer sending ProXR commands, so Reactor is not needed for this application.
OK, now I feel like I am a bit out of my limited knowledge base— when you say use Base Station to determine who has control, do you mean the Fusion Master Control Panel or the Fusion Override Controller or the ProXR Advanced Relay Control Command Set? I am confused as to where I should be looking at for the FOB commands.
Under Fusion Management, I did have all relays set to be controlled by taralist. I had no reactor functions in taralist, just the command to turn relays off. This still did not work to turn off the relays once they were enabled by the FOB.
When I use the FOB, the color changes to red indicating that the relay is reactor controlled. Is that the expected outcome when I use the FOB? Should the relay color change red?
I can see the following on my base station software:
Fusion Features:
ProXR Advanced Relay Control Command Set
Reactor Generation II Automatic Relay Controller
Taralist Enhanced Event Controller
Remote Access (Tunnelling to wireless) <<<< this has nothin to do with a remote FOB correct?
Fusion Management:
Fusion Override Controller
Relay Status and Usage Map
Fusion Master Control Panel
The color codes found in this document will help you understand:
Once the Key Fob has taken control of the relays, Taralist no-longer has control.
You will likely need to setup a key fob button to return control back to Taralist or you will need to setup an event (say at midnight) to return control of relays back to Taralist.
Skip Remote Access all together, this does not apply to your application.
Hope this helps.
Ryan
Thanks for your help so far, can you just clarify what I am actually seeing on my end?
When I activate any of the buttons (each representing three different relays) on my FOB, the relay turns on, the Fusion controller shows the relay turn on, and the color changes to from blue (taralist controlled) to bright red. When the FOB is hit again, it changes to maroon.-- showing taht reactor has control. Can you confirm that this is an expected outcome of when a FOB is used? you have said a few times that I should not be using reactor— but it looks like the system is using reactor
I did set the state of all relays to taralist controlled… used FOB to turn on relay (again, showed red)… had taralist programmed to take over prior to a command to switch the lights off… it did not work
I also set all relays to taralist OR reactor and tried the same taralist commands… no success…
Given my scenario, can you advise what the default state of the relays should be in?
Again, should the FOB show the relay as being controlled by reactor? Is the FOB programmed incorrectly? For the past 5 years our FOB has worked to turn the lights on, and the system turns them off at 10pm… the 10pm part has failed us.
I do not believe that I have changed any of the FOB settings/reactor settings.
This would only happen if your Key Fob is sending Reactor commands, if your Key Fob were configured to send ProXR commands, the the colors would be Green instead of Red. To clarify, Reactor can be used, but it’s not my first choice given the application. I have not tried to configure this exact scenario on Fusion controllers, so I would suggest further experimentation.
If a Taralist command does not appear to work, there’s usually a really good reason why. Please remember, that every Taralist command is processed in sequence every single second. The commands at the top of the list are processed first, but the items lowest in the list will have the “final” say in the computed relay state. So if a command at the top of the list says to turn on a relay, and a command lower in the list says to turn off the same relay, the relay will appear to do nothing and it will appear to not work, even though it is working perfectly. The same hold true for every command in the Taralist sequence, if you tell it to do something high in the list, and later in the list you tell it not to do something, the function will appear to never work, even though it is working perfectly. Hope this helps clarify the order of Taralist operations.
Would a command to restore taralist as the priority turn the color back to blue if the command was functioning correctly?
Yesterday when i programmed my commands, I spaced them ETMO 30 seconds apart to “see” if they were working… i tried with and without reactor commands in conjunction with restore taralist as the primary.
the reactor commands worked… it disabled the FOB when instructed to do so… but the taralist priority did not appear to function, the color on the relay stayed red, and the lights did not turn off as instructed by taralist.
when the commands are programmed, do you suggest any preference of “all relays” “bank 0” “dropdown 1” or should I program the commands and duplicate them for each relay in bank 1, relay 1, relay 2 and relay 3?
I think we established that the FOB is liking processing reactor commands… in which control panel in the base station would I actually see what the buttons on the FOB are set to control?
As far as emulating an additional FOB, can you tell me how I would go about that? Just press the learn button on the hardware and any button on the FOB or all three buttons?
I did read the remote control information, but i may have missed the info about emulating additional remote controls.
Good Morning, do you have any information on how I would find a suitabel contractor to program the relay board for us? Or is this service available by NCD if we send the hardware back to NCD? Thanks
OK, an update. I think I have solved the programming riddle. I assigned taralist to control all relays. The FOB turns on each relay needed and the color changes to red. The lights turn on for those circuits In the taralist event schedule, I programmed an event to “clear all reactor and proxr” priorities. When that event runs, I can see the controller turn my red relays showing 1 for on, back to blue for off. I then added another event to turn off all relays 30 seconds after the first event. That’s it–two events. The controller then stays under the control of taralist until the reactor overrides for the lights on…then it clears at ETMO and then turns then off at ETMO.
I also got my three other FOBS programmed and working.
I am still stumped about where or how I would program a FOB because I cannot find any portion of the software that shows me FOB functions. --as mentioned, in base station, i do not see any options to launch “KFX series configuration control panel”
thanks for all of your help… i am sure I’ll know after few nights of hockey is everthing is working correctly.
Glad to hear you have it working. The FOB is an entirely different computer and has it’s own programming methods. You will need a USB programmer. You will remove the KFX module from the Fusion controller and place the KFX in the programmer and run Base Station Software, which will allow you to configure the commands that are sent to the Fusion controller.
You can learn more about the KFX module here:
They probably don’t want me saying this but if you’re looking for something simpler you can control and program yourself you can get Arduino to do it, there are plenty of relay boards for it too.
Using advanced microcontrollers seems like a good idea at first but they are designed to be used by people that went to school for electrical engineering and computer science.