Introduction This document has been written to give guidance for commissioning of a Rako Wired installation. This is explained step by step by following the programming of a real small system. The same method can be used to program larger systems. Figure 1 shows a simple installation. There are six circuits spread across two rooms. These are fed by two RAK-4 units. There are two wall plates in each room. A RAK-Link powers the wall plates and provides communication with the RAK4 s. Each RAK-4 unit contains 4 dimmers. Each dimmer drives a single circuit. Each dimmer is programmed to hold several preset brightness settings (or Scenes). The Wall Plate controllers have several push buttons. Normally there are four Scene buttons, an Off Button, and Up & Down buttons. By pressing one of the Scene buttons, the dimmers are set to that same scene. The system uses Room numbers and Channel numbers to identify which dimmers respond to which Wall Plate controllers. CONTENTS Page Introduction...1 Figure 1: Picture of a Simple Wired System...2 Preparation...3 Make sure the Wallplates are communicating...3 Check the RAK-4 circuits are working...3 Set the address switches on the RAK4 cards...3 Identify which lights are connected to which circuits on which RAK s...4 Start commissioning the system using RASOFT...5 Create Rooms and Channel names...6 Configure the RAK-Link...8 Map the RAK4 Channels...9 Set the Power-Up Modes...12 SET the Wall Plates...12 Appendix 1 Setting Scenes...16 Appendix 2 Group Settings & Ignores...17 Changing the Ignore Settings...18 Appendix 3 Customising Wall Plates...19 Mapping: List of Plates...19 Mapping: List of Maps...19 Mapping: Source and Action....20 Mapping: Templates...21 Mapping: Enable Programming from Plate...21 Wall Plate Programming Example...22 Mapping: Whole House Off...22 Page 1 of 22
Figure 1: Picture of a Simple Wired System Wallplate 1 RAK4 RJ45 cables LOUNGE BEDROOM 230v ac Cat5 data cable Wallplate 3 Wallplate 4 RAKLink Wallplate 2 ROUTER Page 2 of 22 WRE BRIDGE
Preparation In this Programming Guide we assume that the system has been wired up correctly and communications are working. Make some checks that it s working before starting the programming: Make sure the Wallplates are communicating This is a very important step. If all is well, then each wall plate will have Blue LED s lit up. If a button on a wall plate is pressed then the LED of that button should light. Press another button, and the LED of that one should light up. The LED should follow the button presses. If the Blue LED s no longer change after 6 or 10 presses then there is something wrong with the CAT-5 wiring between the keypads. If there is a problem, then check that the wiring and terminations have been done according to the instruction sheets of the installed hardware. Check the RAK-4 circuits are working For now, leave the RAK4 address switches in their default positions (All Off). If the Wallplates and the RAKLink(s) are in their default factory settings, then any wallplate should control every circuit. If this is the case, then there is a very good chance that the programming can be carried out without problem. If the wallplates do not control the lights then use the RAK4 dip switches to directly switch the circuits. Switch 5 will control Circuit 1, Switch 6 controls Circuit 2, Switch 7 Circuit 3 and Switch 8 Circuit 4. When finished leave the switches 5 8 in their OFF (Down) positions. If even the DIP switches do not control the loads, then check for wiring problems. If the RAK4 channel LED s are going on/off correctly, but the loads remain off, then make sure the neutral connections have been properly wired. Set the address switches on the RAK4 cards. Each RAK-Link can be used to interface up to eight RAK-4 cards. (This can be any mixture of RAK4, RAK-4L and RAK-4F). Each RAK-4 needs to be given a different address to any other RAK-4 that is connected to the same RAK-Link. This is so that the correct commands are sent to each one. The addresses are set by the DIP-Switches on each RAK-4. These switches are easily seen near the top edge of each RAK card. The address is set by switch positions 1, 2, 3 and 4. The coding for the switches is as shown in table below. RAK 0 RAK 1 RAK 2 RAK 3 Switch 1 Switch 2 Switch 3 Switch 4 RAK 4 RAK 5 RAK 6 RAK 7 In the installation of Figure 1 we shall have the Top RAK-4 set to address 1 and the lower RAK-4 set to address 0. Page 3 of 22
Identify which lights are connected to which circuits on which RAK s Normally this information is provided by the electrician who has done the wiring. But, there is often some confusion about which circuit is which. A RAK-4 card has four outputs. These are circuits 1,2,3,4. The terminal block on the RAK-4 is clearly labelled as such. For our installation here we have six circuits. These just happen to be wired as follows: CIRCUIT NAME RAK Number RAK Circuit Lounge Chandelier 0 1 Lounge Standard lamp 0 2 Lounge table lamp 0 3 Bedroom Spots 0 4 Bedroom Standard lamp 1 1 Bedroom pendant 1 2 If you are not sure which circuit is which, there is an easy way to find out. Use the DIP switches on the RAK4 cards. Switches 5,6,7,8 can be used to toggle the RAK outputs on and off. Switch up to turn the circuit ON and switch down to turn it OFF. You ll be able to see what you re doing as each circuit on the RAK4 has an LED that lights up when the circuit is ON. So, just see which lights in the house operate when you move the DIP switch up/down. Page 4 of 22
Start commissioning the system using RASOFT To commission the system a WA-Bridge (or WRE-Bridge or WTC-Bridge) must be plugged into the RAK-Link and to a wireless router. This Bridge and the router form the link between the Laptop PC and the RAKO system. It is important that the PC has reliable connection to the router. If the wireless is weak or intermittent then it is strongly advised that the PC and router be connected together by an RJ45 Ethernet cable. There must be no other Rako interface units connected to the PC (RAUSB, RAH-Smart, RAV232, MB1) Start up the RASOFT software on the Laptop PC. The main Rako home screen should appear without any error messages occurring while the program is loading. Notice that this screen only has Rako written at top left hand corner. This means we are editing the default Rako project file. Press File then Save to create a new project file. Press the Save and edit button Give the file an appropriate name (Wired Demo in this instance) Page 5 of 22
Now the project file is called Wired Demo Create Rooms and Channel names Go to the Channel Controls window by selecting Controls and then Channel Controls To start creating Rooms, Click on Add (Hint: Don t worry about which circuits are connected to which RAKs at this stage. Just think about what Lights are in what rooms) (Hint: Avoid using Room Numbers 1,2,3 and any room number that is a multiple of 4. See section Group settings and Ignores for details). Type Room name (Bedroom) Select a Room Number (5) Press Add again Change Room name (to Lounge) Select a different Room Number (6) Press Add once more Press Quit Page 6 of 22
Now the Lounge and Bedroom appear in bottom RH of the Channel controls window as rooms 6 and 5. The Default Room 4 can be deleted at this point. In Bottom RH corner: Highlight the Bedroom by clicking on it. Then Type in the names of the circuits that exist in the Bedroom. (Hint: Again Don t think about what RAK s these circuits are connected to. Just get all the circuits listed into the correct room) Page 7 of 22
Repeat for the Circuits in the Lounge Configure the RAK-Link On the RAK-Link there are two LED s and a push button. LED 2 should be alight and LED 1 should be OFF. Press and hold the button so that LED 1 lights up. After 5 seconds this LED should start to blink. This Rasoft message should appear Click on Yes Type a name for the RAKLink. Press Add Press Quit Page 8 of 22
This is the RAK-Link mapping screen. There are some things to notice. In the bottom LH corner is a list of RAK-Links that have been added to this system. In this case there is only one and it is called RAKLink. It is highlighted in blue. The red writing above this says OnLine Version 0.1.8 This means that Rasoft is able to see the highlighted RAK-Link correctly. Map the RAK4 Channels Refer to the list of RAK4 connections made earlier. It is repeated here. CIRCUIT NAME Lounge Chandelier Lounge Standard lamp Lounge table lamp Bedroom Spots Bedroom Standard lamp Bedroom pendant RAK Number 0 0 0 0 1 1 RAK Circuit 1 2 3 4 1 2 On the RAKlink mapping screen, Highlight the the first map on the list by clicking on it. Then use the drop down boxes to fill in the Source Room & Channel numbers that are connected to the RAK Box 0 and Circuit 1. (Remember to tick the Enable tick-box at the left hand side of the Source area) Press the Save Button and the screen should look as below: Page 9 of 22
The screen above is showing that on Box zero the first circuit is connected to Room 6 channel 2. Or in other words the first circuit of Box zero is connected to the Lounge Chandelier. Now create maps for all the other circuits until the screen looks as below: When this looks correct, press the Upload button to transfer the information to the actual RakLink. Page 10 of 22
As soon as the RakLink Upload has been done correctly the circuits should start responding to the correct Scene commands. Check this by selecting the rooms in the Rasoft Channel Control screen and seeing that the Scene controls do operate the lighting in the correct room. Individual circuits can be checked by sending Idents to single channels. The Ident buttons are located down the Left hand side of the Channel Control screen. Pressing Ident will cause the circuit to briefly flash on/off. Idents are most easily seen if the circuits are first turned fully off. (Hint: It can be a 2 person job to both press the ident button and see which lights flash. Sometimes it s easier to use the channel sliders instead. Select Scene 1, then slide the All slider (the very top one) fully to the left this should turn all the lights off in that room. Then move a single channel slider to the right to see which light comes on. If the sliders can t be moved, it s because the OFF button has been pressed. Channel Ident Buttons All Slider controls all channels in the room Power-Up Mode Page 11 of 22
Set the Power-Up Modes With the circuits responding to the Channel Controls, it s a good opportunity to set the Power-Up modes. When power is applied to a dimmer it can either fade up the lights, or leave them off depending on the programming. This is an important setting as it tells the system what to do after a power cut. Generally, it is bad if all the lights come on after a power cut. Click on the Power-Up Mode drop down box at the top of the Channel Control screen. The list shows the different settings available to the dimmers. The default setting for a dimmer is 100%. This means that when power is applied to the dimmer it will turn the lights up to maximum. This is a very useful setting during installation & commissioning as it makes it easy to check that circuits are working. However it is generally bad to use this as the final setting since it will cause lights to come on after supply interruptions. The most used options are: Last Scene: The dimmer will restore the same state that it was in before the power was removed. So if the light was On before the power cut, it will come back on afterwards. If it was off before the cut, it will stay off. Off: Whatever the state of the light before the power cut, the light will stay off when the power is restored. The Per Channel option allows each dimmer in a room to have its own individual Power-Up setting if that is needed. Hint: make sure the dimmers are really set to the required power-up setting. Rasoft does not send the dimmers the Power-Up setting unless the setting is manually selected from drop down menu. Just because it s displaying Last Scene doesn t mean that it has actually transmitted that to the dimmers. The Power-Up setting needs to be done in each room. Test the power up settings by switching off all the breakers, then switching back on. SET the Wall Plates Each Wall Plate needs to be set up. Go to one of the wallplates. Press and Hold the two setup buttons on the plate. On a standard 7 button plate these happen to be the FadeUp and FadeDown buttons After 5 approximately seconds the Wall Plate Blue LEDs should light up to indicate that the Wall Plate is ready to be programmed. Press & Hold these two buttons On a 10 button plate it is the same two buttons Return to the Rasoft screen and a setup window should have appeared: Press the Yes Button Page 12 of 22
This screen will allow the Wall Plate to be assigned to the correct room. Use the Drop down box to select the room where the Wall Plate is situated. Then give the Plate a usable name that will allow the plate to be easily identified in the future. Press the Add Button. Then press Quit Page 13 of 22
The Plate Setup screen now lists the new wall plate in the bottom LH corner of the screen. It s entry reads 5:100-Bedside 7 Button. This indicates it s Room Number (5), it s Device Number and it s descriptive name. By clicking this entry to highlight it, the Plate Setup window displays the information particular to this wall plate. Of importance is the red text about 1/3 up on left land side of the window: On-Line. Version 0.1.8 If this text is showing, it means that the highlighted wall plate is communicating correctly with Rasoft. If the text is missing, try closing the window and re-opening it. (<Controls> <Wired> <Plate Setup>). Rasoft can only communicate with a wall plate if it is showing as On-Line. So far, the Plate Setup screen does not show any functions for the wall plate buttons. The White Text Box at the top Right Hand side shows that all the Key Mappings are either Deleted or Disabled. The quickest way to get this setup correctly is to use the factory settings of the wall plate that are already programmed into the actual (real) wall plate. On the Left Hand side of the Plate Setup Window: Press the Download Button. Pressing the Download button causes the information in the highlighted wall plate to be copied into Rasoft. This should take 10 20 seconds. When the download has completed Rasoft asks whether it should overwrite the existing mapping information with that which has been just downloaded. In this instance, choose OK. The mapping information for the wall plate will now look something like this. This is a standard 7 button wall plate. For more details on mapping wall plates see the Wall-plate programming guide. At this point the wall plate has been set up so that it should be controlling the correct circuits. Page 14 of 22
Next, add the remaining wall plates in exactly the same way: When this had been done. The system is basically set-up. Each wall-plate should be controlling the lighting in the room that it has been assigned to. Further programming is normally required to achieve some of the following results: Changing the scene settings Customising the function of the wall plates (mapping wall-plates) Creating room groupings Whole House Commands Adding Wireless modules to the wired system Setting up the I-Phone app Changing fade rates Page 15 of 22
Appendix 1 Setting Scenes The Default brightness settings for Rako Dimmers are: Scene 1 = 100%, Scene 2 = 75%, Scene 3 = 50%, Scene 4 = 25% Unless these Scene Settings are changed the final lighting effects will not be very interesting. Once the system has been commissioned to the point where all the dimmers are properly addressed and being controlled by wall plates, it is an easy task to create some Lighting Scenes. OPEN THE CHANNEL CONTROLS WINDOW Select which scene to set. Scene numbers greater than 4 can be selected from here. (Wireless devices can only use scenes 1 to 4) Highlight a room in which to set the scenes Adjust the level for each circuit to the desired level for the scene Store the Scene when it is correct Page 16 of 22
Appendix 2 Group Settings & Ignores Group setting allows dimmers to respond to commands from different rooms. Group Settings are typically used where a single area is split into two or three sub areas: Examples are Kitchen/Diner areas, Bedroom/Ensuite, Hallway/Landing. In the Rako systems, room numbers are either Group Masters of Group Members. Any room number that is a multiple of four can act as a Master for the following three room numbers. Thus Room 4 is a Master for Group Member rooms 5,6,7. Room 8 is Master for rooms 9,10,11 and so on. The Group Members can be programmed to respond to (or ignore) any of their group Master commands. Whole House Commands Room zero commands can be used to control every room in the house. The most common application is a Whole House Off commands which can be sent from a Wall Plate located by the main exit of the building. Group Example: Hallway Landing Room 9 Room 10 Each of these areas will have their own wall controller. A room 9 controller for the hallway and a room 10 controller for the landing. But it is also possible to fit room 8 controllers (at top & bottom of the stairs perhaps). The programming can be such that the room 8 controllers set lighting in both the landing and the hallway when climbing the stairway. Generally it is simpler if rooms are only given Group Member room numbers. (Room numbers 1,2,3 are also to be avoided. This is because the Group Master for these rooms is Room Zero). So number rooms as 5,6,7,9,10,11,13,14,15,17,18,19 etc. Avoid using Room numbers 1,2,3,4,8,12,16,20,24,28 etc. When allocating room numbers consider which rooms will benefit from being within the same group as each other. Typically a Bedroom and it s Ensuite Bathroom may be grouped or Front External Lights could be grouped with Rear External Lighting. Button to access Group Ignore Options X indicates Ignores are set for all channels in this room Page 17 of 22
Changing the Ignore Settings Select which Room Number to edit Press the Ignore Options button This warning is displayed. Press OK 4. The Ignore Options window is displayed This shows which channel in the room is being set (ALL channels in this instance). Can tell the channels to ignore Direct Commands that is commands from the channels own room. In this example none are selected, so all the Direct Commands are active. (It is rare to ignore direct commands). This button will send an Ident to the selected channel which will cause it to Flash. Use this to check that correct channel is being set Press to send Ignore Option settings to the dimmer (must be done for settings to take effect) Nothing ticked here so all Room zero commands received by the dimmers will be obeyed. In this example All channels are being set to ignore group commands with the exception of the OFF command. An Off command from Group master will turn off the lights of this Group member Page 18 of 22
Appendix 3 Customising Wall Plates This is the setup screen for Wired WallPlates. It contains a number of functional areas. Mapping: List of Plates This area of the screen shows a list of Plates that have been added to the system. The plate 4:1 RH Plate has been highlighted, so all information on the Plate Setup screen refers to this wallplate. The Unique ID Shows a Network address number. The Unique ID should be different for every device on the system. The Room Number is the logical room that the plate has been assigned to. These are the same room numbers that appear in the Channel Controls window. Each room can have more than one plate within it. It is important that plates (or other devices) within the same room have different device numbers. If there are any conflicts of Unique ID s, or Room/Device numbers then the system will not be reliable. (The RAKLink setup screen shows similar information for RAKLinks. It is equally important that RAKLinks do not conflict with each other or with wallplates). Mapping: List of Maps This area shows a list of Maps that have been assigned to the wallplate. Map number 1 has been highlighted. It shows that when Button A is pressed the plate will send a Scene 1 command to All channels in the Local Room. When creating new maps the Copy, Paste & Save buttons are useful. Page 19 of 22
Mapping: Source and Action. These areas define what the buttons on the wall plates do. The programming refers to the Highlighted mapping (as shown above in the List of Mappings) Must be ticked for the Mapping to function This area shows a diagram view of a 10 button keypad. On a 7 button pad, keys F, H and J cannot be used. Button A is pressed The Tick Box indicates that this LED is affected by the Map and in this case the LED is ON. (So, When Button A is pressed the button A LED is lit) These LEDs get switched OFF This LED is not affected by this mapping as it s tick box is unchecked. (LED will stay in whatever state it was in before the button was pressed). Allows individual control of LEDs The button acts when it is pressed. Also possible to have it act when it is released This is how long the button must be held down before it acts. In this case the key operates as soon as it is pressed The keypress will send a message to the local room number. If this tick box is unchecked a different room number can be selected. Which channel will the message be sent to. (As defined in the Channel Control screen) This allows a key to use the same room number as a previous keypress The command type that will be sent. (Do not select Macro use WRE-Bridge for Macro functions). This tick box specifies that the dimmers should go to the new scene (etc) using Default Fade Rate. If unchecked, then use slider bar to set special fade rate. (Wireless dimmers will ignore special fade rates and always use default) Check this tick box if the Action is to create a Fade. Then when key is pressed the dimmers start to fade (up or down). When the key is released a Stop is sent so that dimmers cease fading. If this is checked then the LED illumination of the buttons will fade out after time set by slider. Use this to prevent glare from wallplates at night in bedrooms etc. It is possible to alter the LED brightness. This can affect the power consumed by the wallplate and needs careful consideration. Best left unchecked Page 20 of 22
Mapping: Templates On a large system it will become very time consuming to manually enter the maps for each keypad. It is possible to save favourite sets of Maps as Templates which can be used, reused and modified at will. The Export and Import and keys allow templates to be transferred from one Rasoft Project to another. Mapping: Enable Programming from Plate The Mapping screen has a tick box at Left hand side labelled Enable Programming from Plates. By checking this box it is possible to create a wallplate where Dimmers can be addressed and Scenes set in the same way as on a Wireless Wallplate. If using this feature, be strongly advised to program the maps for this plate as if it were a Wireless seven button plate (i.e 4 scenes, Off, Fade Up and Fade Down in the Local room). If in doubt, do not enable this feature. Once this has been set up, the plate is placed into Programming Mode by pressing and holding a Scene Button and Fade Up. Page 21 of 22
Wall Plate Programming Example Mapping: Whole House Off This example shows that more than one map can be created for a single button on a keypad. Button E is normally the OFF button. This first map shows that an OFF command is sent to the local room as soon as the key is pressed. In this second map, a room 0 OFF command is sent when Button E has been pressed for 2 seconds. The overall result is that the OFF button acts as a normal room off command when pressed normally. If it is pressed and held, then the normal room command will operate, and then 2 seconds later a Whole House OFF command will be sent. Page 22 of 22