lutron communication fails

Set up a driver in HomeWorks for that RS232 port and choose what feed back you want, otherwise everytime you power cylce or lose power to the HWI processer you'll loose feedback. This is done some where in the illumination software, Idon'trecall exactly where. Next, I ususally put the following code in the Online Event for that serial port.

Use what you need and comment out the rest.

           send_string dvHWI, "'DLMON',CRLF"//enable dimmer monitoring
	  send_string dvHWI, "'KBMON',CRLF"//enable keypad monitoring
	  send_string dvHWI, "'KLMON',CRLF"//enable keypad led monitoring
	  send_string dvHWI, "'VMD',CRLF"  //disable vaction mode
	  send_string dvHWI, "'VMR',CRLF"  //start recording vacation mode

The above example has 13,10 (CRLF) which is needed for IP comms but for RS232 only 13 is needed, although the extra 10 may not cause any problems.

OK, I had to retrace the steps to build a serial driver so go into your Illumination Software and open your program.

Press the programming tab and then select the interface tab and highlight the Serial Equipemnt line. An "Add" tab should appear directly above and so click on that. Fill in the fields as appropriate. Also if you changed the default baud rate it will reset to default everytime the system is restarted or power cycled unless this driver is created and assigned to the appropriate port. Any way once filled in exit this set up and go to address assignment tab, top left. You should see your un addressed RS232 device in the table on the right. Select the appropriate RS232 port and assign that device. Save & upload and hopefully that will do the trick.

You may not want all the monitoring enabled just the ones you need otherwise your input buffer will be busy throwing out un wanted strings. Most folks just use the LED feedback which returns the LED states of keypad and Phantom keypads so you know what state a scene is in. I also use dimmer levels as I maintain levels for all my lights in a structure and display levels on mini bargraphs as well on a large bargraph when that dimmer is selected. This bargraph is active and used to set levels of the individual dimmer. The other stuff can usually be left unchecked. If you are using the AMX lutron module then I beleive all you'll want is LED feedback unless you create your own buffer and create your own parsing routine.