How to solve On/Off/On cycle

youstra · February 2009

I have a PCS hooked up to a PS3. When the PS3 is turned on, some other stuff should be turned on, including an RS232-controlled Onkyo pre/pro. This all happens through a channel event.

I'm not having consistent results, and it appears to be because the PCS sends an On, then an Off then an On in rapid succession to the I/O port.

What's the best way to handle this?

Bigsquatch · February 2009

Put a named wait in the off event then cancel it in the on event so that momentary off events will be cancelled.

CHANNEL_EVENT[]
{
   ON: 
   { 
      cancel_wait 'AWait'    // Does nothing if 'AWait' is not pending
      DO_SOMETHING_ELSE() 
   }
   OFF: 
   {  
      WAIT 20 'AWait' { DO_THE_CHANNEL_OFF_STUFF } 
   }
}

Not sure my syntax is right, but that should solve your problem.

DHawthorne · February 2009

The PCS is rather old technology and doesn't seem to have the sensitivity required for modern equipment to reliably determine the difference between standby and on with a lot of devices, especially low-current draw equipment. I've found that many times I need to find a more creative way of checking the power state. The Niles LS-1 is often a good choice (LED sensor), but you have to be careful to isolate the output with a relay.

Spire_Jeff · February 2009

Elan makes a product called the SIM2 ( http://elanhomesystems.com/productdetail.asp?id=27 ) that provides dry contact closures or 12v triggers. There are Light, Audio, Video and Contact Closure sensors available to drive the SIM2.

It has been working well for us. Each SIM2 provides 2 outputs and you can use 2 sensors per output. There is a logic dipswitch to determine if the two sensors work as OR or AND. This means that if you really wanted to, you could use a light sensor with an audio sensor and only consider the box one if both are present.

Jeff

VLCNCRZR · February 2009

PCS

It sounds to me like your PCS calibration is not correct.

Have you gone through the calibration procedure completely?

DHawthorne · February 2009

VLCNCRZR wrote: »

It sounds to me like your PCS calibration is not correct.

Have you gone through the calibration procedure completely?

I have found far too many circumstances when the PCS simply couldn't be adjusted properly. The current threshold between on and standby just wasn't big enough to detect reliably. I've also seen devices that have such a large fluctuation as they power up or down that it was impossible to lock it in (one of the worst I've seen was a Dell monitor, it took a full 5 seconds where the current draw was all over the map). By all means, make sure it was adjusted correctly, but keep in mind it may not help.

shr00m-dew · February 2009

I've had more acurate results with the PCS2, but don't really use either that often.

Kevin D.

How to solve On/Off/On cycle

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