Clipsal C-Bus User's Guide download pdf (Page 7)

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Welcome to libcbus!

This is a Python library for interacting with Clipsal CBus units, and provides some additional utility functions, such

as:

• A high-level DBus-based API for sharing a CBus PCI with multiple application on a computer.

• A library for parsing information from CBus Toolkit project backup ﬁles.

• A “fake PCI” test server for parsing data sent by CBus applications.

1.1 What is CBus?

CBus is a home automation and electrical control system made by Clipsal. It’s also known as Square D in the United

States, and sold under other brands worldwide by Schnider Electric.

It uses low voltage wiring for light switches (panels) and other sensors, and centrally-fed dimmer and relay controls

for devices (such as lights).

CBus has a unit called the PCI (PC Interface) and the CNI (CBus Network Interface) which interactions with the CBus

network via Serial and TCP/IPv4 respectively. These use a common interface described by the Serial Interface Guide,

and other public CBus speciﬁcation documents.

The PCI also has a USB variant which includes a USB to Serial converter.

1.2 Clipsal’s ofﬁcial interfaces

In addition to protocol documentation, Clipsal also provide two systems for interacting with CBus, libcbm and C-

Gate. Clipsal’s own software (like Toolkit) and hardware (like Wiser) uses this to interact with CBus networks over

serial and IPv4.

1.2.1 Comparison to libcbm

libcbm supports to C-Bus protocol completely, including conforming to the various “protocol certiﬁcation levels”.

It is closed source and written in C, and only will work with ia32 Windows and Linux systems. It is distributed for

Linux as a static library in an RPM.

libcbus supports only the lighting application (at present). It is open source (LGPL3+) and written in Python, and

will work with any Python supported platform.

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Clipsal C-Bus User's Guide Page 7