Addressing Issues
Read this document for a deeper dive into Addressing.
Basic Concept of Zone/Group/Node Addressing
Typically, within the e-Node web page/CS-Bus tab, if you randomly observe an ILC-xx0 device with one name and then in a few seconds/minutes that same device unexpectedly reveals itself with another set of descriptions (or disappears), this suggests that you have two or more ILC-xx0 devices with an improperly assigned/duplicate UID address (that was already assigned to another ILC-xx0 device. This is BAD. The identification of this problem is sometimes quite hard to replicate but the easiest way to resolve inconsistent results is to reset any problematic ILC-xx0 devices. Follow the steps below:
- What is a Wildcard?
Z/one/Group/Node (ZGN) addressing requires a discrete number in each octet of the three octets from 1 to 254. Each unique ZGN addresses a single ILC-xx0 device provided duplicate ZGN address are not assigned to multiple devices (we recommend against this). A wild card addresses uses a zero ("0") in lieu of a non-zero number within any ZGN field to represent the entire range of numbers from 1 to 254 which appear in that field. The concept is to reduce bus traffic and increases responsiveness by sending over a wild card address (i.e., a 2.1.0 can control ZGN devices with address of 2.1.1 to 2.1.254).
- What is a Shadow Address?
A Shadow address is a secondary or tertiary address for an ILC-xx0 device that allows greater flexibility in addressing.
- What is a Phantom Address/Phantom Device?
A Phantom Address is a non-existent ILC-xx0 device but with an assigned wild card Zone/Group/Node address that can trigger banks or groups of individual controllers. For example, within third-party automation systems that automatically discover ILC-xx0 controllers (i.e., the bulk of them), if a dealer creates a phantom device within that platform and assigns to it the necessary information to make it look like an already discovered/real device (i.e., its lighting type, and its wild card address), that phantom device then can act as a surrogate to control all of those ILC-xx0 devices with addresses that share the common octets within that the wild card address (but with a zero in the appropriate field). Specifically, if a phantom device in a 3rd-party automation were to be assigned to be a Full Color/CCT device with a wild card address of 2.1.0, it would control all ILC-xx0 devices with ZGN addresses from 2.1.1 to 2.1.254.