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I have always been told that the maximum device count on a single line is 64. Recently i was involved in a project with 118 devices on one single line. The installation where separated in three lines with three power supplies but there were no linecouplers. All lines where simply interconnected by wire. Of course it´s theoretically wrong, but are there any practical drawbacks?

//Goran

asked Dec 06 '09 at 11:23

goran_67's gravatar image

goran_67
101115


The only limitation is the power supply. 64 devices is not a law as I see it, it´s a recommendation based on the assumption that every device needs 10mA and you have 640mA power supply. In this case you seem to have power enough.

answered Dec 08 '09 at 21:44

Pete_H's gravatar image

Pete_H
167338

I would not recommend an installation like that. Exceeding with a few devices is normally not a problem but doubling cant be good. There´s a KNX-rule that there must be at least 200m between 2 power supplies but i cant explain why. Maybe someoneelse can shed light on this question.

answered Dec 10 '09 at 20:56

Fender's gravatar image

Fender
310337

it's not just power limit, there is also bus load limit. if you have lots of telegrams on line, you'll get repeated, also maybe lost telegrams. it all depends on devices on line and also on their configuration.

answered Jul 01 '10 at 13:34

Miro's gravatar image

Miro
6461518

edited Jul 05 '10 at 12:35

The requirements for length, number of devices, cable material and thickness and ... have been designed to have a reliable network (considered reflection, delays, latency, ...). As you may know all telegrams in KXN will be acknowledged (short ack), even when multiple devices are addressed. By not following the requirements of KNX spec you may be lucky and everythings work fine. But you may start to see problems and packet lost later when environmental condition changes and/or some other things change in your network.

answered Sep 20 '11 at 20:43

hassan_mj's gravatar image

hassan_mj
46114

As @hassan_mj says, you may be lucky and have it working so far, but it may stop working if conditions changes like, for instance, the devices involved in a group address.

The reason for the cable distances, materials and number of devices are related to ensuring communications. For instance, if you have a line segment with 64 devices and 1000mts of cable, not exceding 350mts between the power supply and the farest device, you would be in the limit of:

  • the signal detection threshold: as cable & components impedance will attenuate the signal and thus having more cable and devices may translate in not being able of differentiating a '0' from a '1'
  • the time a device can wait for an acknowledge telegram to be received before interpreting there's no acknowledge and retrying the sending: telegrams do not get instantly from one end of the line to the other, they take some time and, even if we talk about nanoseconds or milliseconds, the longer the distance, the longer the time, so you can have an installation where a device is unable to receive an ACK even if its telegram was received.

It is a tricky situation and cannot be guaranted to work.

Hope this helps. Regards.

answered Dec 15 '11 at 08:14

asier's gravatar image

asier
2061211

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Asked: Dec 06 '09 at 11:23

Seen: 1,181 times

Last updated: Dec 15 '11 at 08:14