Introduction to the zencontrol Software

To make any changes to, or receive feedback from a zencontrol system we need to interface with it somehow. The way that we do this is via zencontrol software and the zencontrol cloud.

There are several software applications available, so we'll start with a diagram which shows where they sit in the general architecture and then touch on each individually.

The ecosystem

The rectangular area in the above diagram is the boundary of a site. We can see that there are a few applications which sit within that boundary, and the remainder sit outside.

This is possible because if the control systems have a path to the internet, by default they will reach out and open a connection with the cloud. The apps outside the boundary of the site then make their requests to the cloud, which acts on their behalf to make changes to or fetch information from the controllers.

The applications within the rectangular site boundary are the suite of local applications which communicate with the control systems directly over the local area network.

The cloud

The cloud is at the heart of the zencontrol system, and manages everything from the ownership and permission model to the upgrading of control systems and devices as well as commissioning, emergency test supervision, general site analytics and energy monitoring.

As a general rule, most functions which are available in the various Android applications are also available in the Cloud, and there are a number of features which are only available on the cloud.

Onsite (Windows PC)

zencontrol Onsite is an application which provides a subset of the functions of the zencontrol Cloud for sites which don't have (or opt out of providing) access to the internet. It runs within the customer's LAN and monitors the controllers directly. An offline or offline-readonly addon license is required for each control system for the onsite software to be used.

Commissioning (Android)

Commissioning by zencontrol provides functions for commissioning: creating sites, assigning and labeling control systems, addressing / grouping / labeling devices, commissioning wireless DALI networks, setting lux levels and so on.

The commissioning application is typically where you will start, primarily to configure the system so that it knows where everything is, and then you will move to the cloud to do the remainder of the fine-tuning and batch commissioning tasks.

Home (Android)

The Home application affords the end-user straightforward control over their lighting from a simplified interface.

Schedule (Android)

A simplified interface for modifying control profile schedules and determining the current control profiles of the control systems on a site. The Schedule application also provides an interface for sending all control systems on a site to a desired profile.

Touch switch (Android)

Configurable touchscreen interface for controlling lighting locally over the control systems' Third Party Interface API (licenced add-on). The application communicates with the control systems over UDP.

The layout and behaviour of the application can be configured and exported from the zencontrol cloud.

Express (Android)

Express allows the configuration of standalone zencontrol Smart devices via bluetooth, and the commissioning of standalone wireless mesh networks. The Express application may also be used in some scenarios to manually repair/modify/extend existing wireless mesh networks.