How to assign a KNX Sensor as a virtual zone?

[agenor]

Hello!

I use Comfort as an alarm panel for intrusion, fire and flood detection in a KNX automated house. We have one flood detector in a swimming pool engine room which is separate from the house and we have no more means of additional cabling. However, we have a KNX bus there and we can connect the flood detector to a KNX binary input. I.e. we can have this signal as a 1-bit switch with an arbitrary group address.

I see that in Comfigurator I can define some unused zones as virtual input. In my case, they would be zones 9-16 (LEM on the main panel which is not installed) or any other between 33 and 64.

However, when I try to define any zone as virtual, this particular setting is disabled (the letters are of faint blueish color and the option can\'t be checked) - see attached screenshot.

Am I doing something wrong?

Comfigurator 3.2.8.0
Comfort II Ultra
Filesystem 34
Firmware 254
Comfort version & revision 5.206
UCM/KNX 5.213, ID=2
UCM/Ethernet 5.212, ID=1
SEM 5.175 with LEM, ID=1

Windows XP Proffessional SP3

[ident]

To assign a virtual zone, you have to go to the KNX configurator, add or learn the KNX group address, and assign the Type as Virtual zone on the right pane, then select the zone name.
This will cause the zone to be defined as a virtual zone on the Zones screen

[agenor]

Thanks! That\'s it.

However, I don\'t find it as actually intuitive. Maybe you should write something about it in the manuals (either the KNX manual, or the Programming manual).

[ident]

The new UCM/KNX Manual that explains the Virtual Zone KNX Type can now be downloaded from https://www.cytech.biz/ucmknx_manual.html

[agenor]

Hey, thanks!

[mario.jr]

Hello.
My dealer told me that using a virtual input COMFORT, I must have a physical input, ie if I have 8 detectors to the basic Comfort and I put 5 KNX system detectors to COMFORT, I have a slave module expansion of at least 8 in order to use the virtual inputs for KNX. Is that true?

Thank you very much and sorry my english.

[agenor]

No, you don\'t need to buy actual module, but you use up actual zones. So if you allocate KNX virtual zones to the zones covered by a module, then you can\'t use these physical channels.

But you can allocate virtual zones to the zones that would be covered by modules that are not installed.

For instance, we have a configuration with 1 9000-ultra panel, 1 SEM and 1 LEM. The LEM is put onto the SEM, so zones 9-16 are unused (because we have no LEM on the panel itself) and we allocated KNX signals to these zones.

[mario.jr]

Ok. So I understand that my dealer is not telling me no right.

Thank you so much.

[slychiu]

I think he probably misunderstood, rather than deliberately deceiving you

We only have honest dealers

[mario.jr]

No doubt the honesty of its distributors. But I assure you told me what I have written. Or maybe it was a misunderstanding? But I confirm it one of its customers. Customers of these distributors. This property of the Comfort, which is very good, this dealer as \"ignored\" by removing a large property to this product. For all that are born my doubts about this.
I feel this situation. Thank you.