Issue
Infinity schedules (as opposed to BACnet schedules) may not work correctly if downloaded to the controller before or after the current week of events ends.
Consider the scenario above, CX1 is located in LA (Pacific Time Zone) and CX2 is located in Boston (Eastern Time Zone), the Cyberstation performing schedule downloads is located in Dallas (Central Time Zone). If the schedules are configured with default download time of Sunday at midnight, CYBER1 will download the schedules to both CX1 and CX2 at (or shortly after) Sunday @ 12:00:00 Central time. Meanwhile, where CX1 is located in LA, the time is Saturday @ 10:00 PM and CX2, located in Boston, has a time of Sunday 1:00 AM
The controllers can only hold one week worth of events.
How a schedule download 2 hours ahead of time would affect the schedules in CX1?
Any events in CX1 between 10:00 PM and midnight would be over written with events for the same period of the following week.
How a schedule download 1 hour late would affect the schedules in CX2?
On Saturday @ 11:59:59 PM Eastern time CX2 runs out of events for the past week. Since it has not yet received the events for the next week, it starts repeating the events in the schedule for the week that just ended. If the schedule events for the week that has just started but not yet been downloaded to the controller happens to be the same as the previous week, in terms of events, then this does not present any problem. But if the two weeks differ in the events they have between Sunday midnight and 1:00:00 AM, the schedule will not function correctly.
IMPORTANT NOTE
It is important to note that the scenarios described in this article are only applicable if a schedule contains exceptions or happens to differ from week to week in terms of the events entered in the schedule.
If the schedule happens to be the same week after week, then it should not make a difference whether the controller receives a schedule download or not, from week to week. In fact, even if no download takes place at all, the schedule will function correctly as the controller will just repeat the same events week after week.
Also, BACnet schedules do not have this problem, when a BACnet schedule is created Continuum sends ALL of the events in the schedule to the controller instead of just one week worth of events as is the case with Infinity schedules.
Environment
Cyberstation
All Continuum controllers
Cause
Continuum Infinity Schedule download functionality does not automatically take into account time zone differences between Cyberstation and controllers.
Resolution
When configuring Infinity Schedules download day and time, it is very important to take into account the locale of the Cyberstation performing the download, as well as the locale of the controller receiving the downloaded schedules.
Configure the schedules' download time so that the download takes place on Sunday @ 12:00:00 AM IN THE TIME ZONE WHERE THE CONTROLLER IS LOCATED.
The schedules residing in CX1 in Los Angeles should be configured to download on Sunday @ 2:00:00 AM Central time which corresponds to Sunday @Anonymous user:00:00 AM Pacific time.
The schedules residing in CX2 in Boston should be configured to download on Saturday @ 11:00:00 PM Central time which corresponds to Sunday @Anonymous user:00:00 AM Eastern time. Note that the schedule download engine always downloads one week worth of events starting at the configured download time. In this case all events from Saturday @11:00:00 PM to the next Saturday @11:00:00 PM will be downloaded, which will ensure that CX2 never has to repeat any events from the previously downloaded week.
