How to read your own C-Bus switchboard (and what to photograph)
Ten minutes with a torch and your phone. What the modules are, what the labels mean, and the four photos that let us quote you accurately without a visit.
Half the calls we get could be answered on the phone if the caller had four photos. Here is what you are looking at.
First, safety
Do not remove covers. Do not touch anything inside. A C-Bus board carries 240 volts permanently, even with every light switched off. Look through the door, photograph through the door.
What is inside a typical board
**Dimmer modules** — the wide units with fins. They dim lighting circuits. The most common failure point.
**Relay modules** — narrower, they switch things on and off: fans, pumps, outdoor lights.
**The power supply (PSU)** — feeds the bus and the wall panels. Small, often overlooked, and the cause of a lot of strange behaviour.
**The interface / gateway** — the one with a network port or a USB socket. Look for 5500PCU, 5500CN or CNI printed on it. This is the part that lets an app talk to the house.
**C-Bus cable** — thin pink or grey cable linking the units. If you see it, the network is intact.
Reading the labels
Good installers labelled every module. If yours are labelled, photograph the labels — that is gold. If they are not, do not worry: we can read the configuration off the hardware.
The four photos that let us quote properly
- The whole board, door open, straight on
- A close-up of the interface/gateway label
- A close-up of one dimmer module label
- One wall keypad, front on
Send those four and we can usually tell you the channel count, whether a gateway is fitted, and what the installation will cost — before anyone visits.
What the numbers mean
Channel count is not the number of lights. It is the number of switched or dimmed outputs the system controls. A house with 47 circuits might have 40 lights, six fans and a blind. That number is what installation pricing is based on, which is why we ask for it first.
If the board is a mess
Unlabelled, half-empty, or with three generations of hardware bolted in — that is not unusual. It just means the takeover takes longer, and we tell you that on the quote rather than on the day.
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