new house project with (or not) loxone

[damien deville]

Hi,

First of all, I'm an advanced user of Home-Assistant since 2 years. I'm made some nice automations in my house but I regularly get some yellow cards from my wife and sometimes some red cards ! (f***king WAF :) )

Most of those yellow cards and red cards come from SD cards burning in the raspberrypi, breaking changes in home assistant upgrades and some components which goes outside the wifi (thanks ubiquiti also)

We are thinking of building a new house (baby is coming) and I found the loxone system very interesting. The wire version seems very nice on the paper. Most of my automation can be moved to loxone easily I think.

some questions I still have that can change my mind on my Loxone project.

- Loxone is a "small" company (compared to Apple and Google) and they can be sold to or buy by an other company, disapear, or change their mind on their targets (like cut off the selling for private houses and focus on firm building). How do you handle that on your choice to go with Loxone ? Wiring the house with Loxone is for house lifetime and I cannot depend on the miniserver only without a backup plan.

- Miniserver works only on SD card. How often the SD card needs to be changed ? Is there any way to do backup outside an SD card ? Has someone tried a restore from such a backup ? Is it easy to do ?

- Is the loxone system WAF compatible ? I don't want anymore spend hours and days to see what's happened bad and try to fix it until the next outage.

- How often loxone send new release of their system ? Is there any breaking change ?

- Someone has tried to see if Loxone system works well without internet access ? Which features does not work in that case ? As Loxone can stop development, I don't want to expose on internet an outdated system, which can control my house in that case.

Hope I will my answers there and I can become a loxone user next year :)

Damien

[Jonathan Dixon]

On Tue, 27 Apr 2021 at 15:51, damien deville <damde...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

First of all, I'm an advanced user of Home-Assistant since 2 years. I'm made some nice automations in my house but I regularly get some yellow cards from my wife and sometimes some red cards ! (f***king WAF :) )

Most of those yellow cards and red cards come from SD cards burning in the raspberrypi, breaking changes in home assistant upgrades and some components which goes outside the wifi (thanks ubiquiti also)

We are thinking of building a new house (baby is coming) and I found the loxone system very interesting. The wire version seems very nice on the paper. Most of my automation can be moved to loxone easily I think.

One snag you may hit is the Loxone <-> HA integration is fairly early state, and I've not had much luck with it. Ideally I'd like to do house "infrastructure" automation (heating, lighting control etc) in Loxone and leave more user-specific ("when I do this, turn on my coffee machine, play this music...") in HA but (so far) I've found it frustrating to replicate the basic state between them

 

some questions I still have that can change my mind on my Loxone project.

- Loxone is a "small" company (compared to Apple and Google) and they can be sold to or buy by an other company, disapear, or change their mind on their targets (like cut off the selling for private houses and focus on firm building). How do you handle that on your choice to go with Loxone ? Wiring the house with Loxone is for house lifetime and I cannot depend on the miniserver only without a backup plan.

Run radial wiring wherever possible. The Loxone Tree protocol is good - I just use it for light switches, much nicer to commission that the alternatives. But design wiring plans that it can be converted to something else if ever needed (e.g. KNX, if nothing better arrives).

Some people will vote for using KNX from the get go, or dumb retractive switches, which is also very valid.

We used Tree switches but dumb motion sensors, and DMX lighting, to keep out of loxone. (DALI lighting is another option)

Likewise all my modbus and RS232 interfacing is via ESPHome in HA, rather than via loxone.

 

- Miniserver works only on SD card. How often the SD card needs to be changed ? Is there any way to do backup outside an SD card ? Has someone tried a restore from such a backup ? Is it easy to do ?

Top tip is to minimize the logging / monitoring into SD card. Keep writes to an absolute minimum

 

- Is the loxone system WAF compatible ? I don't want anymore spend hours and days to see what's happened bad and try to fix it until the next outage.

My partner accepted it during spec and now really loves it. We don't get to go to other houses much at the moment, but when we do it's like "it's so weird, I have to turn on light switches when I go into rooms"

 

- How often loxone send new release of their system ? Is there any breaking change ?

No issues yet in my 6 months with it, I'll let others with more experience fill in more

 

- Someone has tried to see if Loxone system works well without internet access ? Which features does not work in that case ? As Loxone can stop development, I don't want to expose on internet an outdated system, which can control my house in that case.

Works fine. The obvious services that need it are weather prediction, remote access. The app works fine on LAN only, and core functionality works great with no ethernet connected at all.

 

Hope I will my answers there and I can become a loxone user next year :)

Damien

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[David Wallis]

Your other option is consider throwing knx in the mix for things like lighting if you don’t want to rely on loxone. 

With regards to updates, don’t install straight away if you don’t need them and without reading release notes. Wait for others to test!

On Tue, 27 Apr 2021 at 15:51, damien deville <damde...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Simon Still]

On Tuesday, 27 April 2021 at 15:51:15 UTC+1 damde...@gmail.com wrote:

- Miniserver works only on SD card. How often the SD card needs to be changed ? Is there any way to do backup outside an SD card ? Has someone tried a restore from such a backup ? Is it easy to do ? 

 

My system has been in for 5 years now.  I *think* I've only had one SD card fail, (though maybe I've had more that wouldn't work - IIRC Loxone cant' deal with a card that's been formatted in some other ways previously? Or is it that you can't use it anywhere else after it's been formatted for Loxone - someone will confirm) 

the one that failed did so when I was trying to do an update from Vx to Vx+1.  It's very easy to create a backup SD card from the Config Software. 

I made a few changes after the failure to make it easier (and higher WAF) to deal with in future.  The SD card slot is in a ridiculous position on the side of the mini server which means to access in most cases you'll need to remove a cabinet cover, potentially exposing live wiring. Probably move a bracket holding the mini server in place, likely drop the card you remove into the cabinet and have trouble inserting the replacement (I managed to slide it behind the slot and then had to take the mini server out of the cabinet entirely).

1) installed an SD card extension (eg https://thepihut.com/products/sd-card-extender? ) That's attached with sticky backed velcro to the outside of my cabinet)

2) next to it is a back up SD card (these take full size cards so much easier to handle as well) in a case.  Also velcroed on to the cabinet and labelled Loxone Backup Card

That means I can give someone really simple instructions as a first triage if it all stops working....

Loxone is a bit fussy about SD cards but LEXAR 633x cards work fine and are fairly easy to get hold of.  

- Is the loxone system WAF compatible ? I don't want anymore spend hours and days to see what's happened bad and try to fix it until the next outage. 

Mine is running on a simple external UPS (£50 job) so it doesn't get affected by power outages.  

The only part of the system that has been problematic is the Intercom (see my other posts) 

Remember it's home automation so a lot of stuff should happen without intervention.  The ability of it to work with standard switches I think is a big bonus (I've got a Pure touch sitting on my desk and I'd not fit them thoughout the house. With standard switches anyone who comes to the house can work the lights and whatever else without needing any tuition (the double press to switch off is a small learning curve but if you don't have too many scenes in any room people work out just pressing again until everthing switches off anyway) 

 

- How often loxone send new release of their system ? Is there any breaking change ? 

I don't think in 5 years I can remember an update that fixed any issues I was having with my system and it's up to you whether you implement any new features that they implement and update your system.  (there might be some exception for a few of the smartphone app functions) 

 

[Rydens]

I have also had Loxone running for about 5 years still on the same SD card, and without any problems. I left a space to get to the SD card slot

I am a self installer and went on the Loxone training, which was good. 

WAF is good as long as you keep design the config to meet your required functionality. 

It's disappointing Loxone will no longer deal with individuals, and their prices seem to keep going up. 

However I would still recommend them for install and leave automation. 

Updates are about every 12 months and so far have not broken anything. 

I do not connect it externally.

I use it for lighting and heating with Loxone dimmers and relays in all of the parts of the house I have rebuilt. 

I use simple push to make switches, normally with one button to turn things off.  I don't like the Loxone double tap standard.

The switches I use are Gira System 55 2003100 which allows me to print a label to identify actions of each switch, and Retrotouch Simplicity White 2 Gang 2 Way Retractive Light Switch all wired back to the Loxone cabinet with Cat 7 - one wire per button - nice and simple!

Put in lots of motion sensors, I have one Loxone one, but many  Faradite  ones - they are very small and reliable. They also do good switches.

For all the extra stuff I use Home Assistant. I link this to Loxone by sending simple HTTP messages each way where there needs to be interaction. This keeps simple and all under control. As an example Alexa or Google voice assistants can trigger Home Assistant which can then trigger Loxone lighting scenes. I also feed the external temperature to Loxone from Home Assistant. Works well.  The combination is good. 

Have fun and this group is very helpful.

Cheers David

[Techdoctor]

I had to re-format a clients SD card. Can't remember why exactly. But I had a recent backup of the config file on my laptop. And had no problems loading the config file back into the Loxone Miniserver.

I too like using normal switches, well momentary switches if I can. Thumbs up here for Retrotouch too, (though Brexit means I won't be ordering anymore unless they change the customs regs, I live in Spain).Using normal switches means you don't need to run a Loxone appreciation class every time you have guests. 

Last client has normal switches with a touch pure by the front door to either turn on or off the outside lights. The corners do individual exterior zones and the middle does all on or all off. 

I too have an SD extension cable but haven't got round to fitting it to my own system yet.

WAF or PAF (partner acceptance factor) quite high once its all programmed. And this forum is great for problem solving.

If you have no internet Loxone still works, within the house. My last two clients where new builds so no internet. I was still able to set it all up. I do have a WiFi router (which is just for local app control, since its not connected to the internet) which I use in these cases until the client gets connected to the internet. 

I can't see Loxone stopping development, its their main source of income. 

[Arnaud]

From my point of view Loxone is still a very good solution if not the best - it would be the best solution if we had several suppliers.

When you deploy or adjust your configuration you have two modes that exist almost nowhere else: the Live View mode to see live the results of your actions, and the Test mode that allows you to test a configuration before putting it in service.

For the wiring, if you wire your TREE bus correctly, if the day is very unlikely or Loxone disappears, you can replace the Tree devices by KNX, I have already done the opposite a few times, it works perfectly.

Loxone is much smaller than Apple and Google for sure, but it's a real industrial company and not a start up, their goal is to grow and become the world leader, not to artificially increase the value of their company to resell it.

Thanks to the numerous protocols and standards supported, there is almost never an impossible configuration, and if a protocol should impose itself as we all hope, loxone will only have to create the adequate extension and it will be compatible.

Finally on the resilience side, I have been an installer for 5 years, I have only lost one SD card, and loxone has foreseen it: you can have a backup card, and if you don't have it, you can create it very easily with a computer, the configuration is always saved on the computer. 

The miniserveur is very resistant, it is an industrial automaton, designed to be installed and forgotten in the depths of a factory.

(French translation, sorry)

[John Verdicchio]

I built a large extension on my house that included a 50% rewire of mains and a 100% rewire of lighting. I put Loxone in as my home automation system (about 4.5 years ago) to cover lighting, heating, fire and heat-rise detection. I've had no SD card failures in that time. I've used DMX for all the lighting (a mix of 240V GU10 and 24V LED RGBW strips). I chose the Tree switches for all rooms - they were cheap in comparison to any KNX stuff I saw. I have used some Loxone motion sensors but mainly use the 24V motion detectors from Filip Bossuyt's web store. I've found Sonof DT10/DT16 units (flashed with ESPEasy) to be useful now that Loxone don't sell directly to the public and these units are much cheaper. However, I've had issues with these losing connectivity with my Wifi and then not reconnecting , though that is an issue with ESPEasy.

I trained as an electrician (UK) and did all the wiring myself. Actually cheaper than paying an electrician to do It and I knew the job was done properly. 

I would add that having a Grafana/IOBroker/Influxdb setup running on a Raspberry Pi 4 is a great addition to my home automation. A) it means the Miniserver isn't filling its SD card with data. B) The Grafana output is much cleaner than the Loxone graphs and far more configurable. C) You can learn things about you house you can only see from looking at time-history graphs over a reasonable period of time. that you just can see from snapshots of statistics on the Loxone App. D) Having a Pi as another device to handle automation tasks is useful. E) IOBroker is quite a capable home automation system in its own right.

What I'd do differently? 1) Would have brought a 1-wire extension and used it to monitor temperature rise on pipes feeding the shower hot-water feed. That would be the logic cue to turn on the extractor fans - using a humidity sensor is a little slow. B) Brought the LNX5 cabinet, not the LNX4 - I'd never thought I'd fill mine and it is close to being full. 

[Rob]

Hi Damien

My thoughts below and I've emailed you too.

Rob

On Tuesday, April 27, 2021 at 3:51:15 PM UTC+1 damde...@gmail.com wrote:

Hi,

First of all, I'm an advanced user of Home-Assistant since 2 years. I'm made some nice automations in my house but I regularly get some yellow cards from my wife and sometimes some red cards ! (f***king WAF :) )

Most of those yellow cards and red cards come from SD cards burning in the raspberrypi, breaking changes in home assistant upgrades and some components which goes outside the wifi (thanks ubiquiti also)

We are thinking of building a new house (baby is coming) and I found the loxone system very interesting. The wire version seems very nice on the paper. Most of my automation can be moved to loxone easily I think.

some questions I still have that can change my mind on my Loxone project.

- Loxone is a "small" company (compared to Apple and Google) and they can be sold to or buy by an other company, disapear, or change their mind on their targets (like cut off the selling for private houses and focus on firm building). How do you handle that on your choice to go with Loxone ? Wiring the house with Loxone is for house lifetime and I cannot depend on the miniserver only without a backup plan.

Compared to Apple and Google most companies (and some Countries!!) are small. Loxone are a reasonable sized EU company and have a decent market share in home automation. I think I read recently that 50% of all new build homes in Austria have Loxone. They are a privately owned company and only do home automation so not likely to be diverted off to something else. They are spending a few million euros building a new head office and research and development centre which I think indicates a long term committment to be around in the home automation sector. As others have said, wiring is key to future proofing, regardless of which companies are in the home atomation business.

- Miniserver works only on SD card. How often the SD card needs to be changed ? Is there any way to do backup outside an SD card ? Has someone tried a restore from such a backup ? Is it easy to do ?

Backup and restore of SD card very easy and you should always have a current version of your programming in Config anyway. I always recommend having a second SD card with a backup ready to install in the event of a SD failure (although I haven't had experience of any failures)

- Is the loxone system WAF compatible ? I don't want anymore spend hours and days to see what's happened bad and try to fix it until the next outage.

Yes, incredibly WAF compatible, once you set it up to how they like it. You can even create bespoke logic and App layouts at a user level.

- How often loxone send new release of their system ? Is there any breaking change ?

 

Config updates come out fairly regularly with a bigger "Whole Number" release every 12-18months. If your system is running as you want and you're not installing any new Loxone components then you don't need to upgrade to the latest version. I know some people who installed Loxone several years ago and haven't needed to upgrade their config as everything works as they want. The old adage of "Don't fix what isn't broke" is very relevant here. Also, new Config versions are backward compatible with older equipment.

- Someone has tried to see if Loxone system works well without internet access ? Which features does not work in that case ? As Loxone can stop development, I don't want to expose on internet an outdated system, which can control my house in that case.

 

One of Loxone's selling points is that their system is completely independent of internet access. The only things which won't work without an internet connection are the remote access and services which need external access like weather service and caller service.

[Ralik]

Hi, 

I am also in similar position on deciding Loxone vs KNX. I had almost decided on KNX because of future proofing and range of options / hardware available - making it more comfortable from long term perspective before I hit upon this post. I like Loxone from ease of maintenance perspective but there are challenges with regard to range of switches, future proofing.

Few questions from my end as well. 

- Some of you have talked about using other switches (other than Loxone one) with Loxone - could you confirm which specific types can be used? One important decision factor has been WAF and she doesnt like the Loxone switch at all. With single switch I want to operate lights, shades, audio volume in the room, temperature setting in the room - so that anyone (if required) in the room can do it without having to do it through app. If it displays the temp in the room and can work with Loxone then it will tick WAF box completely. 
- Can I use CAT 6a or 7 cable instead of Loxone cable for tree connections - will that work without hassles?

- With regard to HVAC integration - do I have to use their valve actuator for the UFH manifolds or is there another alternative for that?

- On AV side - I do not want to use Audio server however need AV distribution as well for which I will have to go some other route - Sonos for Audio / or something else for AV on IP. Any idea what options are best for AV distribution to work alongside Loxone as would like to have some integration between the two. I understood KNX has better options to integrate but I might be wrong.

 

Loxone is becoming more like a closed system and most likely they will go the Control4 / Savant / Crestron way..  and at some point they will have to do what Crestron has done in enabling integrations with third party hardware if they want to become a leader in the HA space unless there is another strategy they are looking to implement in future. 

Thanks

[Duncan]

how about using only knx switches and loxone for the central logic/control?

 if you use something like the mdt glass II switches with icons/text/feedback leds etc you have programmable buttons and only need to use the app for configuration purposes not day-to-day

[Ralik]

Thanks, can I connect KNX switches directly to input to miniserver or do i need the Loxone KNX extension for it? Also will it need ETS5 for programming as well?

I have been looking for KNX integration with Loxone and found information only in forums but not in any single place - any sources?

[Duncan]

if you use the v1 miniserver, they can be directly connected and dont have a 500 limit to the group addresses

v2 needs the addition of 1 or more knx extensions - i would suggest buy a v1 miniserver just for use as a knx extension and use it in conjunction with a v2 miniserver for your main programming

you do need ets but not the pro which is 1000 euros

the free/demo version cant do everything you need, such as programming the icons of the MDT lights, but the lite version can do up to 20 devices (you can use multiple projects of 20 devices if your project is larger) for around £200

this goes through the basics of knx and worth a read

https://haus-automatisierung.com/knx-tutorial-reihe/

also the basics of loxone:

https://haus-automatisierung.com/loxone-tutorial-reihe/

but knowing how to integrate in loxone is a little more tricky - im not sure there are any specific resources other than the forums

[Ralik]

Thanks. The videos are in German but have gone through the text. 

Using Loxone with KNX seems like a good idea. Will start to work on the design and see how far I go before getting stuck.  

A quick question on wiring - If I go with KNX cable for all KNX switches and devices and for everywhere else use cat 7/6a (even for 24v DC devices) and not use Tree cable at all then will that work or are there any pitfalls to be aware about?

Any suggestions on which valve actuator for UFH manifolds? KNX or Loxone?

Regards

[Jonathan Dixon]

(All this is "FWIW" take it or leave it, certainly no strong recommendations in any of this, just sharing my own experiences)

- I set out on KNX + Loxone but gave up because I was learning both together and wasn't really enjoying it.  I could see I could get it to work, but I could also see I'd probably end up with a system I was reluctant to ever change. That said, I was hoping to use a more hybrid mix of tech, I think if uing KNX switches just as "dumb" inputs to Loxone it maybe more workable approach.

- I pulled U/FTP CAT6A everywhere and very happy I did - Tree runs fine on it, and plenty of cores free for other protocols or simple binary contacts where needed. And I can terminate standard RJ45 onto it wherever needed.

while I'm not using KNX   I'd have no qualms putting KNX on a CAT6A pair if needed to retrofit a device, but if designing KNX from the outset I'd likely be swayed to pull their TP1  even though it's more limited for future changes.

- There's a lot of reports of Loxone manifold actuators being unreliable - you can search this group for some.

Rather than use KNX another popular option is to use 24V or 240V actuators and standard relays to power the zones on/off.

- I bought a box of Salus thb23030 actuators , as these are supposed to be really good at auto-balancing the loops too. However I've still not installed them: we find running the whole ground floor UFH as one big zone at a nice low temperature (24ºC from a heat pump) all the ground-floor rooms warm up at about the same rate, and I've not yet missed the ability to control temperature by room. With a really well insulated house like ours the need for room be room control is much less, as there just isn't the same problem of unoccupied rooms hemorrhaging wasted heat out of the building. And the manifold is super accessible so it'll be very straightforward to retrofit these actuators if we do ever need them.

(Our first floor rooms a different matter, with some isolated overheating, but they don't have any heat sources in them to start with so having zoned control there really wouldn't have helped!)

But I know for a UK new build, Part L does require multiple zones of stats+control.

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[Duncan]

many people suggest not using rj45 for knx, but i swapped out my simple switches on cat5 to knx and have no problems at all, so cat6 or 7 would probably be better than knx cable as you have far more cores to play with

for ufh manifolds just go for cheap standard ones (either 24v or 240v) rather than loxone ones and buy a handfull of spares as its usual for some to fail over time due to water/heat/cycling etc

 if i was doing this again i would use 24v actuators and use dmx constant voltage dimmers at the manifolds, configured as on/off relays to controls them as this is cheap and reliable and multi-channel dmx dimmers are available from a multitude of suppliers

[Techdoctor]

Any type of switch can be used that is normally used to turn on a light. I have used momentary switches from RetroTouch  and also normal on off type switches. This is the beauty of Loxone in that you can use almost any style of switch. Being able to use either normal on off or momentary style is great  for retro fits, and also requires no Loxone appreciation course for your guests, as you press the switch and the lights come on. 

Momentary switches have the added advantage that they can have more than one function. So a double click can turn all lights on and a triple click can do say a night time mode.

[damien deville]

My main concern is to find a solution for automate my future house without :

- having crash. (i got too much red cards from my wife with home assistant)

- having a solution working successfully with no cloud / no internet

- easily maintainable (without a call to a specialist, and if possible by my wife which is a no-tech person)

I have made a list of scenario I want in my future house with the notion of must-have / nice-to-have :

-   the water heater that switches to boost mode when hot water consumption exceeds a certain threshold over a given period of time : MUST-HAVE
-   the lights that turn on and off automatically according to various criteria (we go to sleep, it's daytime, it's nighttime, the luminosity goes below a certain threshold ...) : MUST-HAVE
-   the heating turns on and off by itself and can be managed by rooms (depending on the temperature of the rooms and the state of the windows and the weather forecast) : MUST-HAVE (but is still challenged as we want to make a passive home without heating)
-   the double-flow mechanical ventilation which starts by itself when it is needed  (CO2 too high in a room, get fresh air from outside in summer, exit humidity from kitchen / bathroom, exit bad smell from toilets / kitchen) : MUST-HAVE
-   the cameras (from ubiquiti, in POE) and the alarms that turn on and off mechanically depending on the presence or absence of the family : MUST-HAVE
-   the robot vacuum cleaner which starts when nobody is home since 30 minutes : MUST-HAVE

-   the shutters that adapt to the outside temperature and the time of day and weather (rain, thunder, snow, wind...) : MUST-HAVE

-   random scenariies in case of prolonged absence to simulate a presence (with the possiblity to cast a video on the TV) : MUST-HAVE

-   voice notifications located in the house in case of a change of status of an appliance (hoover, dishwasher, dryer, ... ) : MUST-HAVE

-   fake the presence of a dog if someone use the doorbell if nobody is home : NICE-TO-HAVE

-   different electrical equipments that turn off automatically according to the global electrical load of the house : NICE-TO-HAVE

-   a dashboard of energy used by the house by different criteria (for heating, for hot water, for living) : NICE-TO-HAVE

-   a dashboard of the CO2 equivalent consumed by the house (since the beginning, by month, by year) : NICE-TO-HAVE

-   the lawnmower that start by themselves according to the weather : NICE-TO-HAVE

I found loxone which can be closed to do that but :

- the price is very expensive. I get almost 30k€ with uplan.io when trying to do this, without the basement on the scope, and only on stuff needed,

  one of the constructor asked for the future house annonced 18k€ for electricity stuff.

- I'm still not sure that I can go with confidence on loxone stuff

      - a brand that says "we are open" but refused to "open the tree technology"

      - which can only be setup by a "professionnal"

      - which says in these professional video "you click on a button and all automation are setup"

      - which says "you charge 100% for the setup because we sell good stuff (and expensive stuff)"  => so, 60k€ for my house ... totally out of budget.

What do you think of that ? I'm going wrong ? Loxone is still the good idea ?

[hidde....@gmail.com]

Maybe you can use some of the learnings we had in our journey. When we started I wanted the whole thing wrt automation when we started our new-build project in the Netherlands. We started with the idea for loxone to "own" it all.... so we went with all loxone relais, tree touch buttons, code-touch, some air devices etc. Movement sensors basic 24V, dimmers (all 230V) where DMX based, Heating manifolds 230V with loxone extension (no longer sold) to control them. Doorbird for doorbell. Ventilation controlled through 0-10V. Hikvision camera's around the house. Basically use loxone wherever we could justify it... some thigns where just not right for us, so we went with generic components.

This was ~3 years ago...  grand ideas for lawn robot, smart chargind of battery systems and other things one can think of...but first we had to move in. What happened since then.

1) after a few months we found the DMX solution not reliable enough, so switched all my DMX dimmers for Theben KNX dimmers.

2) Had space constraints in my wiring closet/space. So switched the Loxone Relais for Theben KNX relais (much smaller).

3) found out the hard way that there's such a large amount of steel in our concrete floors that air devices are useless. got rid of them and worked out a solution based on Shelly (Shelly H&T), this worked since I had done proper planning fro my network (Wifi) with UBNT unifi all over the place (and even outdoors).

4) Loxone discontinued the loxone extension, this means that when our installed extensions would  ever fail I needed a plan to replace them given that I had no spares around, thus if some day I needed to get rid of them then any day would be a good day for this, so the month they announced these as EOS/EOL,  I decided to swap them out for MDT KNX heating aktuators and a Weinzierl multi-IO 570 for 24V DI/DO contacts. At this point I still used the KNX devices as relatively dumb devices under control of loxone and with the ETS demo software.... just needed to manage a few ETS projects to work around the 5 device limit.

5) figured out that our ventilation system (Zehnder Comfoair Q600) has a nice app, and this is fine for me the few times a year I use it... reason is that the internal sensors of the ventilation system work perfect for our case, so no need for fancy control logic etc. if we ever have/want to do this then we can add a KNX gateway to it and integrate things that way. with the introduction of this app, I never used the 0-10V for our ventilation control again... whcih made me decide to get rid of it alltogether last month.

6) found out that the main reason loxone systems crash/die is because of bad SD cards... mostly because of frequent writes. therefore I decided to minimize the writes for statistics, and move all my statistics to our synology NAS with a few docker containers for IoBroker/influxDB/Grafana. I really like this, since it provide me the flexibility to also integrate directly with my shelly devices (Shelly 3EM), PV, Heatpump etc. and get all the statistics in one place... allowing me to build any dashboard I want. and as a bonus I can backup my statistics properly/easily.

7) our heatpump controller is smart enough to do the right thing, it also controls the heating/cooling pumps etc.... all it needs to know is if anywhere in the house there's heating/cooling demand. a few simple relais contacts do the trick. Oh, and our heating installer is not our electrician... they will not support the stuff the other guy did. So keeping these things separated using a simple (dry contact) interface makes this work out too...

8) my better half started to complain about not liking the loxone touch buttons... and the visitors all wondered how these things worked... Also Loxone started to act in ways which I don't like (no direct purchases or cases for end-users anymore, all through partners. Strange products which make me wonder who would ever want those... etc. The general feeling for loxone chnged from my side because of this). So we decided to go to relatively basic KNX switches (these are available nowadays, weren't there 4 years ago when we had to decide). Basic means, looks and feels like old fashioned buttons, include a temperature sensor, a led for visual feedback/alarm, and have enough capability to switch/dim the lights/blinds for a room... (we ended up with basic KNX buttons from Gira, since we had Gira material all around already, so color and finish matches). This was also the moment that I Invested in the BAB-tec app-module with ETS inside, and we moved all our movement sensors to KNX movement sensors. Took a few evenings of room-by-room migrations, some learning of ETS inside (once you "get it", it's really easy to work with) and some fine tuning... I now have the BAB-tec module as a plan-B in case I need to move away from loxone ever...

I now have decided that for heating/cooling, lighting and ventilation of the house I don't want to be depending on loxone. the only "large risk" I have for that is my KNX power supply, for which I have a spare one around (Which is also relatively cheap). To rach this, I only need to migrate my thermostat functionality from my loxone config to KNX... I know how to do this, just have to find a free day to do this... preferably not in the middle of the winter ;)

I still like loxone config A LOT, I also like the loxone app... so I keep the app integrated to KNX to allow control of the lights and to set a new target temperature for a room, just not to own the control...but mostly finetune if I ever need to (remember the nice thing about ETS inside is that you also configure this from your mobile device... so for real changes I can do these in a few clicks in KNX too, no need to startup the laptop). I also keep loxone around for the irrigation control, alarm of the house (with the code touch), switching outdoor lights based on location/timezone. it's worth the investment for just this alone (just check what an alarm system costs, and an irrigation computer and a KNX logic module... with some half decent UI). 

We now only have a loxone Gen1 server with a tree extension and a code touch left that are loxone specific. I wouldn't mind moving to Gen2 some day, to keep loxone config working. One thing I'm toying with is whether I can make the loxone miniserver talk to KNX using UDP/HTTP in some way (either through the BAB-tec module with some application, or through a weinzierl IP Baos...) instead of through a KNX extension (I think it's overpriced). that's a project I want to figure out in the coming winter...

Also for charging of cars and batteries I've deceided to not rely on Loxone but make it work through independent solutions (likely a Zappi for the car). Again, this would become core to my house and thus should not rely on a single company.... same for lawn mowers, they'll be independent with their own sensors, it's afordable nowadays and will work fine together.

some of these things may apply to you, some may not.I do travel a fair bit for my work (just not last corona year), and things jsut need to work... for sure the house needs to keep "mostly working" if one component fails... especially when I'm not around for a week or so.

One thing I've learned is that the smart home market is developing really fast, some things are here to stay, some will pass by... and some are just gimmicks. try to build the things that need to last really well, the things that pass by or are gimmicks can be done in any other way (e.g. iobroker). I've also learned that integration should not be confused with "all in a single device/module/system"... integration is fine through APIs, interfaces and triggers. Also ask yourself the question what reall, really, really needs to keep on working in your house if things go sour with one vendor....Lastly I've learned that any verndor/solution you pick may develop in another direction then where you develop, e.g. loxone develops in the direction of installers/integrators which makes perfect sense for them to scale up/out as a company, it just doesn't fit too well with the open standards world and self-build/installers out there...

sorry for the longs (nto too well structured) e-mail. but I hope it helps you... long story short: integration isn't always the answer, integrate only where you have to...

Hidde

Op vrijdag 14 mei 2021 om 20:52:03 UTC+2 schreef damde...@gmail.com:

[Ralik]

Thanks Joth, Duncan, Techdoctor and Hidde for sharing your experiences and additional pointers. It is interesting to understand the real experiences with HA and also specifically with Loxone. Few weeks back I was convinced that Loxone is the way to go to provide ease of use and maintenance but now convinced that I cannot depend upon Loxone alone and now even thinking - if Loxone is required at all in my setup. 

Reliability and ease of maintenance are key (and value for money is important too) for me even if I loose out on some fancy integrations and features that might not so cohesively work together and need to be independently automated. I do not want to keep calling the installer for any regular changes. Also one cannot ignore wife's like / dislike for certain kind of switches!

@Joth, if I may ask what are you using after giving up on Loxone+KNX?

@Damde  - you and I have very similar requirements - probably I have not yet thought through all the scenario requirements as I wanted to see the possibilities and then decide what will actually remove pain and save time for me. Happy to share notes on an ongoing basis? Also it will be interesting to know if you do your setup on pure KNX - what the component cost will be? How many rooms are included in your plan?

I have not played around with the ETS5 - but does it allow someone else to come and make changes to your configuration if you are not there? Is it as easy as Loxone Config?

Many thanks for sharing your experiences in detail. This has been very much useful to me.

[Techdoctor]

One last thing if you keep the install really simple to start with then its easy to fault find if there are problems.

My last install I did I did in planned phases.

Phase one  - Exterior lights. 

Phase two - interior lights.

Phase three - the fancy stuff, all exterior lights on off, timing of lights and holiday/away mode.

This makes it very easy to fault find, and if say phase three went pear shaped, and the exterior lights stopped coming on,  while I was programming I always had the phase two config to fall back on, for the client to use, and for me to make sure they where still working and its just the phase three config that was causing the problem.

Seen it too many times when people install everything in one go and then can't get the thing to work, and don't know where to start with the fault finding.

[Rob]

There's no right or wrong answers with home automation.

First you decide what you want to automate, make a list and rank each feature for importance.

The second decision is whether you want a main primary system which you can install and just let it work in the background or are you happy to spend the time to install a homegrown system with several systems/devices etc and try and configure them to all work together.

There are pros and cons to both approaches.

If you enjoy putting things together and have the necessary skills and time then a homegrown system might be what you need.

On the other hand, if you want your home automation to just work with little need to constantly be using different apps etc for the various features, then a single primary system like Loxone is what you need.

I acknowledge that Loxone's approach sometimes seems a bit left field but compared to the big system names like Control4, Lutron etc, Loxone is a much more flexible system, especially for the DIY/Self Builder/Home User market.

@Damdeville - did you get my email 2 weeks ago?

[damien deville]

@Rob : yes, i've well received your email. I'm still on the definition of the building and finding a "price" for that to be sure that the bank will follow us on that project. Then, I will contact you for more details.

@Ralik : we are thinking a house of 170m2 with 4 rooms and 2 living room, on 2 floors.  Nothing amazing, just fonctionnal.

[Rob]

Happy to help :)

[daniel poon]

Some great posts. 

On Saturday, 15 May 2021 at 12:06:38 UTC+1 hidde....@gmail.com wrote:

6) found out that the main reason loxone systems crash/die is because of bad SD cards... mostly because of frequent writes. therefore I decided to minimize the writes for statistics, and move all my statistics to our synology NAS with a few docker containers for IoBroker/influxDB/Grafana. I really like this, since it provide me the flexibility to also integrate directly with my shelly devices (Shelly 3EM), PV, Heatpump etc. and get all the statistics in one place... allowing me to build any dashboard I want. and as a bonus I can backup my statistics properly/easily.

How did you get the stats written to sinology NAS? is there an option where you can specify a network drive for logging? I guess there must be!

Cheers

Dan