My ongoing critique

[Tarun Nagpal]

Well after crashcourse reprogramming my entire system after having  installers flake... it is mostly done. (well if i can ever get the HVAC to behave like a normal person would want it to...)

Anyway, whenever I do stuff like this I keep an ongoing list of problems/critiques. These may reflect my lack of knowledge but also reflect bugs and defects in whatever I am working on.

Figured I would dump it here, see if anyone else had thoughts about these issues (and I have shared a fair number back to Loxone's black hole of feedback but whatever).

===

Interface

• • Saving should not default to project.loxone but whatever file name was opened first. 
  • There is no clear communication when you connect if it is going to download over your file or not - the workflow is a flat out disaster
  • Backups are primitive and not very well done - honestly just make every save a version and let me flag key ones
  • Blocks should not be able to go off the borders
  • I'd like meaninful room hierarchy (e.g., Whole House > Floors > Combined Areas > Specific Rooms) that also add up the underlying sq footage and let me order rooms according to floor then alpha versus just alpha
  • Room Types are a bit confusing and not sure what they are used for

Config Blocks

• Schedule Blocks
  • All schedule blocks should have Everyday as default and you can add Weekdays, Weekends, or individual days of the week as options
  • Main schedule block should be fully HVAC enabled to allow combining different IRCs into one. (But see HVAC section)
• Analog values
  • Analog values and text are second citizens to pulses - most blocks should be trimodal (digital, analog, text) ; analog memory is a conceptually annoying workaround
  • Gating Blocks are needed - pass through if allowed, otherwise block (not 0, no signal) (for digital, analog, and text - any data flows)
• Logging
  • Should be able to push syslog to remote server instead of wearing down the SD card
  • /dev/syslog does not comply with RFC5424.
  • Many blocks are terrible loggers, every input, every output value, every parameter change and initial setting should be logged at the minimum; many log nothing
• Irrigation
  • Module should support more sophisticated models using Eto, water tension meters, soil moisture meteres, lux by zone (at least match rainbird and HA smart irrigation plugin but realistically should be FAO56)
• Shading Logic
  • Needs to accommodate nonlinear curtain motor movement (ramp up speeds, slight changes as roll unwinds, delay in command - realistically a formula would be best)
  • When using DCT; open, close, and hold might be three different relays, not two; so should be three independent VQs and outputs on the shading block
• HVAC
  • Different zones should not mean different schedules. I add a damper to modulate the air to get the temperature to be consistent, not to have wildly different temps. How many times do you want me to adjust the temp?
  • Mode has multiple overlapping meanings across blocks because Loxone fails to distinguish between functional operating mode (e.g. a minisplit has heat, cool, dry, fan) and user operating modees (heat, cool, auto, heat to setpoint but don't cool)
  • On top of that modes are keyed to different numbers across blocks so you can't slave one to another without blocks
  • Overshooting is ridiculously common, there is a PID block, It should be integrated
  • Tooltips are in C even when my miniserver is set to F
• Ventilation (RVC and TVC blocks)
  • While HVAC is opaque and not well designed, ventilation is outright stupid
  • Is completely missing the Pto block of lighting. Total oversight. (Also why is musics exact same thing called Ti?); so you turn off the light manually with a button press and it instantly turns back on because your arm is moving - dumb
  • Should have an On pin and Tr pin like, you know, every other control?
  • Should have a humidity rise trigger built in (take a min moving value and compare to current and trigger)

Hardware

• Where is a good mmWave sensor? - Everything Presence Pro is a much better sensor than all of the Loxone sensors and cheaper
• Needs Apple Wallet support for the NFC reader
• In fact, fingerprint or facial recognition would be better than any of these

Integrations

• Loxone needs to be a full Matter coordinator and client both
• Supporting only 16 MQTT feeds is a sick joke

User Management

• Permissions are unions not intersections, so I can't say you get lighting and shading across these specific rooms unless I do it device by device 

Education

• The programmer I was referred to, who I was told was their best guy (and is very nice and diligent), didn't know how to use an RVC block and had built all that logic in the most complicated way possible (but the block is broken anyway)
• There is no UI/XML cross-reference available
• Descriptions are abstract and often difficult to follow; every single one should have:
  • is it a pulse or sustained
  • what values it intakes or outputs
  • which pins are dominant and subordinate to it
  • a concrete example or two of how it will work connected to other blocks with a nice narrative story of what happens
• There should never be hidden settings (e.g. CO2 sensor has a -9 hysteresis to turn off on RVC)

[Paul Watkin]

I will start my comments by saying I do not work for Loxone but I am a Loxone partner and prior to that I spent 20 years in customer facing roles at one of the largest semiconductor technology companies in the world.

If an email such as this had come towards my inbox it would have been deleted within reading the first paragraph, so i wouldn't expect much of a response from Loxone given your style of communication. You are coming across as being the only smart guy in a room of perceived idiots.

By what you have written I would guess you aren't a Loxone Partner and haven't done any of the training?

As with any embeded system there are a million ways to achieve an end result, some might be complicated or messy and others simple and elegant - the key thing is if they both work they are both the right way to do things.

Most of your assertions above come without a real world example of why they should be implemented - because you say so isn't going to cut it if you want people to buy in and help, especially when a company has a finite amount of resource and plent of priorities - explaining why something is an issue and what could be achieved by removing that roadblock is a far more affective way of getting something achieved/changed

For instance under Logging - point 1 - a 5 second google would show you how to log data from the Miniserver to an external drive, the reason most blocks don't log data incessantly is that it goes back to point 1 in that you will trash the SD card. Coming full circle what is the need you have for keeping so much logged data about what is going on in the system - explaining this last point "the why" may lead to people being able to provide suggestions as to how you can achieve your desired  result without a trashed SD Card - also a miniserver only has so much compute power - would you rather a log full of entries that mean nothing or your light to come on when you press the switch?

Loxone is essentially a closed system with some 3rd party integration - but the core functionality is essentially closed and with that comes stability and resilience that homebrew systems don't afford - if you wanted a system that was fully open and you could do what ever you want then Loxone isn't the right product.

Under your title hardware you say x cmpany has a mmWave sensor - Loxone have decided to use technologies based around acoustic sensing and PIR - again two solutions with the same outcome - also you seem to ingore that other companies might have patents on concepts of how to do things that mean Loxone can't simply copy the idea.

Loxone is a European product, I am not sure where you are based but certainly in the UK and most of Europe it is very normal to have zoned heating with different schedules / temperatures in different rooms

Your comment about switching a light off and then having PIR detect an arm moving  - have you looked at leaving room double click rather than setting the lighting mood to OFF?

Fingerprint or facial recogition - why? again to what purpose - are you wanting to rock up outside your house and have a camera scan you and wlecome you home after unlocking all the doors - good luck getting house insurance based on that! Again coming back to resources that is 0.01% use case so why would they bother.

Loxone is a system designed to cover the needs of the 80% who want a technology driven home and who don't care how it works or even want to open a laptop to see pretty graphs - if you are in the 20% camp then open source software based systems like HA, OpenHAB etc and a collection of 3rd party devices is the future you seek assuming you can get it working....

Regards

Paul

[Tarun Nagpal]

Well it isn't like I am filing tickets here, so I was summarizing gaps, flaws, and inconsistencies (and there are a lot more inconsistencies). Frankly I admitted that some of these things might be gaps in my knowledge.

When I have filed tickets with Loxone, I have typically given them test suites, tcpdumps, procmon dumps, etc. spelled out the issue, etc. But just to expand on a few of them...

"Your comment about switching a light off and then having PIR detect an arm moving  - have you looked at leaving room double click rather than setting the lighting mood to OFF?"  I was specifically addressing the RVC block there which has an Off but does not have any time block for motion, so if you have ventilation running on motion, the Off when triggered will not block motion from turning it on again. So you go to the bathroom, the fan kicks on, you click it off on the way out and it turns itself back on instantly. That is just broken functionality as far as I can tell.

In our house we have 9 zones. So adjusting an HVAC schedule across the house means 63 adjustments (9 zones x 7 days). Sure you might only do it once... But it is still an interface nightmare for someone who says, I want it 70 degress during the day and 68 at night in every room.

Fingerprint or facial recognition - PINS can be compromised. fingerprints and facial don't require additional devices. Plus frankly my phone has it, my car has it.

I could go on... I assume the experience in Europe is far better than the US where Loxone just isn't quite there even after being in the country for a long time

I am not sure why you take it so personally if you don't work for them.... Mediocrity should be called out. 

[Jedi Tek'Unum]

What this is, IMO, is just frustration being vented. It’s what happens with mediocre products from mediocre companies. There is a multitude of deficiencies in Loxone software and they have nearly zero interest in addressing them.

The “tone” of complaints is not an excuse for rejection. If I ran a company where that happened I’d fire those involved. Undesirable tone is frequently a result of long-term terrible customer service and corporate attitude. Your interpretation is actually the reverse of most cases - arrogant companies are usually the side that believes everything they do is perfect and they couldn’t possibly be wrong about anything.

Loxone is a product in conflict with itself. If, as you say, it’s only about the 80% then it didn’t need a data-flow style visual programming approach. That’s a strong suggestion of something potentially far more powerful. Yet neither perspective is done well.

As my opinion is likely to also be fully rejected let me state a bit of my credentials. I’m retired from a career in software engineering rising to a high level in Fortune-500 computer/ISV companies where I did software architecture. Large (10+ million lines of code) complex “systems level” software. In other words, I know a thing or two about design/architecture/documentation/consistency/cohesion/… And an expert at technology evaluation (M&A [merger & acquisition] lead).

On Thursday, May 21, 2026 at 4:01:00 AM UTC-5 pa...@watkinworld.co.uk wrote:

I will start my comments by saying I do not work for Loxone but I am a Loxone partner and prior to that I spent 20 years in customer facing roles at one of the largest semiconductor technology companies in the world.

If an email such as this had come towards my inbox it would have been deleted within reading the first paragraph, so i wouldn't expect much of a response from Loxone given your style of communication. You are coming across as being the only smart guy in a room of perceived idiots. … 

[Simon Still]

I'm with Paul on this - Loxone is far from perfect but having had my system installed for 10 years I'd install it again without question.   The blocks are designed for a particular way of working and if you don't want them to do that the App UI becomes sub-optimal but this is supposed to be about home automation - not creating a complex interface that lets you manually adjust everything with a smartphone remote control.

Fingerprint or facial recognition- for me too this is a why?  What do you want them to do?  There's no way I'd control access to my house with either of those - what else are you going to use it for?    

On individual complaints, theres definitely a degree of 'not knowing how to solve a problem' (there are many ways to deliver functionality in Loxone which aren't always obvious) or 'not using as intended'.

RVC bloc - why do you want to switch off the extract fan when leaving the room?  the normal behaviour is to continue extract for a period after presence ends (whether for smells or moisture). If you want the fan manually controlled with the lighting why have you linked it to the presence sensor - just link it to the lights?  If you really want it to have a presence time out after a manual switch off you can build it with a few blocks of logic.

You've got 9 HVAC zones but you want them all set up the same?  Then configure the block for one room with all your settings in the config, and copy and paste it, which will take all those settings, to the other 8 zones.    

I've not used the IRC or HVAC blocks but If you want to be able to adjust the settings on all of them from a single point I'm sure theres ways to do it.  I'd be surprised if you coundn't create a single schedule block and feed that to the inputs of the 9 zones and only have that one schedule visible in the UI.  Likewise you could have a single temperature control feeding all the IRC blocks. 

I'm not going to go through every one of your points.  

The Matter integration is one that I've been annoyed about but I'm pretty sure the reason is that Matter is still really immature, unreliable and not deeply implemented even by the key members of the alliance.  I've 3 rooms with Matter blinds - only the basic open/close action appears in Apple home. For all config I still nneed to use the Eve app.  I bought a Matter window sensor just to try it out (Ikea - very low cost).  I can't see any way to bring that sensor into the Eve blind controller as a condition (if the window is open, disable the schedule so the blind doesn't automatically close onto it). 

[Simon Still]

What this forum is good for is suggestions on how to solve issues.  it's not monitored or contributed to by Loxone.   I'm guessing their development priorities (and hardware development) priorities are influenced by what their installer base is asking for and products they can develop and sell profitably  (which is why theres a very German bias on some of the 3rd party integrations)

If you want some help on here it's probably going to be more productive to ask the best way to achieve something rather than saying 'this *obvious* parameter is missing) -- I suspect there are ways to achieve most of what you want.  If you're a programmer and want to do stuff that isn't built into Loxone then there are Home Assistant and Loxberry.  

Last point, as a 10 year+ user i'd say my other takeaway is that Its been a remarkable trouble free system.  I don't think there have ever been any system bugs that have affected my install (I did have a moan recently because the changes to the App changed the UI in a way that required a load of config adjustment to get it working intuitively again.  But thats the first time that's happened.  The only other issues have been when SD cards have been failing and a replacement solved it. 

Whereas my Eve blinds had the Automated shading function broken by the (automatic) update last summer.  (you can no longer adjust the angles to adapt to buildings - so your shade time is the maximum for that direction).  They think they'll fix it in the next release, but those appear to be annual or less so a year or more broken.  

[Jedi Tek'Unum]

It’s important to state that those of us that are very critical of Loxone are still running their systems. After 8 years I just recently purchased a nearly new v2 miniserver despite my unhappiness. Partly to have a spare but mostly so I have a standalone clean system to completely rebuild my “config”. I feel I must do that if there is to be any hope of resolving some nagging problems such as UDP Virtual Outputs not working for the last year or so.

This indicates a lot of things. One, the product fills a unique niche that is valuable. Even with the problems and deficiencies. Two, quality is of the “ok” variety but not as good as it should be for this class of product. Third, the company refuses to provide any meaningful level of support for resolving most problems. Fourth, the company rejects input from most customers; customers whose only intent is to improve the product for everyone.

It’s all too clear that the company believes the only “customers” they have are partners. That the lowest common denominator functionality is ok. So instead of conquering the market they apparently accept less. As an example of how to conquer a market they should look at Ubiquiti and how they conduct business.

This product has great potential but is only achieving mediocre results. If and when a serious competitor appears in this niche they will fail rapidly. It’s a very poor way to run a business. Until the company awakens to the level of frustration in their user base they are in a perilous state.

[Tarun Nagpal]

To Jedi's point, ten years ago when I installed Loxone, I was willing to forgive some rough edges. They were new to the US market, etc. But to see lots of simple mistakes, design flaws, and things to work around just reeks of lack of good product design management. Even if contractors and partners are their customers, then they should be endeavoring to make it easier on them too... OOB functionality should be better. Settings should not be opaque or poorly defined or inconsistent from block to block. As it is, I have seen two Loxone installers quit their relationships with Loxone during this time saying they hated dealing with Loxone, that they couldn't get the functionality they needed to appease their customers, etc.

For my particular list, they are grounded in real concerns: Sure, I can copy over schedules relatively easily using Loxone Config - but how about my wife who doesn't know how to use it? If I die, she is editing 9x7 days of scheduling to her preference (she can finally have the house warmer at night!). Frankly that is not even close to a premium home automation experience. RVC has an Off pin. An off pin that does nothing if you are using the motion sensor. Imagine a world where you get up late at night to use the bathroom, and you want to turn off the fan quickly since your partner is a light sleeper. Or you just walked in to get something and don't need the fan to run for ten minutes since it is wasteful...

Some of them are just, this could be so much better if they weren't just hitting the bare minimum. Building PIDs into HVAC blocks mean they would essentially learn the patterns of your room for heating and cooling. Irrigation integrating FAO56 would be a huge step up in functionality for not much additional implementation work (Rainbird can do it, why can't Loxone).

Anyway, I have shared many of these with loxone, and while they are nominally receptive, I suspect they don't really care. More focused on trying to sell to developers...

I won't say more on the topic... seeing people just accept mediocrity is just depressing.

[Paul Watkin]

Jedi, Tna, it is very difficult not to be offended when someone says you are settling for mediocrity by using a system, especially when you have invested significant time and money into not only becoming a Loxone Partner but also installing it extensively in your own home.

Yes, some of the descriptions in Loxone are a challenge to understand and that is down to the original concepts being in German - ideally it wouldn't happen but most of the time it isn't an issue.

For basic fan control / over run timer, the much talked about RVC block is complete overkill - it is intended for controlling ventilation based on environmental inputs like CO2 and Humidity which change slowly - use a stairwell switch or time block instead.

Schedules can be edited directly in the App by a user - so not sure why your wife would need config? Also if you only want one schedule then disabled the IRC's internal schedules and use an external schedule block to control all of the IRC's and the issue goes away - personally I am fine with the flexibility of individual room schedules edited via the app every once in a blue moon

I don't need or want most of the features you are both criticising Loxone for not including and to the best of my recollection no customer i have spoken to has asked for any of these either - that doesn't mean I am accepting mediocrity, it means I and they don't see the point in some of the things you feel are necessary.

I would question where you both believe this premium panacea system is going to come from that has the stability of something like Loxone but supporting all of this "other" stuff that is apparently so lacking in Loxone - no company in their right mind will develop a central hub and then guarantee it will work with every combination of things thrown at it.

If you want something like that use HA or another software based system and accept you will be tinkering with it a lot.

It is interesting that Ubiquiti got a mention ( with its roots in Apple) - 2 companies that are regularly pulled up for being closed environments that don't address everything they should  - yet you see Loxone as needing to be an open system.

For instance when Ubiquiti launched the UNAS series - everyone complained that it couldn't run apps or do this or that and was purely just a NAS - funnily enough that is exactly what Ubiquiti wanted it to be and they never said it could boil the kettle, run the toaster or some apps that the commentators thought it should support - it was a NAS drive. 

Loxone is the same, they have never claimed (to my knowledge) that a Miniserver will do half of the things it is now being viewed negatively for not supporting  - in fact most of them didn't exist when Loxone launched the gen 1 Miniserver or the Gen 2 for that matter and these hardware platforms may not be capable of the level of processing required to run them stably in the real world. 

A future Gen 3 Miniserver might address some of this but Loxone only have so many resources so do they focus on a new miniserver for a small portion of the market or do they focus on adding things that are being requested more?

Talking of Matter, it is a fledgling standard, it will take years for it to stabilise and there will be an awful lot of companies that will come and go along the way - there will also be a lot of interop issues along the way - would you rather Loxone rushed headlong chasing support for every Matter device out there at the risk of making the core system unusable 

As always just my thoughts 

Paul

[Paul Watkin]

"   Imagine a world where you get up late at night to use the bathroom, and you want to turn off the fan quickly since your partner is a light sleeper. Or you just walked in to get something and don't need the fan to run for ten minutes since it is wasteful... "

there are plenty of ways of doing this without an RVC block - why not use night mode option so the fan doesn't run at all in the middle of the night?  Or change the run on time based on operating mode i.e. in the day it runs for 5mins but at night it only runs for 30secs? Or what about a delay from the presence block output so the light comes on instantly and the fan doesn't start for xx secs, if presence expires before the xx secs elapse then the fan doesn't run. - or maybe combine any of the above

i am sure others could chime in with a myriad of other ways to do this but the RVC block probably wouldn't be the go to block.

Also the availability of near silent extractor fans and prevalence of MVHR in Europe make this much less of an issue than it is in North America where bathroom fans sound like a jet engine - the last bathroom extractor fan i fitted the customer requested a video of it working as they couldn't hear it and didn't believe it worked

On Wednesday, 27 May 2026 at 22:47:32 UTC+1 t.na...@gmail.com wrote:

[Jedi Tek'Unum]

On Wednesday, May 27, 2026 at 6:43:55 PM UTC-5 pa...@watkinworld.co.uk wrote:

Also the availability of near silent extractor fans and prevalence of MVHR in Europe make this much less of an issue than it is in North America where bathroom fans sound like a jet engine - the last bathroom extractor fan i fitted the customer requested a video of it working as they couldn't hear it and didn't believe it worked

 Like automation systems, it’s all about what one buys. Panasonic fans are widely used in North America and are quiet.

[Jedi Tek'Unum]

On Wednesday, May 27, 2026 at 6:23:34 PM UTC-5 pa...@watkinworld.co.uk wrote:

I don't need or want most of the features you are both criticising Loxone for not including and to the best of my recollection no

I did not comment on any of the specific functional complaints that were made. They don’t affect me currently so I have no comment on whether they are reasonable or not.

What I was saying was general agreement with the themes presented as I have experienced the abundance of chaos referred to as it relates to other blocks.

I would question where you both believe this premium panacea system is going to come from that has the stability of something like Loxone but supporting all of this "other" stuff that is apparently so lacking in Loxone - no company in their right mind will develop a central hub and then guarantee it will work with every combination of things thrown at it.

It isn’t premium stability. Case in point my system had run for years without change and all the sudden a year or so ago my UDP Virtual Outputs stopped working and still don’t. We’ve had no indicators on our switches since. I’d give it a moderate stability rating.

In my enterprise scale systems experience I’ve seen plenty of massive systems far more complex than this product that have run continuously for more than a decade. Sure, not great from the standpoint of applying security patches but then some of them had no external connection so risk was low. That’s stability.

I admit it is better than commodity junk.

Nobody mentioned guarantee. That’s just a lame excuse. I have DMX and I’m very confident there is zero guarantee that it works with any given DMX device.

It is interesting that Ubiquiti got a mention ( with its roots in Apple) - 2 companies that are regularly pulled up for being closed environments that don't address everything they should  - yet you see Loxone as needing to be an open system.

Not sure where you are getting that from. Obviously a closed system is acceptable to me. I’m an Apple household too.

I don’t need to “tinker” with my Unifi setup as it does what is expected as well as continually evolving in a positive direction. If you are referring to past firewall limitations those have been addressed recently. I suspect they are heading for a path that includes home automation. They recently released an alarm panel in USA. It has some limitations in software but they have a robust history of quickly improving software for new devices. It isn’t about being perfect out of the gate - positive evolution in reasonable timeframe is what makes the difference.

[Techdoctor]

I find the fan thing amusing. Its such an easy fix. I have ceiling lights and a mirror light in my bathroom. So when one of these comes on it starts a timer. If the lights go off before the three minutes are up nothing happens, the fans stays off. But should the lights stay on for over three minutes the extractor fan comes on. Then once the light is switched off the fan will get switched off 3 minutes later.  So this would solve your just a quick in and out dilema. You can set the timer block to what ever you want if 3 minutes is not long enough.

I must admit I am slowly moving away from Loxone not just for me but for my clients as well. I am installing Shelly modules and most recently started using the Homey Pro device. Loxone and Shelly work well together but its not an easy thing to set up, but once set up Shelly modules talk to Loxone and I can then control the Shelly devices within Loxone.

My reasoning for moving away from Loxone is more to do with cost you can buy several Shelly modules for a single similar Loxone module. 

For the presence detection why not use the Shelly presence device and then using a virtual input you can get the shelly data you need across to Loxone I do this with my Solar set up which uses Shelly modules to monitor power consumption and production and sends the data to loxone.

[duncan]

ive done something similar to my fan installs - all configurable within loxone

delay start, runtime of fan, triggered per room by humidity or light switch or both together, global night disable schedule / night mode

ive also added a multi-click to the light switch so can manually turn off (double click, easy WAF) or turn on (triple or quad click)

i can then set each room as the user wishes, some such as trigger (light, humid or both) set by the user, others by an admin user only

i tend to leave the kids on humidity as they always leave their bathroom lights on :-(  but my wife prefers the lightswitch option

i still use loxone (since 2013) along with zigbee2mqtt / loxberry / shelly i can get most things done and havnt found anything else as easy, its fundamentally limited by the programmers imagination rather than 
config limitations in my opintion

[Jedi Tek'Unum]

Always interesting to read so many comments that describe functionality that is not available directly with a single blessed block. Obviously this forum is unlikely to represent the majority of Loxone users but I would wager most here are going well beyond what is provided OOB. There are over 800 members in this forum. Seems to me that more advanced users are not an insignificant number.

Another possible contributing reason may be that documentation and support are so bad that people come here.

The company has problems that they would do well to begin addressing.

[Simon Still]

What I really like about Loxone is stuff like long press/triple click (all my switches are are single). You can have a system that’s completely simple for a visitor but has advanced functions for the homeowner who wants something specific). 

[Simon Still]

Interface

There is no clear communication when you connect if it is going to download over your file or not - the workflow is a flat out disaster

If you connect to the Miniserver with no file open it downloads the config
If you have a config file open when you connect it does NOT download the config from the mini server.  If you then click download it warns you that it's going to overwrite your open file and changes will be lost.

If you connect and click upload it checks if there are any unsaved changes on the mini server version (that have been made via mobile apps) and offers to merge them into the config

That workflow seems pretty rock solid to me.  In 10 years it's never resulted in me losing any changes I wanted to keep. 

On Wednesday, 20 May 2026 at 21:59:32 UTC+1 t.na...@gmail.com wrote: