Advice for 1st time Loxone install

[DMD1062]

I'm relatively new to this forum and limited on my Loxone knowledge, so go easy! 

I'm renovating my house and want to install Loxone.  Like some others on here, I'm nervous of using proprietary technology unless it's a necessity.  I understand the simplicity of Tree but have been in business to long to know that at some point it will become unsupported and I don't want to run that risk of being tied into one vendor.   That being said, I'm seeking advice on:

1. Your thoughts on my infrastructure design. All wiring standard electrical/CAT7, no tree
2. Any advice on Heat Pump integration - what brands are good / bad
3. I have an electrician who has installed similar technology (not Loxone) so if there are any Loxone Partners interested in designing, supplying Loxone components and configuring / installing please drop me a PM

Lighting

• Switches: Faradite in living areas (aesthetics); Touch in Bathroom & other areas; cabled using CAT7 to control panel
• LED Downlighters: Switched / dimmer low voltage electrical circuits wired back to control panel
• LED Strips (RGBW) DMX controlled (some thing like InStyle LED)
• LED Downlighters (RGBW) DMX controlled (some thing like constaled.de)
• PIRs in bathrooms & key areas wired using CAT7 back to control panel. Used for lighting control & security

Heating / Cooling

• Actuators (non Loxone) cabled back to control panel
• Thermostats in each UFH zone using Faradite / Touch temperature functionality
• Bathroom fans wired back to control panel on electrical circuit; controlled by light activation & Touch humidity sensor
• Boiler controlled through Loxone interface.  Will be moving to a heat pump within next 18 months so haven't done much research into that yet
• Electric radiators in bathroom wired back to control panel, controlled by room temp/time of day.  Unsure about how these might integrate to Loxone 

Building Control

• I have a Velux window with electrical opening that will be wired back to control panel & controlled through Faradite switch / building temp
• Will wire some electrical spurs back to control panel for some blind/curtain motors, although putting these in is a future item
• Will wire electrical spurs in for garage door control and wire back to control panel, again a future installation
• AICO Fire/Smoke alarms wired back to control panel
• Door intercom: electrical cabling and CAT7 for future addition wired back to control panel
• Other: I may have SolarPV, battery storage & EV plug so will need to consider how these are integrated without tree.

Wireless

• Will have WiFi integrated throughout the house but not integrated to Loxone.  If I add future wireless products (e.g. Blind control / window sensors), I understand these need to use the Loxone Air system so should I put that in too or can I piggy back on my own WiFi for these?

 Sorry for the long post but thought I'd just put it all out there and see what comes back...

[Rob]

PM's don't seem to work so I've dropped you an email.

[Rob_in]

On Sunday, 28 March 2021 at 14:48:37 UTC+2 DMD1062 wrote:

Lighting

• Switches: Faradite in living areas (aesthetics); Touch in Bathroom & other areas; cabled using CAT7 to control panel

IMHO KNX is a better choice here. Although others will tell you they have had KNX work well over CAT7 so guess you have the choice to change in the future. 

• LED Strips (RGBW) DMX controlled (some thing like InStyle LED)
  

At this point in time I think individually addressable LEDs are the way to go in any strips but just personal preference I guess.

• LED Downlighters (RGBW) DMX controlled (some thing like constaled.de)
  

We have these and are very happy with them. Bit exy but they work well. We use EldoLED dimmers FWIW.

• PIRs in bathrooms & key areas wired using CAT7 back to control panel. Used for lighting control & security
  

Again, I would use KNX for these, but again, you have the choice with home run wiring. 

• Bathroom fans wired back to control panel on electrical circuit; controlled by light activation & Touch humidity sensor

We have a ERV ventilator that runs constantly and I recently built some 1-wire devices based on SHT31 sensors (also built some AQ sensors based on SGP30s) and put them in the duct above the shower. Amazingly responsive to humidity change and picks up shower running in a few seconds whereas the Unica 1-wire wall sensor would have a hard time reliably detecting this. My point is - seems placement is very important.

Others have also suggested it's useful to put a temperature sensor on the hot water pipe to your shower/bath to detect when it starts up.

• Boiler controlled through Loxone interface.  Will be moving to a heat pump within next 18 months so haven't done much research into that yet

We have a Zenno KNX interface to a Daikin heat pump. Works well.

• Electric radiators in bathroom wired back to control panel, controlled by room temp/time of day.  Unsure about how these might integrate to Loxone 

We have our radiator (it's only 50w for drying towels) turn on for 1 hour after shower runs. The ERV is slightly boosted when the rail is on.

• Will wire some electrical spurs back to control panel for some blind/curtain motors, although putting these in is a future item

Yup, we did the same here and still mulling over automatic shading options 3 years later ;) 

• Will have WiFi integrated throughout the house but not integrated to Loxone.  If I add future wireless products (e.g. Blind control / window sensors), I understand these need to use the Loxone Air system so should I put that in too or can I piggy back on my own WiFi for these?

Never use WiFi unless it's the very, very, very last resort. And personally I wouldn't touch Loxone Air for the same reasons I don't want to use Tree. We have some CoolCam Neo Z-Wave door sensors and they work well. IMHO Z-Wave is technically better than Zigbee but it's VHS/Betamax all over again ;) Ok - not that bad, but Zigbee does seem to have more backing annoyingly, although you can find Z-Wave stuff easily enough I guess.

HTH,

Robin

[Techdoctor]

As regards to LEDs have to agree with Rob_in individually addressable LED strips are the way to go. Not easy to control via Loxone but it can be done.

I have used Loxone Air on quite a few installs and it is very reliable, and if the Air device is battery powered make sure you use a good quality battery, Energizer Ultimates are good. All air devices (except battery powered ones) work as repeaters, and this is done automatically. And if you change location of an Air device it will work out if it needs to hop or not.  No need to go back into settings and plot its route, Loxone does this automatically, and will give you a text file of its route/hops if you want.

Found Tree to be very reliable, like most Loxone stuff it just works.

The only thing I would be worried about is the Faradite touch switch in the bathroom, would moisture and or wet fingers stop the touch switch from working properly. 

For ventilation control, I just used a simple timer, so if bathroom light is on for more than 3 minutes then the fan goes on, and stays on for 5 minutes after lights have been turned off. (I have found humidity control can be temperamental, as the fan can turn on when it shouldn't)  I will also be adding control via my washer dryer so when its in dryer mode the fan switches on and then off when the washing machine has finished. I already get status information back from the washing machine so shouldn't be too much of a problem to link it to the fan. 

My electric water heater is controlled by Loxone, and have been looking at ways to control it better rather than just schedule based. Did think of adding a pulsed water meter with a square wave output and using this to tell Loxone to switch the heater on or off when a certain number of pulses have been counted, then turn water heater on for a set time and reset the counter. 

[DMD1062]

Thanks for the response... is there a 'best way' to control the individually addressable LED strips in Loxone?

[Techdoctor]

What I am using is a Pixel Blaze V3 (have also used a PB V2, but my daughter now uses that one) LED controller to control the LED strips, then on an RPi I run some software called Firestorm. Then via Firestorm use  Loxone to send HTTP commands to the PB via Firestorm.  There may be better ways to do it, but that's what I use. The RPi should only run the Firestorm software and nothing else. 

Now for the links.

The PB V3 pico is very small its about the same width as an LED strip.  I also have the sensor board so I can have sound to light patterns.

Pixel Blaze shop https://www.tindie.com/stores/electromage/ 

Set up etc https://www.bhencke.com/pixelblazegettingstarted
Firestorm on Git Hub https://github.com/simap/Firestorm

You will also find in the setup pages a link to the forum, very helpful.

[Flux]

Maybe I am reading this wrong, but with regard to the suppossed  problem with Loxone for "individual addressable LED strips",  surley this can be achieved by assigning a range of 4 DMX addreesss for each LED strip

[Techdoctor]

I am talking about individually addressable pixel LED strips. May be I read it wrong

[Rob_in]

On Tuesday, 30 March 2021 at 22:41:33 UTC+2 Flux wrote:

Maybe I am reading this wrong, but with regard to the suppossed  problem with Loxone for "individual addressable LED strips",  surley this can be achieved by assigning a range of 4 DMX addreesss for each LED strip

Well, if you use 4 DMX addresses (I assume you are referring to those 4 == RGBW) then that's going to end up (via whatever IA driver you have put between the DMX bus and the LEDs) with all the LEDs in the strip the same colour. In which case (if you just want all the LEDs to light the same colour), just use a regular RGBW strip.

I would consider 2 possible control options for IA leds:

1. Use ioBroker (or whatever) to watch which mood a Light Controller is in and then have animation (or static scene) activated based on that mood. Probably best for holiday decorations, etc.

2. Have 'virtual' lights configured for parts a strip. Ie. say you have a 5m strip under a counter. Say the middle 1m (or whatever LED numbers you identify) illuminate a specific zone - in front of a cooktop for example. You could, via programming in the IA driver, treat that middle 1m as Virtual Light 1 and have that middle 1m lit up based on the RGBW value from a Loxone Lighting Controller. Same for each 2m 'segment' (not really segments - use arbitrary pixel numbers the IA driver has been programmed with) at each side. So in Loxone you would configure 2 outputs (1 for middle, 1 for sides) in a Lighting Controller for this 5m led and use a Loxone Virtual Output to push the RGWB values for each 'segment' to the IA driver.

Robin

[John Perdoni]

My bad, I was reading it wrong, didn't see the reference to the fact that each individual led on a strip was addressable.

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Subject: Re: Advice for 1st time Loxone install

 

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[Techdoctor]

What I am doing is setting up a virtual input to control a virtual output from Loxone which then tell the LED pixel strip to go to a specific pattern or solid colour, and as Rob_in mentioned some patterns/moods will be say the first 20 LEDs on then LEDs 50 to 70 on. I also have brightness controls buttons set to 100%, 50% and 25%.

I am currently experimenting with the best way to control all this from within Loxone.