As I’m sure many have noticed over the last year, I own a company in the UK that imports and supports the Velbus range of digital building control technology.
I make no secret of it and I hope that anything I have posted has been seen as just my enthusiasm for the industry and an attempt to get the Velbus ecosystem into the psyche of anyone interested in home automation and digital building control.
What I haven’t made a big deal about is all the work that goes on to promote MDAR Ltd and Velbus as a commercial solution.
For example. MDAR offers a fully CIAT approved CPD course for Architectural Technologists and contractors that wish to add to their knowledge base.
Our “Controlling Buildings Digitally” course details can be found here
https://ciat.org.uk/education/cpd/cpd-register/controlling-buildings-digitally.html
We also approach electrical and plumbing contractors who are looking to expand their businesses into this area, offering them full hands on training which come with a complete working demo kit for them to continue their development in their own time and act as an effective sales tool.
As part of supporting these contractors, we offer a system design service which covers everything from assessing the needs of the client and the building to delivering :
- A complete kit list
- Wiring explanation and building overview
- Fully assembled electrical cabinet, containing all the Velbus parts and PSUs, thanks to our partnership with Future Automation.
These cabinets can be shipped around the world for installation by contractors.
With Velbus being an open system, each property owner is able to connect to the control network and change things as they wish using the freely available VelbusLink software.
Initially reading back all the settings that an installer has deployed and change them as they wish.
(Unlike some other systems where the original configuration file is required to make sense of the data on the control bus, or worse where modules have been locked completely.)
openHAB2 has been very popular with a sector of our customers, who want to have full ownership of their properties and be empowered to develop and expand their system at their own pace, without being locked into a proprietary system.
(We always remind these people that while openHAB2 is “free” is still costs money to run, so we encourage new user to become supporting members at the very least.)
While MDAR Ltd doesn’t directly support or charge for support for openHAB2, we do ensure that all of the deployed Velbus modules are accessible from openHAB2 and where required we can supply the Item files to the client’s requirements.
With the increase in popularity of Velbus within the domestic / self build market, we would like to offer our professional services to anyone that come to us from the openHAB community.
When getting in touch, please let us know so that we can bypass the “big sell” and get straight down to the interesting stuff.
There might even be a certified installed in your area that can help you with the physical installation of the Velbus hardware and ensure your project meets the local building regulation.
This includes anyone outside of the UK, as Velbus is a global product with many installers located around the world.
On behalf of my team, I would like to wish everyone the greatest of success with their projects.
Best wishes from the UK
Stuart Hanlon