Home automation (KNX, Digitalstrom or Homatic)

All,

I am considering building a house from scratch.

My current (appartment) system has been a good praparation for this project:
Light switches (z-wave)
Plug switches for irrigation, coffee machine, Alexa, … (z-wave)
rollershutter (z-wave)
Alarmsystem (Abus) - integrated by http
presence by owntracks / network binding / motion (ip camera)
Heating (IP module)

For the house I would like to cover the same functions, but would like to prepare is right from the beginning.

So I am investigating into Digitalstrom (https://www.digitalstrom.com/index.php?cl=start&lang=1), KNX (expensive) and Homatic.

A good start would be a short pro and contra.
Any hint would be greatly appreciated.

I am using Homematic (wireless) in my pre owned house and it works quite well. But because it is wireless I notice rare situations that an actor does not switch of the lights when it misses a command. Not a big deal but if I had the chance to build a new house I would at least have a look at the wired Homematic components.

In question of knx, yes, it’s expensive, but you could hardly find another bus system with such a wide support of manufacturers and such a variety of devices, which can all communicate to each other. There are even some “cheap” modules (d-i-y) and the system is growing and growing. You can combine TwistedPair, PowerLine, RadioFrequency and InternetProtocol in one system, you can combine knx with other techniques such as DALI and Enocean, and this will work without any server component.

If building a house, you should budget about 10%-15% of total cost for electric installation, this is a fair fraction, comes up how much comfort is planned. When I built my home 2005-2006, I paid less than 7% for electric installation, but of course I did it by myself, so … cheated :wink: and it would have been much less expensive if I had done it the conventional way (but much less fun either :slight_smile: ). Most rooms have more than one Light circuit, most of them are dimmed, and there are 20 roller shutters, 4 motion detectors, music in the two bath rooms, heating controlled with knx…
I also have CAT7 in every room (even the bath rooms!) and I don’t regret no point of the installation, it was (and is) much to much fun…