Migration from Somfy Tahoma to Velux KLF200

[Konfusius (Reinhold Wagner)]

Some months ago I decided to get rid of my Somfy Connexoon and replace it by a Velux KLF200. The reasons: I cannot understand that I need a permanent internet connection just to control my roller shutters when I have a local gateway. The recommended polling interval of 15 minutes is useless when your rules depend on the roller shutter status. And I’m also tired of the yearly SSL certificate expiration!

I found a Velux KLF200 for a reasonable price at Ebay and purchased it. The migration was really straight forward. Let me describe how it works (by the way: the Somfy support was very helpful!):

1.) Start the Tahoma App on your smartphone (must be connected already)
2.) Navigage to “Help & assistance” → “Advanced assistance” → "“io key management” → “Continue” → “Transfer the installation key to a control point” → “Other box”
3.) Now you have 10 minutes to (re)start your KLF200

• from now on I have to trust my memory
  4.) Re(start) the KLf200 and connect to the KLF200-WLAN
  5.) You have to receive the system key and to import the devices. I had to import the devices twice (1st for the awning, 2nd for the roller shutters) - Sorry, I can’t tell what I did exactly, but it was not a big deal.

Benefit:

• no cloud solution
• immediate status feedback

Drawback:

• no silent mode! Connexoon proviced a silent mode where the roller shutter moves slowly but with less noise.
• no possibility to backup the configuration

My current configuration: I use the Connexoon box to control the roller shutters in the rules (slow movement) and the KLF200 to get “real time” status feedback. It’s far away from a optimal solution but it works sufficiently.

BTW: The Connexoon thing goes offline very ~ 5 minutes! This is something I also don’t understand, but as long as it has no impact on the reliability of openHAB’s functionality it’s just garbage in the log.

Hopefully this small “tutorial” will be useful to someone.

Have fun.
Reinhold

[Chiuaua79 (Cor)]

There is a silent mode, but I don’t know if it works for Somfy devices as well. Also, it is available only as a scene (preprogrammed movement).

You need to log in to your KLF200 web interface and find the scene tab(?). Here you can record a “scene”. Start recording, move the devices you want to a position you want by means of an ordinary Somfy io remote, stop recording, name the scene and you can mark it for silent mode.

In openhab you can add a “scene” thing. In this thing make sure you set the thing to silent as well (I don’t know if the KLF200 and openhab overrule one another when they are set differenlty). You activate the scene by sending it an ON command via the activation channel (switch item).

Drawback of this way is that a scene is for a predefined position (kind of the Somfy “my” position) and not for random positions. But the KLF200 gives the option to record multiple scenes (being multiple things in openhab).