Hello everyone,
As I’m sure most of you know by now, I own a company in the UK that handles the Velbus fully wired digital building control system sales within the British Isles.
For the last 12+ years I’ve been trying to get home builders over here to take digital controls seriously and realise the savings for them, before trying to sell the fancy extras to end customers.
At the back end of last year, I was very kindly introduced to a decision maker within one of the UK’s largest home builders.
They currently build over 10,000 homes a year, but they are looking for a wiring solution that will both be quicker (with less snagging issues) than classic AND will empower their sales teams to offer more upgrade options to customers.
Like a few companies in Europe, they are seriously considering Velbus, due to its open nature and the option for homeowners to expand the system by simply adding a software platform of their choice.
The idea being that the homeowner is free to deploy their choice of interface or get a third party company to provide a solution.
To date, MDAR (my company) has provided extra support to anyone seeking to add Velbus to any platform.
In the case of openHAB, these amazing wizards must take all the credit for the level of integration there is between Velbus and openHAB
@cedricboon & @Daniel615be
They have steadfastly refused any offer of a financial reward in any way.
I really can’t thank them enough for the work they have done.
HomeAssistant has it’s own Velbus masters, who have also refused any kind of reward for their incredible efforts.
(in fact one of them refused to allow me to buy him a hot dog at an event, instead he paid for mine!!!)
OpenRemote and Control4 are commercial platforms that support Velbus, both of which charged a fee for writing the drivers to bridge into Velbus.
Trigrr (formally Bizonia) is also a commercial platform that support Velbus, their integration being funded by their own investors.
So what does this mean and why am I creating a post here?
The idea that I’m pitching to these home builders is that all they need to do is put in a digital backbone and get the property working to a minimum standard.
Offering upgrades to customers that can be easily added by the first and second fix teams like;
- Extra Outside lights
- ALL OFF button at the front door
- Multiple Heating zones
- RGB / RGBW LED strips
- PIR Presence sensors
- Humidity / CO / CO²
- Doorbell push button (linked to the digital backbone to provide multiple sounder trigger or flashing light etc)
- in-glass window blinds (controlled by the digital building control)
- Keyfob control
When they hand the keys over, the builder need think about nothing more than directly passing any warranty issues straight to us / Velbus HQ.
At the point of sale or six months later, we talk to the new owners and tell me about some of the amazing things that they can achieve by adding a third party software solution package.
All we do is pass the contact details on to a local third party company.
With HomeAssitant, they could use a company like “The Real Smarthome” who will install a mini computer and configure HA as required.
or they could reach out to a local Control4 dealer and ask them to take thousands of pounds in exchange for a mini-computer and branded tablets.
Triggr would offer something similar, but they are really more interested in commercial buildings, much like OpenRemote.
What I can't find is anyone that offers a similar service with openHAB
I simply don’t have the skills or time to take on such a task.
If you have a company that offers a solution along these lines that uses or is based on openHAB, please leave a comment or send me a DM.
Thanks to everyone involved for the great work at openHAB, I know my company wouldn’t be where it is now, if I hadn’t been able to point Velbus customers towards openHAB and the wonderful community.