KNX runs stable with openhab, also if some posts in other forums says that it doesnt? KNX needs ets5 prof software and I need to find out if the electrician man does have the prof edition or lite.
homematic ip wired does have security issues? does it work stable?
velbus could be an alternative which isn’t so well known in the internet. I will have an exchange in the next week with the UK importer. developer software is for free.
DMX can also be an alternative… currently I’m not sure if DMX can dimm HV (230v leds like GU10).
zwave / zigbee is a no go at least for me. a wireless alternative could be shelly (maybe also sonoff) but I’m not sure if I want this (because hackable without physical contact if security breach is in firmware ) also if it’s probably the cheapest solution which can work equal good to a wired system
currently I don’t see any advantage for a loxone system and it’s probably the most expensive one.
I really don’t understand why there is no competitor who produces this… I would directly buy this when it would has mqtt or websocket support.
Original post:
Hi,
I’m planning a complete building control for around 100 dimmable led lamps (splitted into 10 zones), 20 dimmable RGBW leds (splitted into 10 zones) and some other stuffs like camera etc. which isn’t so important regarding openhab.
I’m struggling between homematic ip wired and knx and which one of these runs absolutely stable with openhab. In the internet I read something that openhab and knx works, but it’s not recommended to use openhab and knx because of not certified for knx, missing calculations of filtertables, knxnet/ip router calcs and something of this (currently I have no idea what this means - I just read it in some internet forums and need to work me in).
So what I’m searching for is a stable wired solution and I’m open for your comments and discussion.
BR
Claims like what you read are nonsense for the most part or just apply to ONE device or implementation but not to the whole technology so don’t get misguided.
I’d suggest you read up way more on all the available technologies yourself first.
KNX is known to be very stable, HomeMatic works, too, but it is proprietary and IP brings security issues that’s why I’d avoid it.
Also - assuming this is a starter project but you will be planning on having more smart home control - you mustn’t decide in favour of one tech by evaluating lightning only but take into account how well they’re applicable to the rest of your home.
If you really plan to ONLY stay with smart lighting, you should check out DALI and DMX. They’re standards for wired lighting control. While KNX is rather universal for all sorts of smart home applications, choices and capabilities of KNX devices aren’t great and pricing is high, amortization times are looooong unless you expand your KNX network into more areas of smart homing.
As Markus says, please don’t judge a system just by one aspect, consider if the platform is capable of managing lots of different aspects of your home.
Then once you have a system that copes with as much of your property as it can, how easily can you connect it to umbrella systems like openHAB2.
There is something very serious to consider when comparing any protocol.
Which is…
Can you read the settings back, years after an installation / configuration.
For example, without the original configuration files, systems like KNX & Rako are utterly useless.
All you’ll get from connecting to the system is the raw packets, with no way of knowing what the group assignments actually mean.
With Velbus, you can extract the entire configuration.
For example
As the UK importer of Velbus, I’m very happy to help you learn as much as you like about the product, before you make your final decision.
@mstormi it’s not only control of light. I just wanted to give an example what’s need to control. When I wrote that I read somewhere that knx and openhab could run into some problems, I mean this with an AND.
I know that KNX is stable. But I read that KNX is not good to include and use with openhab because of some things I mentioned in my first post. If that is true or not is what I wanted to find out with my post. And I wanted to ask for alternative recommendations for a bus or wired system which works stable with openhab, because I’m convinced about openhab (in most cases) so that I want to use it as control / middleware software.
That there might be security issues in homematic ip wired is new for me. I will have a look about this. Security is absolutely important for this project, because it’s commercial.
edit: what I forgot to answer at DALI/DMX: I do know basics about DMX, and some theory about DALI. But I decided to not use this protocol because we only need to switch, dimm and rgbw leds and this is solvable e.g. with knx, homematic ip wired etc. and I wanted to stay with the most things on one system.
@Kim_Andersen and @MDAR I will have a look at velbus.
edit: well I think velbus is out. I don’t see any easy way to import those modules to germany. There is no seller for velbus. Additionally velbus seems to be pretty new and I don’t want to try something new on the market in this project.
MDAR
(Stuart Hanlon, UK importer of Velbus hardware)
6
Hi there are a few things wrong with that statement
We can organise a delivery to anywhere in world, directly from the HQ in Belgium, with full support.
So don’t worry about that.
By ‘new’, do you mean less than 15 years old?
As for commercial, Velbus is used in some pretty serious projects, I’m happy to share some information privately with you.
well, I’m sorry when my assumption was wrong. It was about marketing like yt channel (2016), no importer (at least in germany), pretty unknown compared to other companies/products (at least for me) etc. which leads me to my wrong statement (if velbus is ~15 years old).
I’m open for having a chat where you can try to explain me what your products are doing better or at least equal good compared to other ones.
1 Like
MDAR
(Stuart Hanlon, UK importer of Velbus hardware)
9
No harm done.
They are standard statements I deal with on a weekly basis.
The ‘issue’ with Velbus is that it’s a professional product, so isn’t promoted very much in the public sector.
As in, you simply can’t buy it on the “high street”.
I’m happy to have a private conversation about your project.
I have a combination of KNX and DMX running for 1 year without any issues yet.
OpenHAB translates between KNX switches and DMX Dimmers. The KNX switch itself is not able to communicate directly with the DMX dimmers. Because I did not want to pay the price for a knx2dmx gateway. And since OpenHAB works like a charm there is no need to do so.
For me the perfect solution for a reasonable price. If you compare 24 DMX Dimmer channels (60€) to 4 KNX Dimmer Channels (100 €).
Another money saving effect with the DMX KNX OpenHAB Solution: The personell KNX Software license was enough for me (160€ compared to 2000€).
Now the probably nicest thing about openHAB is that it gives you choices.
Most smart homes are based on one technology and things get ugly, expensive or both when people start trying to integrate or bridge other technologies.
With openHAB at the heart, you don’t have to worry. Choose the optimum* technology for your application and don’t worry about compatibility, openHAB will take care of that for you.
“Optimum” is a matter of personal bias, but as cost is always very important, I’d give DMX another peek, see @chrode’s post.
I’d also seriously consider wireless solutions because they are pretty reliable, too, and cheapest to deploy.
In the course of equipping more areas of your building with smart tech, you will end up using some sort of wireless tech anyway. Yes to have wires is better than not to have them, then again wiring everything gets nasty and expensive very quickly, and most people tend to forget about the cost of deploying the whole thing and only stare at actuator cost per channel. But a 16-channel KNX actuator isn’t great at all if those 16 lights are spread all over the building and it’s damn expensive and time consuming to connect them all. Let alone Loxone or other PLCs that require centralized wiring.
thanks for your opinions. You are true that openhab is especially made for this scenario, that I can combine different systems to openhab.
Personally I just want to make it as simple and stable as possible. And not everything works perfectly in openhab. When I remember back to my first times with zwave …
But I will think again about DMX.
Wireless… yea when wireless, then via wifi. I already had some thinkings about shelly. But I’m not 100% sure about this. I remember back to the days where esp8266 chip got hacked and after a while you had to flash another firmware. And I’m not sure if I want this. Of course something like Shelly, MQTT broker and some firewall/vlan and everything runs and that a lot cheaper than with most or maybe all wired solutions. hmm
Depending when that was, I am sure things have improved. I moved to openHAB a year ago specifically because of the excellent Z-Wave support.The binding was originally developed by reverse engineering behaviour but the developer now has access to the official standards documentation.
How do you expect them to get support on openHAB? There are some developers marketing commercial systems based off openHAB but openHAB itself is not designed for commercial use.
@Bruce_Osborne it’s longer than a year. I dont know exact with which release I started. I think openhab 2.2 but I’m not sure. today, zwave runs stable (maybe until the next patch when I may need to remove and reinclude all things again like in the last patch which is one of the zwave thing in openhab which isnt so nice… )
thats the reason why I’m asking for experiences who is running a stable system with what architecture. IMO when we are talking about a small company with limited budget it could be a fair argue to go on with open source software when there are enough people in the community which says that something is stable. That big companies like e.g. microsoft would never go with software where you are not able to have a maintainance contract thats clear.
Unfortunately that is a restriction imposed by the OH framework. I keep hoping somebody can improve on that.
Actually, some large companies, in a quest to cut expenses are looking more to free software. It does not need to be open source since they usually do not dive into that to customize or vet for security.
WiFi is IP thus as easy a botnet target as is HomeMatic IP. ZWave and ZigBee, while not perfect, are better in terms of security. And they’re standards (read: there’s multiple vendors thus alternatives, there’s a spec and certifications). I like Shellys, too, but they fall short in these disciplines.
It’s all a big trade-off.
Really, who ?
I wouldn’t say. But you cannot compare commercial support for a smart home or building automation with software-only support.
You need to support the hardware and the combined service rather than the software.
Why do you think this? IMO I don’t agree with this. Wireless is wireless. Wpa is as secure as aes but you can bother WiFi frequency same like zwave frequency.
I use zwave in my own home and it is really slow and aes is mostly disabled. If its enabled it would be more slow… WiFi and WiFi mesh does work better IMO (except on battery purpose)
Also Wi-Fi has huge network overhead which makes it a poor choice for battery operated devices. Zigbee & Z-Wave are designed to minimize battery usage.
I have seen this before.
I kinda wonder, what exactly makes people say this? Or perhaps the question might be - What is required for a smarthome system like openhab to be “acknowledged” for commercial use?
