Since I couldnt find much Info about Busch-Jäger / ABB Free@Home I’m going to write this to explain how it works, why I’m using it and why you might (not) want to. This is probably mostly interresting for Germans, I dont know if the Hardware is availible elsewhere.
First of all, let me start by saying: This is an expensive System. The Access Point is 350 € or more, a full single switch can be more than 100 €. However the Hardware seems to be of a very good build-quality. Before I used Technisat Z-Wave switches, which werent bad and did most things I needed but felt a bit “mushy”. Now, the Software unfortunately is not really great. It does however allow a lot of things (that the manufacturer seemingly didnt intend) and the whole thing works good with HA.
First, the Station:
It has Power, LAN, a Port for an external Antenna (even without the Range seems quite acceptable), two unused USB-Ports, BUS Connection and BUS Power. Im using a full Wireless Setup, so those BUS connectors wont be used.
The Switches consist of two Parts. A Base and a top (an actuator for example).
As far as I have seen - and this is great - those are freely configurable. You can use a single relay actuator with a double switch on top and have the double switch do something completely different (independent switches). Or you could have a bottom with no actuator and two switches, or two actuators and one switch. I guess you can also combine movement sensors and similar things in the same way.
This is a Shutter Actuator with a double switch. The rockers have a center resting position and 2 Buttons each, yo here you have 4 Buttons. You can useone of the Rockers for Up/Down and have the other one free to do something else.
You’ll also have to buy covers, existing Busch-Jäger covers wont work with those smart switches. But the advantage is that you can have them with Symbols on them:
Now, each of the double rockers also has a LED that can work as a nightlight and an Indicator. More on that later.
The basic Setup isnt too difficult. Im not going into details there as its well documented in the Manual(s) and more or less intuitive. Especially the Free@Home part isnt the most userfriendly, especially not if youre going to use the 350 € AP as a HomeAssistent Gateway anyway. For example, you have to assign everything a Room before you can use it. I use jheeling freeathome integration (GitHub - jheling/freeathome: Free@Home component for Home Assistant) to integrate it in HA. Im aware that there is also the option for a Matter integration, but jheelings seemed to be more mature.
Now, however, we need to talk about the actual control. Actually setting up Integrations. The free@home AP allows you to link Switches to Channels. Which i’d recommend for something that is directly connected to free@home and doesnt need to do fancy things. For everything else, every button press sends a signal to HomeAssistant. Even if a Rocker is already “on”, you’ll get a new Signal if the Switch is pressed again. This is great, as it allows you to do multiple things (color change, double click actions etc).
The SIgnal can be read as “event” and be used in Automations:
The “Rocker On” sends state: true and the “Rocker off” sends state: false
Note: You CAN configure the Switches in the AP to have 2 Channels instead of true/false rocker. But IMHO that just confuses things. You can read each button press in the Developer Tools event log freeathome_event (as stated in the jheling/freeathome manual).
This allows you to respond with different automations on every button press and, as stated, you can control the relay(s) individually.
Finally, controlling the LEDs is a bit more difficult. You can set the Night Light function in the APs app. But to have them work with HomeAssistant you need to do a bit of extra things. Theyre controlled by the Channel, so if your device switches a free@home - channel, thats no problem. Otherwise you’ll need to create a Virtual Device and switch it with a bash-script / curl.
You can reach an API by going to the IP of your AP and adding /swagger, e.g.
192.168.50.50/swagger/
there you find a REST API Interface (I think) with lots of Documentation and “examples”, AKA you can just enter things.
Youll need to add a virtual device, e.g. Channel 2, by creating avirtual device. MAke sure to set the TTL to -1, otherwise it will time out.
You can now see the Virtual Device as Channel in the AP and link your switch to it. Unfortunately, those virtual devices arent switchable, neither in HA nor on the AP. You need to send the correct curl-script to it.
You can do that by adding shell-commands to your HomeAssistant Config.yaml and then triggering them:
shell_command:
fhome_vbutton1_off: "curl -X 'PUT' \
'http://192.168.50.50/fhapi/v1/api/rest/datapoint/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000/6000CB765531.ch0000.odp0000' \
-H 'accept: application/json' \
--user 'installer:1111' \
-H 'Content-Type: text/plain' \
-d '0'"
fhome_vbutton1_on: "curl -X 'PUT' \
'http://192.168.176.79/fhapi/v1/api/rest/datapoint/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000/6000CB765531.ch0000.odp0000' \
-H 'accept: application/json' \
--user 'installer:1111' \
-H 'Content-Type: text/plain' \
-d '1'"
6000CB765531: the Serial of the Virtual Switch, can be read from the REST API or the AP
ch0000.odp0000: the Endpoint. The Documentation gives great info about most of them
–user ‘installer:1111’: Username:Password
-d ‘0’ or -d ‘1’ turns the virtual button On or Off.
Now you can call those Shell Scripts in your HomeAssistant (youll have to restart first after editing the configuration.yaml:
The LED can now be controlled from HA.
A few notes: I think the LED has its own Endpoint, but im not sure. So maybe you can turn it on and off directly without a virtual Switch.
The Switches also have a Blue LED, but I havent found an Endpoint for it.
Final thoughts: This stuff is expensive and its probably supposed to be its own ecosystem and not work with HA. But thanks to the rest API you can probably do all kinds of funny things. As stated, the Switches seem to be of a good quality, extremely flexible, the tactile feeling is a bit too hard for my taste, but not bad. However I can’t really say I’d recommend those switches, due to pricing and annoying software. Some things also are SLOW. A Firmware Update on a Switch can take 45 Minutes or more. They take a bit of time (2 Minutes or something) to link after a power outage. And after all, it IS a closed Ecosystem. It could be that the API gets disabled for private customers tomorrow. Availible Documentation on what the switches can do is also the bare minimum.
If you have further questions or want more detailed explanations, feel free to ask.
I wanted to put a few Images in the Post, but since im a new user I cant really do that. Maybe ill post them later.