Did anybody integrate the Denkovi smartDEN IP-16R-MQ with MQTT ?
How do you plan out the wiring for such a system in a professional way?
I had four IP-Maxi modules in use for about a year, mostly for switching the lights. However, I was not very satisfied with the performance of the provided Home Assistant integration, so I came up with an SNMP ↔ MQTT bridge - GitHub - andyboeh/denkovi2mqtt: Denkovi SmartDEN to MQTT gateway
While the modules are great, they are a bit too inflexible for my use and in the meantime I’ve replaced them all with custom modules based on ESPHome.
@lepton In my case, there was not much planning involved. I told my electrician to wire up all switches with CAT7 cables to the distribution and to wire all lights to the distribution. What’s then important is the amount of space available on the rails - make sure to have enough room for the power supply and additional devices you might need.
It all depends heavily, of course, on what you want to control and how much relays/inputs/… you need.
Hi @andyboeh,
Could you share with us what did you face on using IP-Maxi modules?
Why you considered that modules a bit inflexible?
Any issue on performance?
Any other issue?
Thanks in advance!
OK, I’ll try to make a few points clearer:
- HA integration (integrations in general): The module requires polling. The HA integration polls the HTTP interface which takes a considerable amount of processing time on the module side (there is only a PIC uC on the module). Using SNMP is much faster on the module side, but the Python SNMP modules are very slow. I had to come up with the aforementioned SNMP <-> MQTT bridge involving two Python SNMP modules.
- Relays/functionality on the device: While the module works great for simple switching applications, you cannot do more complex things. I wanted to use them to control blinds, the logic has to be done in HA not on the module. That’s a problem if HA doesn’t work.
- Inputs: You cannot (easily) use an input as a trigger in HA if a push button is used. Due to the polling, you might miss the actual input. You would have to set up an SNMP trap to achieve this.
- Dimmer control: You cannot use the Analog Output to control a dimmer using a single push button attached to a digital input.
Some of my use cases could be solved by the IP-PLC module, but, as mentioned, I switched to custom modules based on ESPHome. Due to the more powerful ESP32 and the great software, I can cover all my needs.
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I put one in the loft for upstairs and outside lights I disconnected the feed to the first light on the circuit and fed it into a double pole isolator on my controls board then fed a single live feed to all light positions and used a switched fused connection unit downstream of the isolator for the control circuits this gives me compliance with safe isolations procedure for maintenance and if I get a controls issue I can isolate them and still have light switches
The double pole isolator kills the whole power to the controls and the lights down stream of it and the switched fused connection unit isolates and protects the controls