A friend of mine renovated his house a couple of years ago. The company that did the work included a “smart home” setup in the contract.
It’s actually his second home, and the only thing he really cared about was being able to turn the heating on remotely.
The system is provided by Ekinex. From what I can tell, it’s based on KNX and relies on their own server, with both local network and remote access through the Ekinex Cloud.
There are two main issues:
the fact that it depends on their proprietary cloud worries me;
and more importantly, the system simply doesn’t work — he’s never been able to reliably switch the boiler on or off remotely.
I don’t think KNX itself is the problem. It’s probably either a poorly configured setup or an unreliable cloud service.
After two years of unsuccessful tech visits, he’s ready to throw the whole thing out.
So, what would you suggest, pragmatically?
Two options come to mind:
Set up Home Assistant with KNX integration — as far as I know, you need to configure the KNX network using ETS (which costs a few hundred euros) and then use Home Assistant Cloud for remote access.
Skip KNX entirely and connect the boiler to a standalone smart thermostat that can be controlled remotely, either directly or via Home Assistant.
Would love to hear if anyone here has tried similar setups or found a reliable way to escape vendor-locked KNX clouds
KNX on itself is not dependant on any cloud and or server. Each component is an island onitself and will work if it can just talk to the other components.
Only “central” thing needed is a KNX power supply.
Having said that, you will need to inventory what is actually in the house component wise.
Best way would be to get the knxproj file so you can read it in ETS or import it into HA. Best case scenario would be that you can just import in HA and not have to use ETS.
Either way, having the knxproj file will be best.
Is there a KNX router or tunnel device? should be hooked to the network and KNX.
From your 2 options, number 1 may not even require ETS and might be the best for you.
Thanks @Dujith for all the invaluable information.
I’ll go and check it out in person in the next few days. My friend isn’t very tech-savvy and doesn’t know exactly how the system is composed.
What I imagine the company offers is some kind of server, equivalent to HomeAssistant, which interfaces the network sensors with the cloud and their mobile app.
Getting the knxproj file will be fun. My friend asked, “Can I buy the program to setup the home automation myself?” The gatekeeping response was, “No, private individuals can’t have it.” So much for the touted open solution.
So is there only boiler on KNX? In that case just replace it with something more simple.
But if the whole house is on KNX, it’s worth to stay with it and integrate.
I think it’s the heating (which he’d like to be able to turn on remotely) and the light switches (which he doesn’t care about). It’s a shame to lose all the wiring, but after all, he needs something and that thing doesn’t work, I understand the frustration.
I don’t understand. The owner isn’t interested in controlling the lights with home automation; he wants to use physical switches.
I assumed that since everything is wired, the physical switches would work even without home automation. Or is that not the case?
Depends on how you want to see it.
Traditional light switch pass current directly to light. KNX light switch pass signal to KNX relay to turn light on.
I have no idea what you have there…
In any case you can easily just control the boiler separately.