I am not sure if this question is in the right category. We have bought a house with a complex smart home installation (BUS) but a broken server. The replacement of the server should cost at least 5000 €. Unfortunately, we have almost no idea what to do. We have already contacted several electricians, but they either do not have the capacity or do not know the components used and therefore wink at us. Since we are obviously not getting anywhere with these experts, I have decided to teach myself and become independent.
There is a large cabinet with many “devices” (we are amateurs) installed, about a third of which is LCN (Issendorff). We have already asked for LCN, but apparently it is not really an LCN system. They have laid 5-core cables and installed multi-sensors (LNC) and other stuff in almost all the rooms.
Now we have been recommended a home assistant - specifically the Green Box. It is supposed to find and recognise the various components. Including LCN. There is an LCN module with a USB port to which the previous server was connected.
Can I use the green or yellow box to control our smart home? So far I have only used Apple’s HomeKit to control our old home via WiFi. If one of the boxes is suitable, which one is recommended for us? Or does another server like a Synology NAS make more sense?
We need the text on some of the modules to figure out what we are dealing with.
At distance it looks like any other DIN mounted module.
Regarding HA green and yellow, then they are the same for an entry into HA.
Yellow is a bit more capable, but how long it goes before you need that extra capability is hard to say. The green can be expanded too and both versions might be to small if you fall into the rabbit hole and go nuts “smartifying” your home.
As long as you do not go into camera feeds and music servers, then you should be fine for quite some time with either.
FYI - there are good “upgrade paths” down the road if you need them. For example, some folks start out on a Green or Yellow, and then upgrade to a NUC or other type of small PC/server. This is a simple process that does not require “starting over”, that provides more capability / faster performance. Many folks never need this and are totally fine with the Green or Yellow. I only mention it to reassure you that the Green or Yellow boxes are a great place to start, and you can always upgrade later if you like.
Unfortunately just setting up a HomeAssistant instance (no matter if Green, Yellow or anything else) will NOT get you going with LCN.
The LCN integration of HA does not have any functionality to automatically read out the module’s configuration. This is because the vendor simply does not offer any possibility to do that with their official third-party software interface. The LCN configuration has to be done manually!
To get you going you need several prerequisites:
a hardware coupler which connects the LCN bus to a computer (I guess you have that one with the USB port called LCN-PKU)
a computer with the LCN-PCHK software running on, connected to the LCN-PKU. This “can” be the same computer HA is running on. I would only recommend that if you are an experienced user.
at least one LCN-PCHK license.
… or …
a LCN-VISU or LCN-PKE device. This is a plug-in replacement for the LCN-PKU and has already the PCHK and two licenses and LAN/WLAN installed.
I would definetely recommend the latter.
Second you need to read out your module’s configuration using the LCN-PRO software. Either you already own that software and a license and read out the configuration on your own or you need someone at hand who does this for you using his license. In priciple this could also be done remotely.
Once you have all these things together, you can connect HA’s LCN integration via network to your LCN-VISU / LCN-PCHK, configure your modules (read the LCN documentation!) and that’s it.
Usually most of the people have all those things already at hand when they start using the LCN integration. To be honest, depending on your knowledge and setup it could be a tough journey for you.
I am doubtful here that a beginner level device like a Green is going to be able to interface with that.
Frankly if you are asking basic questions like this, I would not recommend doing anything with that. If you get a Green, OK, but ignore that nuclear power plant wiring mass and just do normal stuff.
Wires need things that can connect to wires, like other computers. The green is basically an appliance with radios and USB ports running a PI CM4 module, so don’t expect it to connect to probably any of that.
