Ok, now let’s think about the topic from a practical perspective. I’m quite familiar with KNX, but I can’t really come up with a scenario where KNX would clearly benefit us. Here are our floor plans again:
According to the current planning status, roller shutters will be installed everywhere (current planning status!). There will be a large sun sail to shade the central window and the dining room window from the sun. The dining room window facing east and the kitchen window will be in the shade shortly after noon.
A heat pump with cooling function and a ground loop exchanger for the controlled ventilation system are planned. Simple logic functions, such as bypass for the controlled ventilation or controlling the underfloor heating based on outside and return temperatures, are handled by the devices themselves. In winter, when the sun heats the floor, the return flow temperature rises, and the heat pump realizes it needs to heat less because of the external heat input. The ventilation system detects when the bypass should be activated.
Individual room control is pointless, or so everyone says in the pink forum. At least for our KfW55-standard building, it’s probably very unnecessary. Night setback is also not needed.
Energy-saving functions don’t interest me because the investment cost will always be higher than the electricity savings. Conventional smoke detectors will be installed, and please no hysterical discussions about this. There will be no gas, oil, or fireplace in the house. And if the house burns down while we’re away, it’s insured. There will be no photovoltaic system, and I’m not interested in any other extreme energy-saving measures. The washing machine has its own timer. Usually, we just load it in the afternoon and hang the laundry in the evening. It doesn’t need to run for three hours at night because of lower tariffs to save 0.3 cents per wash cycle.
The living/dining/kitchen area will have six roller shutters and four dimmable lights. Three shutters and two lights each will be controlled from switches next to the living room door and the kitchen door. The switches are arranged side by side so that the leftmost switch controls the left side of the room, and so on. So the west, south, and central living areas are controlled from the living room door; the south dining area, east dining area, and east kitchen are controlled from the kitchen door. For shading, only the two roller shutters next to the living room are relevant (south living room, as it is not under the sun sail, and west living room).
Currently, in the old building, we have internal blinds and a large west-facing facade. Apart from the five warmest days of the year, we don’t fully shade the windows. We just want to avoid direct sunlight where we are sitting, working, playing, etc. Depending on the situation, some blinds go up and others go down, and so on.
Constant light regulation is not desired. Even now, we switch lights on and off based on feeling. When we want to go to bed soon, the lights are usually off or more distant lights are on (kind of indirect lighting). I have different lighting preferences than my wife, and when we are together in the room, naturally, a compromise solution applies.
I sometimes work flexible hours, and sometimes I might sleep only four hours one night and seven hours the next day. A rule like “dim after xx o’clock” won’t work.
There is no defined TV lighting plan. It depends on the program. For briefly watching the news, all lighting can remain as is. For a moderately interesting football game, only the direct light is turned off, but indirect lighting can stay. For a ‘Game of Thrones’ episode or a good movie, everything should be off, especially since these often have dark scenes. Sometimes, for example, the hallway light stays on as indirect lighting for the living area (which makes sole hallway lighting with motion sensors pointless now).
Hallway lighting will have switches (two-way switches) next to each door, which can turn the lighting of the respective floor on and off. So yes, exactly one switch next to each door. The two lamps upstairs will switch on and off simultaneously. It is a floor-level switch. At stair landings, of course, there are exactly two switches: one for upstairs and one for downstairs. So, coming down the stairs, you can operate both switches to turn lights off upstairs and on downstairs. Or you turn off the upstairs light at the bottom of the stairs (top switch off = upstairs off; makes perfect sense to me).
Stair lighting could theoretically be controlled similarly, but that also depends a bit on the show effect, right? It could also be done with a timer or motion sensor. And if pets trigger the stair lighting, well, that’s just how it is. At the moment, we don’t have pets.
As for roller shutter control in the living/dining/kitchen areas, as I said before: short press for fully up/down and hold for precise positioning. But half-positioning is discouraged because temperature differences across the glass can cause damage. For example, next to the living room door, pressing the button three times briefly will raise (or lower) the three shutters. All other roller shutters follow the same principle and are arranged next to their respective doors. Only for bedrooms could I imagine a switch with a timer function, and I would only program the opening time for the next morning. I don’t need a closing time. A short press closes the roller shutter. But if I set my alarm clock to 6:53, I also set the roller shutter to 6:53 so that daylight wakes me at the same time (in the future, we will have joint wake-up times again, and my wife won’t have shift work anymore). BUT: all this can be done conventionally and very simply. So: the office (guest room), bedroom, and two children's rooms will have a switch (short = fully up/down) that allows an opening time to be set.
Just to summarize the shading logic during the day: roller shutters go down in the morning when leaving the room/living area and stay down until the first person returns home in the afternoon. This covers the first 10–12 hours of sunlight exposure.
The lighting in many rooms will be dimmable, but I don’t want expensive color lighting effects. The bulbs should have low blue light and good quality.
So, I think I’ve described the most important areas: roller shutters, lighting, heating, and a few other things...
How can automation like KNX help us now? What comfort gains are possible? What should we automate and why?
According to the current planning status, roller shutters will be installed everywhere (current planning status!). There will be a large sun sail to shade the central window and the dining room window from the sun. The dining room window facing east and the kitchen window will be in the shade shortly after noon.
A heat pump with cooling function and a ground loop exchanger for the controlled ventilation system are planned. Simple logic functions, such as bypass for the controlled ventilation or controlling the underfloor heating based on outside and return temperatures, are handled by the devices themselves. In winter, when the sun heats the floor, the return flow temperature rises, and the heat pump realizes it needs to heat less because of the external heat input. The ventilation system detects when the bypass should be activated.
Individual room control is pointless, or so everyone says in the pink forum. At least for our KfW55-standard building, it’s probably very unnecessary. Night setback is also not needed.
Energy-saving functions don’t interest me because the investment cost will always be higher than the electricity savings. Conventional smoke detectors will be installed, and please no hysterical discussions about this. There will be no gas, oil, or fireplace in the house. And if the house burns down while we’re away, it’s insured. There will be no photovoltaic system, and I’m not interested in any other extreme energy-saving measures. The washing machine has its own timer. Usually, we just load it in the afternoon and hang the laundry in the evening. It doesn’t need to run for three hours at night because of lower tariffs to save 0.3 cents per wash cycle.
The living/dining/kitchen area will have six roller shutters and four dimmable lights. Three shutters and two lights each will be controlled from switches next to the living room door and the kitchen door. The switches are arranged side by side so that the leftmost switch controls the left side of the room, and so on. So the west, south, and central living areas are controlled from the living room door; the south dining area, east dining area, and east kitchen are controlled from the kitchen door. For shading, only the two roller shutters next to the living room are relevant (south living room, as it is not under the sun sail, and west living room).
Currently, in the old building, we have internal blinds and a large west-facing facade. Apart from the five warmest days of the year, we don’t fully shade the windows. We just want to avoid direct sunlight where we are sitting, working, playing, etc. Depending on the situation, some blinds go up and others go down, and so on.
Constant light regulation is not desired. Even now, we switch lights on and off based on feeling. When we want to go to bed soon, the lights are usually off or more distant lights are on (kind of indirect lighting). I have different lighting preferences than my wife, and when we are together in the room, naturally, a compromise solution applies.
I sometimes work flexible hours, and sometimes I might sleep only four hours one night and seven hours the next day. A rule like “dim after xx o’clock” won’t work.
There is no defined TV lighting plan. It depends on the program. For briefly watching the news, all lighting can remain as is. For a moderately interesting football game, only the direct light is turned off, but indirect lighting can stay. For a ‘Game of Thrones’ episode or a good movie, everything should be off, especially since these often have dark scenes. Sometimes, for example, the hallway light stays on as indirect lighting for the living area (which makes sole hallway lighting with motion sensors pointless now).
Hallway lighting will have switches (two-way switches) next to each door, which can turn the lighting of the respective floor on and off. So yes, exactly one switch next to each door. The two lamps upstairs will switch on and off simultaneously. It is a floor-level switch. At stair landings, of course, there are exactly two switches: one for upstairs and one for downstairs. So, coming down the stairs, you can operate both switches to turn lights off upstairs and on downstairs. Or you turn off the upstairs light at the bottom of the stairs (top switch off = upstairs off; makes perfect sense to me).
Stair lighting could theoretically be controlled similarly, but that also depends a bit on the show effect, right? It could also be done with a timer or motion sensor. And if pets trigger the stair lighting, well, that’s just how it is. At the moment, we don’t have pets.
As for roller shutter control in the living/dining/kitchen areas, as I said before: short press for fully up/down and hold for precise positioning. But half-positioning is discouraged because temperature differences across the glass can cause damage. For example, next to the living room door, pressing the button three times briefly will raise (or lower) the three shutters. All other roller shutters follow the same principle and are arranged next to their respective doors. Only for bedrooms could I imagine a switch with a timer function, and I would only program the opening time for the next morning. I don’t need a closing time. A short press closes the roller shutter. But if I set my alarm clock to 6:53, I also set the roller shutter to 6:53 so that daylight wakes me at the same time (in the future, we will have joint wake-up times again, and my wife won’t have shift work anymore). BUT: all this can be done conventionally and very simply. So: the office (guest room), bedroom, and two children's rooms will have a switch (short = fully up/down) that allows an opening time to be set.
Just to summarize the shading logic during the day: roller shutters go down in the morning when leaving the room/living area and stay down until the first person returns home in the afternoon. This covers the first 10–12 hours of sunlight exposure.
The lighting in many rooms will be dimmable, but I don’t want expensive color lighting effects. The bulbs should have low blue light and good quality.
So, I think I’ve described the most important areas: roller shutters, lighting, heating, and a few other things...
How can automation like KNX help us now? What comfort gains are possible? What should we automate and why?
S
Sebastian7927 Aug 2016 13:04The key point in this way of thinking is that no one plans to make changes in 10 years – you just live with it. I know what counterarguments will come, but it is simply true that a house is usually not lived in flexibly – very little normally changes that would require adjusting the installations.
By the way, I don’t have a single isolation relay in my group circuits for the roller shutters.
You can program KNX yourself and implement logics that most electricians only dream of – so you can achieve a lot for yourself at a low cost. Few homeowners can do this, so I would always be cautious when it comes to cost questions. Also, just because it seems easy to program yourself – not everyone can or wants to do that.
I did all the electrical work myself, so the cost issue of drilling holes and pulling cables does not apply to me – it’s the same situation just from a different perspective. Therefore, the effort to install extensive wiring is very limited.
I still think you may be underestimating the complexity of KNX from your perspective and skill level.
By the way, I don’t have a single isolation relay in my group circuits for the roller shutters.
You can program KNX yourself and implement logics that most electricians only dream of – so you can achieve a lot for yourself at a low cost. Few homeowners can do this, so I would always be cautious when it comes to cost questions. Also, just because it seems easy to program yourself – not everyone can or wants to do that.
I did all the electrical work myself, so the cost issue of drilling holes and pulling cables does not apply to me – it’s the same situation just from a different perspective. Therefore, the effort to install extensive wiring is very limited.
I still think you may be underestimating the complexity of KNX from your perspective and skill level.
Now, regarding the configuration of KNX (I dislike the term programming because KNX is quite different from that), anyone who can create a table in Excel can handle the configuration of sensors (switches) and actuators (relays in the distribution panel) using the ETS software.
The logic you can set up for each device is also not complicated (easier than Excel formulas).
When it comes to flexibility, this is where the different type of wiring comes into play. Anyone who built their home 10 years ago now faces the challenge that new possibilities come with LED technology. These usually require 24V, and here the fact that KNX wiring is typically star-shaped to the distribution panel is a clear advantage. However, this is only indirectly related to KNX.
Basically, the difference between classic and KNX wiring can be summarized into two main points:
1. In KNX, consumption points are usually wired in a star configuration back to the distribution panel.
2. In KNX, 'switches'—no matter how many 'actions' they control—are simply operated via the bus cable.
This makes KNX wiring much simpler than classic wiring. The idea that it requires MORE cables is a myth. I actually think it uses fewer cables, especially when there are multiple control points for one device or fixture. Keep in mind that in classic installations, every location that has a light switch or device outlet needs its own cable.
The connection between action and reaction happens through configuration. This means what a sensor (switch, motion detector, temperature sensor, VOC sensor, or whatever) triggers depends on its settings. This flexibility (among many other things) is what makes KNX so versatile. For example, when I come home in the evening with a full trunk and pull into the garage, I don’t want to have to turn on any lights first. I get out and walk into the house with my hands full.
If I have a motion sensor in a room, it doesn’t necessarily have to turn on the light.
It all comes down to how much comfort you want. And one thing I can say is: you only realize what you’re missing after you’ve experienced it.
The logic you can set up for each device is also not complicated (easier than Excel formulas).
When it comes to flexibility, this is where the different type of wiring comes into play. Anyone who built their home 10 years ago now faces the challenge that new possibilities come with LED technology. These usually require 24V, and here the fact that KNX wiring is typically star-shaped to the distribution panel is a clear advantage. However, this is only indirectly related to KNX.
Basically, the difference between classic and KNX wiring can be summarized into two main points:
1. In KNX, consumption points are usually wired in a star configuration back to the distribution panel.
2. In KNX, 'switches'—no matter how many 'actions' they control—are simply operated via the bus cable.
This makes KNX wiring much simpler than classic wiring. The idea that it requires MORE cables is a myth. I actually think it uses fewer cables, especially when there are multiple control points for one device or fixture. Keep in mind that in classic installations, every location that has a light switch or device outlet needs its own cable.
The connection between action and reaction happens through configuration. This means what a sensor (switch, motion detector, temperature sensor, VOC sensor, or whatever) triggers depends on its settings. This flexibility (among many other things) is what makes KNX so versatile. For example, when I come home in the evening with a full trunk and pull into the garage, I don’t want to have to turn on any lights first. I get out and walk into the house with my hands full.
If I have a motion sensor in a room, it doesn’t necessarily have to turn on the light.
It all comes down to how much comfort you want. And one thing I can say is: you only realize what you’re missing after you’ve experienced it.
S
Sebastian7927 Aug 2016 14:11A common misconception that is simply stated: Not everyone is proficient with Excel, and a proper introduction is necessary. You are just assuming your own level of knowledge. In the same way, I find it hard to believe that so few people here can disassemble their engine – that is actually quite easy.
If it were really that easy, so many electricians wouldn’t fail at it – you are enthusiasts, people who are very interested in this. The internet may give the impression that there are many of you... but in reality, there are only a few.
Building a house is pure stress for many people, and then having to deal with that on top of everything else?
And for my LEDs, I either need 230V or 12V – both are no problem for my wiring (maximum cable lengths aside).
If it were really that easy, so many electricians wouldn’t fail at it – you are enthusiasts, people who are very interested in this. The internet may give the impression that there are many of you... but in reality, there are only a few.
Building a house is pure stress for many people, and then having to deal with that on top of everything else?
And for my LEDs, I either need 230V or 12V – both are no problem for my wiring (maximum cable lengths aside).
Tom1607 schrieb:
The link between action and reaction is established through configuration. This means that what a sensor (switch, motion detector, temperature sensor, VOC sensor, or whatever) triggers depends on the configuration. And this (among many other things) is exactly what makes KNX so flexible. When I come home in the evening from shopping with a full trunk, I don’t want to have to turn on any lights first. I get out and go into the house fully loaded.Motion detectors were just available for 10 euros at Aldi SCNR
I remain skeptical about using KNX. Many things that seem understandable (like the last example from Tom1607) aren’t new and can be easily achieved in other ways without having to maintain the necessary infrastructure. I’m tech-savvy myself and would like to understand the benefits, but I really agree with grym ... no one has convinced me yet, though I would like to be convinced.
@Sebastian79
Cost aside... a drywall contractor building a house can also save 20,000 (about 20 TSD), or a landscaping contractor can do the exterior work at cost price.
Among my friends, family, acquaintances, and recently neighbors, I know quite a few homeowners, and there isn’t a single one who hasn’t made any changes in the last 10 years. Even to the electrical system.
New furniture or appliances are added... rooms are redesigned due to children moving in or out, or a garage/carport is built, etc.
With conventional electrical systems, everything usually remains fixed... you can’t just easily add outlets because the wiring doesn’t support it.
Many electricians struggle with configuration because they took a basic building services course long ago during their training... and if they haven’t kept up with it since, they simply can’t do it...
I agree that true specialists are rare... but so are houses/installations where a true specialist is actually necessary.
Here in Grym, there’s a person frustrated with workplace automation who, among other reasons, resists the technology... whether someone like that, who only knows basic standard configurations, was involved here, I don’t know... but that could be the case...
@Marko958
Here’s a comparison: traditional wiring versus BUS system:
Left is traditional – right is BUS.
Where do you think more cables are needed?
Cost aside... a drywall contractor building a house can also save 20,000 (about 20 TSD), or a landscaping contractor can do the exterior work at cost price.
Among my friends, family, acquaintances, and recently neighbors, I know quite a few homeowners, and there isn’t a single one who hasn’t made any changes in the last 10 years. Even to the electrical system.
New furniture or appliances are added... rooms are redesigned due to children moving in or out, or a garage/carport is built, etc.
With conventional electrical systems, everything usually remains fixed... you can’t just easily add outlets because the wiring doesn’t support it.
Many electricians struggle with configuration because they took a basic building services course long ago during their training... and if they haven’t kept up with it since, they simply can’t do it...
I agree that true specialists are rare... but so are houses/installations where a true specialist is actually necessary.
Here in Grym, there’s a person frustrated with workplace automation who, among other reasons, resists the technology... whether someone like that, who only knows basic standard configurations, was involved here, I don’t know... but that could be the case...
@Marko958
Here’s a comparison: traditional wiring versus BUS system:
Left is traditional – right is BUS.
Where do you think more cables are needed?