ᐅ New Construction – Which Smart Home System?

Created on: 14 Feb 2020 11:38
B
bonkers223
Hello everyone,

I am finally planning to build our own house with my family. I don’t want to do without a smart system and have already done some research.

Loxone is basically off the table for me because it mainly relies on its proprietary system and products.

Of course, I have repeatedly come back to KNX (as here in the forum as well). However, I am not entirely happy with it because I don’t want to have to call a programmer every time I want to make a change; I also don’t really want to buy the ETS license. Additionally, I want to integrate and network fingerprint scanners, Sonos, and a heat pump, but I haven’t fully figured out how to do this with KNX.

The house basically has two floors with an open-plan kitchen/living area, entrance hall, utility room, bathrooms, children’s rooms, bedroom, garden, and so on.

The following systems should be connected:
- Lighting (some dimmable)
- External blinds / weather station
- Underfloor heating
- Heat pump
- Music system (Sonos)
- Fingerprint access
- Video intercom
- Some switched power outlets
- Photovoltaic system

Since I am technically fairly knowledgeable, I want to be able to manage, adjust, and optimize my system myself in the end.

Does anyone have good input here? Or already experience with Loxone, KNX, or others?

Thanks and best regards,
Stefan
Mycraft27 Jul 2020 22:15
1. Most of it is actually quite low-tech. The typical basic “smart home” devices are basically just switches with remote controls. Often they are simply repackaged, sometimes with the added option of voice control.

2. Without detailed networking throughout the entire system, it is rare to get beyond the stage of a remotely controlled or automatic setup. That is still far from being truly “smart.”
N
Notstrom
30 Jul 2020 17:48
Hello,

The rough installation is almost complete. So far, we have decided on BJ combined with the Welcome, meaning the visual interface is used as the doorbell system and for the KNX visualization.

Question: do you know of any good alternatives? Would it be possible to use an iPad as the visual interface? I saw the BJ for the first time today; it is really quite small and, I think, doesn’t feel very high quality.

Best regards
Tarnari30 Jul 2020 18:06
Depending on what you want to visualize, you might want to take a look at the MDT object server.
We are installing it here. It is sufficient for our needs initially.

Edit: By the way, you can try out the associated app in demo mode.
Mycraft30 Jul 2020 22:07
You can run anything you have in mind on a tablet, and if you have an IP router in your system, you can usually control everything through it.

There is plenty of software available for tablets and hardware as stand-alone servers for this purpose.
N
Notstrom
30 Jul 2020 22:10
Mycraft schrieb:

You can run everything you have in mind on a tablet, and if you have an IP router in your system, you can usually control everything through it.

There is plenty of software for the tablet and hardware as a stand-alone server available.

Do you happen to know a suitable combination for an intercom system and visualization server that runs on an iPad?
At the location planned for the visualization server, there is both a bus cable and 230V (230 volts) power supply.
Mycraft30 Jul 2020 22:18
What do you mean by usable? Basically, an IP camera and a Raspberry Pi are sufficient.

But it can also be done with the GIRA X1 and more than 50 other options.