{"id":5831,"date":"2025-05-26T09:20:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-26T08:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/?page_id=5831"},"modified":"2025-05-26T09:49:18","modified_gmt":"2025-05-26T08:49:18","slug":"knx","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/?page_id=5831","title":{"rendered":"KNX"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The foundation of the Home Automation solution is a set of devices which conform to the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/KNX_(standard)\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">KNX&nbsp;standard<\/a> which is generally used in larger commercial or hospitality projects but which meets Marsh Flatts Farm&#8217;s requirements very well:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>When switching mains voltage the paramount requirement is electrical safety so it&#8217;s important to use commercially manufactured and certified devices, installed by a qualified electrician<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>There are a lot of competing, proprietary solutions on the market but I didn&#8217;t want to be reliant on any single manufacturer to offer a suitable range of devices (and integration options) and maintain those for the lifetime of the installation\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>KNX is unusual (in a good way) in that it is not specific to one manufacturer and it&#8217;s normal to mix-and-match devices from different manufacturers within a single installation<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Many home automation solutions are intended to be retrofitted to existing, &#8216;traditional&#8217; electrical installations which have hard-wired wall switches and light fittings &#8211; but in a new-build project there&#8217;s no reason to hard-wire traditional mains-voltage control switchgear\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>If there&#8217;s no hard-wired switching for e.g. lights and blinds there&#8217;s also no fall-back in the event of problems with the home automation system &#8211; so it needs to be reliable<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>KNX has a very robust &#8216;distributed&#8217; system architecture with no central controller<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>I wanted something that would be instantly recognisable to home automation professionals, mostly from a property resale standpoint (on the assumption that anyone buying the house would be less hands-on and would want to hand over any updates to the KNX control logic to a specialist)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>In very high-level terms the KNX installation consists of a dedicated KNX &#8216;bus&#8217; network using a specific type of twisted-pair wiring (KNX TP1) with various input and output devices mounted in electrical cabinets around the House. With the addition of the separate Outbuildings in 2025, a second KNX &#8216;bus&#8217; was installed there, electrically separate from the &#8216;bus&#8217; in the House &#8211; but integrated so that devices can be controlled in both buildings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mostly I am using KNX devices from German manufacturer <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mdt.de\/EN_Start.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">MDT<\/a>\u00a0which I have found to be of high quality, good value and with great functionality and documentation. A good supplier for these is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eibmarkt.com\/gb\/index.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">eibmarkt<\/a> in Germany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>KNX installations need to programmed with a Windows application called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.knx.org\/knx-en\/for-professionals\/software\/ets-5-professional\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">ETS<\/a> which is firmly aimed at home automation professionals rather than end users. The full version, ETS Professional, is expensive but there is a cut-down version, ETS Lite, which is rather more affordable but can only be used with (any number of) projects containing up to 20 KNX devices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As of ETS version 6, a third license tier has been added &#8211; ETS Home &#8211; which caters for a single project containing up to 64 KNX devices, for the same price as ETS Lite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is (was?) another option, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.knx.org\/knx-en\/for-professionals\/software\/ets-inside\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">ETS Inside<\/a>, which is more intended for end users and did support other operating systems than Windows &#8211; notably Linux.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are a few further pages with specific configuration notes for some of the KNX devices:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/?page_id=4106\" data-type=\"page\" data-id=\"4106\">MDT JAL Window and Blind Controller<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/?page_id=4736\" data-type=\"page\" data-id=\"4736\">MDT Push Button Smart 86<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The foundation of the Home Automation solution is a set of devices which conform to the KNX&nbsp;standard which is generally used in larger commercial or hospitality projects but which meets Marsh Flatts Farm&#8217;s requirements very well: In very high-level terms &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/?page_id=5831\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":5829,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5831","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5831"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5846,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5831\/revisions\/5846"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}