@@JurassicJungle Sorry, my brain was on backwards last night! I meant the control panel (board) and network rack (tower). Planning a renovation and trying to figure out where to put these in the house and how much space is needed. Hope this now makes sense
@@MrWhoAmI57 Ah, that makes more sense. I can't see how I can add photos. My network rack is in the garage and very small, probably too small. I have a 24port patch panel and room for a couple of small switches and a small server running home assistant. Its about an 8U rack 450mm deep. Its probably visible on this older walk about around 11 mins in th-cam.com/video/KJtNWEoU33A/w-d-xo.html The Loxone panel is a future automation unit, they do various sizes, I think my one is about as large as they go! Its aboout 110cm x 70cm and 10cm deep. I put it centrally as I just happened to get a void behind a shower and my thought process was locating centrally would be easier with cable runs. Ideally I would have a plant room with everything in it in the garage but there is a vaulted celing between that and the rest of the house which made cable runs much harder. If you do any of the other things we have done like solar and battery you may well need a much larger consumer unit, we have a large Hagar unit in the garage. As always with hindsight I would do things differently and give myself more space.
Hi, I would have to confirm the design with Hugh that built the panel but the CU has RCBOs that are generally higher rating that the MCB in the Loxone panel. He specified what we needed in the CU and built the panel. Most of the Loxone panel MCB are just 6Amp. The main breaker for the Loxone PSU is I think 10Amp as I have the big loxone power supply. I guess I could get a situation where an earth leakage fault would trip the CU but not the Loxone breaker but having RCBO in both locations could make it even harder to diagnose?
Thanks for the update on the Loxone system. You're right about other videos on TH-cam, they mainly just show the end result and seem just like advertising for the installer and/or Loxone. That's fine but I love to see the nitty gritty stuff associated with designing and installing. Have you tried out the 1-wire bus, presuming this is still included on the Multi Extension Air? I played around with using these to determine when the show or bath is being used and for how long. Coupled with the temp in the water tank, the hot water can boost as and when needed. Other question was, how did you achieve measuring the temperature of the hot water in the tank?
Does the latest Loxone Miniserver integrate with Matter and MQTT independently? I thought I read that. It would be great to have an MQTT server running allowing the use of all sorts of lower cost sensors and for them to integrate with Loxone.
Hi Rob, I have used 1 Wire before with Zwave/Fibaro. The only sensors I have on the tank are the Dakin ones which are terrible so I may get a 1Wire interface for loxone to add a bit more resolution. I am currently getting the tank temperatures by Modbus from Daikin but I think its the temperature at the bottom of the tank. It would be good to have more sensors but its all sealed and insulated so not sure how I could do that. Also as we have a heat pump we really wnat to use that to heat water rather than the immersion.
Ok, on this question I will have to come back to you later as we are working hard just to finish the house so not had time to dig deeper into what is possible. I am currently playing with Home Assistant and 1Home to bring in Matter and MQTT to Loxone but there may well be other ways of doing so. Home Assistant will certianly bring in MQTT and 1Home does add Matter but you seem to have to automate in 1Home whcih sucks. Our reason for going with Loxone was that it would be a solid core to the home and just work which it does. Adding things like Matter and MQTT as great and may become more important but less so than a 100% reliable home setup. our build is to be reliable and solid first and add toys later that do not risk stability. Hope that make sense.
I am very jealous, you’ve got a great setup. Couple of questions: What cable did you run for RGBW? How are you setting the warmth of the lighting in (I think) the living room? Assume that’s the 24V lights? How many dimmers vs relays are you using for lighting? Adding dimming modules seems insanely expensive compared to relays in most systems.
Hi, All very good questions. I have not actually connected any RGBW yet as plans changed a but but I do have 4 modules. You can get 5 core 1mm flex cable (need to calculate voltage drops as may need thicker cable), there are some now that are the correct colours to make life easier but currently at a premium. The dimmers are very expensive in comparison with using a relay or even better an RGBW module that could run 4 sets of lights for a fraction of the price. I bought 2 dimmers as I wanted at least 5 dimmed channels so used the 3 spare ones as I had paid over £500 for the dimmer. I am not currently adjusting the warmth of the light other than the fact we bought switchable fittings. It would have been nice to take advantage of the colour adjustment in Loxone but I found that colour adjustable lamps are hard to find and expensive. Hugh was looking at importing some and I did trial one but it came with loose wires so I would have to adapt all of the light fittings to install them. In the living room I have installed cable lights where the power is supplied by the suspension cables so that rules out colour changing. I really want to run these at 24V as they are currently 12V run via a transformer but I struggled to find decent 24v GU5.3 lamps. If I can I may well change that later by removing the transformer and using an RGBW unit to run the lights. I think Hugh also said I could get a 12V supply and run the RGBW units at 12V rather than 24v but it would limit capacity and perhaps have voltage drop issues. The Loxone RGBW lights are really nice but they have a narrow beam angle and are not that bright. It was going to cost me over £3k to use them rather than less than £300 for the collingwood fittings I used.
Hi There. Great questions. KNX seems to give a bit more choice of components but from what I saw its a bit harder to configure as each device has to be configured, it does have the advantage of resiliency as you are not relying on a central controller as a single point of failure. That said Loxone servers seem very reliable other than the SD card, always worth having a spare SD card. I liked the combintaion of Loxone ease of configuration and the ability to connect to other devices. I would have liked more choice of switches as I think the basic Loxone plastic switch looks terrible and the glass pure I used is expensive. I think my overall costs were about £15k with half of that being Loxone components and the other half the cabinet, psu cabinet build and partner install work. I installed all of the cables and did first and second fix of all of the devices, the loxone partner brought the panel to site and connected everything up, that took just 2 days on site including finishing off the programing. As this was really a new build quite a bit of that cost would have been required even if I fitted traditional lighting and alarm system. The light switches alone were almost £3k but they control music, blinds, lighting and act as thermostats so have avoided a lot of other cost. The dimmers are not cheap at around £500 each, I wish I had done more 24v lighting and used RGBW controllers, I may change some of that over time. The audio system worked out reasonable value in comparison with something like Sonos and sounds good enough to me.
@JurassicJungle thanks for this, I am planning a knock down rebuild of my house and working through the electrical and automation. I have a background in engineering, IT and programming so I am comfortable with building a knx system, but I do wonder if it would be wiser to pass it over to pro. Probably not as I think I will enjoy doing it and I have worked out most of the knx details already. One element I really liked was the integration of audio control into your Loxone glass switches. Can you control audio source? What kind of level of control do you have there. I would like to do whole home zoned audio, integrating with knx switches is probably possible but I expect challenging
@ The switches can turn on an existing source adjust the volume and mute. We have a default source as a radio channel. It works pretty well. The advantge of using loxone is that the speakers can also be used for the doorbell, burglar alarm fire alarm and announements which would not be possible with Sonos. You have to use an app to select the source or pair rooms together but that can also be done as a scene but I have not dabbled with that yet. I think there is an argument for going best in class as its simpler, creston or Lutron lighting and blinds for example but I wanted the ability to have functionality across functions. Our presence based lighting works pretty well, what I do like is that i don't need to use the switches much and only need to go to an app to select a different music source or do something not yet automated. I had Fibaro in my old house and did that all myself. I wanted the foundations of the house automation to be rock solid which is why i chose to pay an installer. Now its up and working I want to understand how it all works so that I can adjust and maintain it myself. I am from an IT background but not really in software, I usually found someone better than me at scripting to do things for me. The other challenge is this all needs to be signed off. I am lucky that i have a very friendly electrician who has overseen all of my cable install, he installed all of the cunsumer units, battery, solar etc and will shortly do the full inspection and test of my work. If I had paid an electrician and installer to do all the work I suspect my costs would have doubled. I have lost count of how much cable I have installed but it must be getting close to £2k work
We did consider putting in conduit to allow any future changes. Do you mean running 2 to each light switch for example? I think that would have been a great deal of work for something that would probably never be needed. Also as quite a bit of our house has either vaulted ceiling or a warm flat roof there would not really be any way of getting to the top of the conduit or it would have had a complex route in the loft space. I did use conduit under the floor for some of the socket wiring. All of the socket power is traditional, we have only used KNX cable to sensors and switches. I do wish I had run a bigger conduit or a second one for low voltage to the kitchen island, its not really possible to do anything now as we have UFH and screed all laid. The Island has a 50Amp feed and a sub consumer unit so we have plenty of power flexibility and can use Loxone Air to control any lighting. I am not saying we got everything right, there are things I would do differently. We had to take on a lot of first fix that we never intended to do and that mean we lost focus on some of the automation install details.
Thanks for another really helpful video. With the touch pure switches do you ever get any instances of a touch not registering or having to tap several times before they work or any lag in the response? Also was the issue with the Loxone RGBW downlights the relatively narrow beam angle? I like the idea of these and being able to re-assign individual lights but with only 2400mm ceiling height fear we may have the same issue of needing a lot for even coverage.
Hi Richard, the switches are very responsive the only issue I would say is getting the timing right for a double click to turn off. We find the audio and blind control work well and if someone uses a full hand it just does the lights. I do like the theatrical down light on the switch as well. The rgbw spots would be great for colour accents but not really as good for white lighting. The while lamp is ina central part of the fitting and does have a narrow beam. I have a couple I am going to use in a walk in wardrobe but I have used over 40 normal spots around the house so the Loxone ones would have been well over £3000. I would suggest you try and see some. I bought a second hand demo case and some switches and rgbw lights. I fitted a couple of lamps in an mdf sheet and tried them in various locations. As you say the ability to control every lamp is cool.
I have watched nearly all your videos over the last two weeks as you have done virtually everything that I am planning for my self build which is currently waiting on Building Control approval. Like yourself, I much prefer the idea or a locally controlled presence-based system to control my home automations and that I can program if I want to make any alterations in the future which is why I have also settled on Loxone (Lyttle Smart Homes is my installer). I have a raft of questions that I want to ask so will drop them into various videos to help the engagement algorithms if that’s ok with you? Just so I put the right questions in the right video, I believe you said you are going to do ones for the 1HOME hub and one about MODBUS, correct? I did leave a comment earlier but it doesn’t seem to have come through so sorry if this is a repost.
Hi and thanks for your comments. I am happy with my choice of Loxone but it is a leap of faith. The platform itself has been pretty solid which I can't say is true for Home Assistant which I have also been using to add a few buts of functionality. I do plan a number of videos to dive deeper into Loxone but please feel free to add questions and comments on any other videos. I found there was very little of end user reviews of Loxone on TH-cam, mostly installer tours. I will cover the Modbus connection to Daikin, being fair this was configured by my installer but I am still having to tweek a few things as it did not quite work as expected in the first place. I will also cover the Connection to Somfy Tahoma which again the installer get working to start with but I hope to add blinds to 13 windows myself and document it partly just in case it stops working but also to help others. I have purchased 1Home. I find their marketing is better than their product and the constant amazing discount offers. I think I miss understood what it was going to offer me as a lot of the marketing about functionality seems to refer to the older "Bridge" product. The new one is Matter only so lacks a lot of what I thought I was buying. 1Home does allow Alexa control but only for certain functions (not audio for example) so I am not sure how useful it will really be. I had assumed it would allow Loxone to see and control Matter devices and they are looking at that but currently they seem to want me to configure matter automations in 1Home not really linked to Loxone but I reserve the right to update my views as they update the product.
@@JurassicJungle Really good to know about the 1Home system. I ultimately want it as a conduit between loxone and Google Assistant. Stuff like Smart ovens and Washing machines would be set up in my Google Home much like it is currently but then any alerts or notifications would be pumped through as an audio/visual alert in Loxone. If i Can't do that then its probably a product I can skip.
I think the panel build is very good, it’s very neat and tidy. The cables at the top are quite difficult to dress and there are many different types coming in. Not sure what could be done for it to be better to be honest.
Great video. How much space do you need for the board and tower? Would be great to see the tower space
Hi I am not sure I know what you mean by board and tower.
@@JurassicJungle Sorry, my brain was on backwards last night! I meant the control panel (board) and network rack (tower). Planning a renovation and trying to figure out where to put these in the house and how much space is needed. Hope this now makes sense
@@MrWhoAmI57 Ah, that makes more sense. I can't see how I can add photos. My network rack is in the garage and very small, probably too small. I have a 24port patch panel and room for a couple of small switches and a small server running home assistant. Its about an 8U rack 450mm deep. Its probably visible on this older walk about around 11 mins in th-cam.com/video/KJtNWEoU33A/w-d-xo.html The Loxone panel is a future automation unit, they do various sizes, I think my one is about as large as they go! Its aboout 110cm x 70cm and 10cm deep. I put it centrally as I just happened to get a void behind a shower and my thought process was locating centrally would be easier with cable runs. Ideally I would have a plant room with everything in it in the garage but there is a vaulted celing between that and the rest of the house which made cable runs much harder. If you do any of the other things we have done like solar and battery you may well need a much larger consumer unit, we have a large Hagar unit in the garage. As always with hindsight I would do things differently and give myself more space.
Interesting stuff. How did you provide discrimination for the circuit breakers in the cabinet you have here and the consumer unit?
Hi, I would have to confirm the design with Hugh that built the panel but the CU has RCBOs that are generally higher rating that the MCB in the Loxone panel. He specified what we needed in the CU and built the panel. Most of the Loxone panel MCB are just 6Amp. The main breaker for the Loxone PSU is I think 10Amp as I have the big loxone power supply. I guess I could get a situation where an earth leakage fault would trip the CU but not the Loxone breaker but having RCBO in both locations could make it even harder to diagnose?
Thank you very much for yours videos. From Spain
Thank you!
Thanks for the update on the Loxone system. You're right about other videos on TH-cam, they mainly just show the end result and seem just like advertising for the installer and/or Loxone. That's fine but I love to see the nitty gritty stuff associated with designing and installing.
Have you tried out the 1-wire bus, presuming this is still included on the Multi Extension Air? I played around with using these to determine when the show or bath is being used and for how long. Coupled with the temp in the water tank, the hot water can boost as and when needed.
Other question was, how did you achieve measuring the temperature of the hot water in the tank?
Does the latest Loxone Miniserver integrate with Matter and MQTT independently? I thought I read that. It would be great to have an MQTT server running allowing the use of all sorts of lower cost sensors and for them to integrate with Loxone.
Hi Rob, I have used 1 Wire before with Zwave/Fibaro. The only sensors I have on the tank are the Dakin ones which are terrible so I may get a 1Wire interface for loxone to add a bit more resolution. I am currently getting the tank temperatures by Modbus from Daikin but I think its the temperature at the bottom of the tank. It would be good to have more sensors but its all sealed and insulated so not sure how I could do that. Also as we have a heat pump we really wnat to use that to heat water rather than the immersion.
Ok, on this question I will have to come back to you later as we are working hard just to finish the house so not had time to dig deeper into what is possible. I am currently playing with Home Assistant and 1Home to bring in Matter and MQTT to Loxone but there may well be other ways of doing so. Home Assistant will certianly bring in MQTT and 1Home does add Matter but you seem to have to automate in 1Home whcih sucks. Our reason for going with Loxone was that it would be a solid core to the home and just work which it does. Adding things like Matter and MQTT as great and may become more important but less so than a 100% reliable home setup. our build is to be reliable and solid first and add toys later that do not risk stability. Hope that make sense.
Hi Rob, Yes Loxone has an MQTT connection, looks pretty easy to setup. I may try a link and link presence senors to see if I can get that to work.
I am very jealous, you’ve got a great setup.
Couple of questions:
What cable did you run for RGBW?
How are you setting the warmth of the lighting in (I think) the living room? Assume that’s the 24V lights?
How many dimmers vs relays are you using for lighting? Adding dimming modules seems insanely expensive compared to relays in most systems.
Hi, All very good questions. I have not actually connected any RGBW yet as plans changed a but but I do have 4 modules. You can get 5 core 1mm flex cable (need to calculate voltage drops as may need thicker cable), there are some now that are the correct colours to make life easier but currently at a premium. The dimmers are very expensive in comparison with using a relay or even better an RGBW module that could run 4 sets of lights for a fraction of the price. I bought 2 dimmers as I wanted at least 5 dimmed channels so used the 3 spare ones as I had paid over £500 for the dimmer. I am not currently adjusting the warmth of the light other than the fact we bought switchable fittings. It would have been nice to take advantage of the colour adjustment in Loxone but I found that colour adjustable lamps are hard to find and expensive. Hugh was looking at importing some and I did trial one but it came with loose wires so I would have to adapt all of the light fittings to install them. In the living room I have installed cable lights where the power is supplied by the suspension cables so that rules out colour changing. I really want to run these at 24V as they are currently 12V run via a transformer but I struggled to find decent 24v GU5.3 lamps. If I can I may well change that later by removing the transformer and using an RGBW unit to run the lights. I think Hugh also said I could get a 12V supply and run the RGBW units at 12V rather than 24v but it would limit capacity and perhaps have voltage drop issues. The Loxone RGBW lights are really nice but they have a narrow beam angle and are not that bright. It was going to cost me over £3k to use them rather than less than £300 for the collingwood fittings I used.
Thanks for sharing your build. How much was the loxone kit and install? Why choose loxone over standard knx?
Hi There. Great questions. KNX seems to give a bit more choice of components but from what I saw its a bit harder to configure as each device has to be configured, it does have the advantage of resiliency as you are not relying on a central controller as a single point of failure. That said Loxone servers seem very reliable other than the SD card, always worth having a spare SD card. I liked the combintaion of Loxone ease of configuration and the ability to connect to other devices. I would have liked more choice of switches as I think the basic Loxone plastic switch looks terrible and the glass pure I used is expensive. I think my overall costs were about £15k with half of that being Loxone components and the other half the cabinet, psu cabinet build and partner install work. I installed all of the cables and did first and second fix of all of the devices, the loxone partner brought the panel to site and connected everything up, that took just 2 days on site including finishing off the programing. As this was really a new build quite a bit of that cost would have been required even if I fitted traditional lighting and alarm system. The light switches alone were almost £3k but they control music, blinds, lighting and act as thermostats so have avoided a lot of other cost. The dimmers are not cheap at around £500 each, I wish I had done more 24v lighting and used RGBW controllers, I may change some of that over time. The audio system worked out reasonable value in comparison with something like Sonos and sounds good enough to me.
@JurassicJungle thanks for this, I am planning a knock down rebuild of my house and working through the electrical and automation. I have a background in engineering, IT and programming so I am comfortable with building a knx system, but I do wonder if it would be wiser to pass it over to pro. Probably not as I think I will enjoy doing it and I have worked out most of the knx details already. One element I really liked was the integration of audio control into your Loxone glass switches. Can you control audio source? What kind of level of control do you have there. I would like to do whole home zoned audio, integrating with knx switches is probably possible but I expect challenging
@ The switches can turn on an existing source adjust the volume and mute. We have a default source as a radio channel. It works pretty well. The advantge of using loxone is that the speakers can also be used for the doorbell, burglar alarm fire alarm and announements which would not be possible with Sonos. You have to use an app to select the source or pair rooms together but that can also be done as a scene but I have not dabbled with that yet. I think there is an argument for going best in class as its simpler, creston or Lutron lighting and blinds for example but I wanted the ability to have functionality across functions. Our presence based lighting works pretty well, what I do like is that i don't need to use the switches much and only need to go to an app to select a different music source or do something not yet automated. I had Fibaro in my old house and did that all myself. I wanted the foundations of the house automation to be rock solid which is why i chose to pay an installer. Now its up and working I want to understand how it all works so that I can adjust and maintain it myself. I am from an IT background but not really in software, I usually found someone better than me at scripting to do things for me. The other challenge is this all needs to be signed off. I am lucky that i have a very friendly electrician who has overseen all of my cable install, he installed all of the cunsumer units, battery, solar etc and will shortly do the full inspection and test of my work. If I had paid an electrician and installer to do all the work I suspect my costs would have doubled. I have lost count of how much cable I have installed but it must be getting close to £2k work
@@JurassicJungle thanks for taking the time to reply, hope you enjoy it
@ Hope this has helped you decide what you want. There are so many things to think about
why not 2 conduits to everywhere? Hi and lo voltage separate,
We did consider putting in conduit to allow any future changes. Do you mean running 2 to each light switch for example? I think that would have been a great deal of work for something that would probably never be needed. Also as quite a bit of our house has either vaulted ceiling or a warm flat roof there would not really be any way of getting to the top of the conduit or it would have had a complex route in the loft space. I did use conduit under the floor for some of the socket wiring. All of the socket power is traditional, we have only used KNX cable to sensors and switches. I do wish I had run a bigger conduit or a second one for low voltage to the kitchen island, its not really possible to do anything now as we have UFH and screed all laid. The Island has a 50Amp feed and a sub consumer unit so we have plenty of power flexibility and can use Loxone Air to control any lighting. I am not saying we got everything right, there are things I would do differently. We had to take on a lot of first fix that we never intended to do and that mean we lost focus on some of the automation install details.
Great to see your project progressing. What part of the UK are you based in?
Hi Sam, Glad you are enjoying our journey. We are in West Dorset (They don't do much tech like this around here, they all think I am crazy)
Thanks for another really helpful video. With the touch pure switches do you ever get any instances of a touch not registering or having to tap several times before they work or any lag in the response? Also was the issue with the Loxone RGBW downlights the relatively narrow beam angle? I like the idea of these and being able to re-assign individual lights but with only 2400mm ceiling height fear we may have the same issue of needing a lot for even coverage.
Hi Richard, the switches are very responsive the only issue I would say is getting the timing right for a double click to turn off. We find the audio and blind control work well and if someone uses a full hand it just does the lights. I do like the theatrical down light on the switch as well. The rgbw spots would be great for colour accents but not really as good for white lighting. The while lamp is ina central part of the fitting and does have a narrow beam. I have a couple I am going to use in a walk in wardrobe but I have used over 40 normal spots around the house so the Loxone ones would have been well over £3000. I would suggest you try and see some. I bought a second hand demo case and some switches and rgbw lights. I fitted a couple of lamps in an mdf sheet and tried them in various locations. As you say the ability to control every lamp is cool.
I have watched nearly all your videos over the last two weeks as you have done virtually everything that I am planning for my self build which is currently waiting on Building Control approval. Like yourself, I much prefer the idea or a locally controlled presence-based system to control my home automations and that I can program if I want to make any alterations in the future which is why I have also settled on Loxone (Lyttle Smart Homes is my installer). I have a raft of questions that I want to ask so will drop them into various videos to help the engagement algorithms if that’s ok with you? Just so I put the right questions in the right video, I believe you said you are going to do ones for the 1HOME hub and one about MODBUS, correct?
I did leave a comment earlier but it doesn’t seem to have come through so sorry if this is a repost.
Hi and thanks for your comments. I am happy with my choice of Loxone but it is a leap of faith. The platform itself has been pretty solid which I can't say is true for Home Assistant which I have also been using to add a few buts of functionality. I do plan a number of videos to dive deeper into Loxone but please feel free to add questions and comments on any other videos. I found there was very little of end user reviews of Loxone on TH-cam, mostly installer tours. I will cover the Modbus connection to Daikin, being fair this was configured by my installer but I am still having to tweek a few things as it did not quite work as expected in the first place. I will also cover the Connection to Somfy Tahoma which again the installer get working to start with but I hope to add blinds to 13 windows myself and document it partly just in case it stops working but also to help others. I have purchased 1Home. I find their marketing is better than their product and the constant amazing discount offers. I think I miss understood what it was going to offer me as a lot of the marketing about functionality seems to refer to the older "Bridge" product. The new one is Matter only so lacks a lot of what I thought I was buying. 1Home does allow Alexa control but only for certain functions (not audio for example) so I am not sure how useful it will really be. I had assumed it would allow Loxone to see and control Matter devices and they are looking at that but currently they seem to want me to configure matter automations in 1Home not really linked to Loxone but I reserve the right to update my views as they update the product.
@@JurassicJungle Really good to know about the 1Home system. I ultimately want it as a conduit between loxone and Google Assistant. Stuff like Smart ovens and Washing machines would be set up in my Google Home much like it is currently but then any alerts or notifications would be pumped through as an audio/visual alert in Loxone. If i Can't do that then its probably a product I can skip.
What brand of devices are you looking at? Loxone connects to Bosch, Neff, Siemens home connect so that should be possible without 1home
@@JurassicJungle it will be Neff for the cooking appliances but Samsung for laundry.
Ok Neff should be good but not sure about Samsung. That may support smart things which may work via home assistant or 1home
that panel is so messy, I would be ashamed to put my name to that if i had done it
I think the panel build is very good, it’s very neat and tidy. The cables at the top are quite difficult to dress and there are many different types coming in. Not sure what could be done for it to be better to be honest.