Every home can now become a Smart Home! Loxone Air is a wireless technology that has been tailored to the exact requirements of a true smart home. With the introduction of Loxone Air enabled devices, it is finally possible to wirelessly automate your home without compromise and without the need to pull a single new cable! No new cables, no mess!
Read on to find out more about Loxone Air – the wireless answer to home automation.
Using mesh networking technology ensures that there are no boundaries to the size of your installation, since each new device increases the network coverage.
The lack of wiring and the versatility of our products mean that the level of automation of your house is limited only by your imagination.
All Loxone Air products were fine-tuned to consume as little energy as possible, whilst ensuring that the communication network was rock solid.
All Loxone Air products can be set up in your home and become part of your Loxone system with just a few clicks.
Loxone Air products are more that they seem at first glance. Taking the Smart Socket Air as an example – its in-built power meter and temperature sensor make it so much more than your average wireless plug and allow for countless cool uses around your home.
With the Smart Socket Air you can take control of all items around your home – Lamps, heaters, the washing machine or your hair straighteners… Never wonder whether you have left something on by mistake!
For anyone that wants to enjoy the benefits of Loxone Air, you’ll need either a Miniserver Go OR a Miniserver and an Air Base Extension.
Loxone Air Base Extension
The Air Base Extension is the interface to let your Miniserver communicate with other Air devices and forms the cornerstone of our Air technology. Once connected to the Miniserver it can manage up to 128 wireless Loxone Air devices around your home.
There’s no denying that the lighting in your house affects the way you feel. Soft yellow lighting adds feelings of warmth and comfort to a dining scene, whilst warm white in the bathroom prevents the dreaded harsh lighting when getting ready. The new RGBW 24V dimmer allows for complete lighting control. No fancy bulbs required, regardless of whether your project is a new construction or a retrofit.
To celebrate the release of our new RGBW products, we are offering two combo sets at an introductory price, which include our new RGBW LED strips. We have a wired version for new builds and a wireless version for our retrofitters!
Are you are planning your new home or just started the build? Why not include colour LED lighting with the RGBW 24V Dimmer DMX?
With our new Air wireless technology standard and the RGBW 24V Dimmer, retrofitting colour lighting into your home is simple and easy!
Take advantage of our limited time introductory discount on the new RGBW sets for Air and DMX including a RGBW lighting strip.
Are you are looking for some ideas for your lighting project? Want to see what coloured lighting really looks like in your home? Then take a look at our ‘Lighthouse’ case study. If you still need a little creative nudge, why not head over to our Pinterest page, where we have lots of different ideas for creative the perfect smart home?
Have it any way you like!
When talking about light control we very much talk about personal preferences. Some rooms have a lamp, others have indirect lighting with or without RGB.
For Loxone, it doesn’t make a difference.
The current firmware will be available to our customers from tomorrow. Its focus lies on lighting, beside other important topics. For this reason we included a “lighting control” in Loxone Config (formerly LoxPLAN). That’s it for now concerning lighting.
The result of our research and development is a twelve channel light control, which supports, freely definable, following lights on each channel:
Each of the twelve lighting circuits can be defined completely unrestricted. And each of the 12 lighting circuits can be controled with any number of individual buttons.
And there are eight light scenes available which can be freely defined. They can also be controled using a button.
Loxone clearly recommends installing motion or presence sensors in each room, preferably onto the ceiling.
Doesn’t everyone want automatic light when walking from the living room to the kitchen when no lights are on? Simply connect your motion sensor, which can work as an alarm system at the same time, to your light control. That’s all you have to do, your light control will take care of the rest.
Where in your house might be the perfect place to a central light off function? Near the entrance? In your living room? Or maybe in your bed room?
This common question when you’ve got one of these old-fashioned bus systems has now come to an end.
Double-click on any light-influencing button to turn off all the lights in a room, triple-click to turn off all lights in the house. This is standard on every button in the house, you’ll never have to worry or even label your switches. Buttons, even when they are bedded in lovely glass frames, are never considered to be architectural gemstones. This central function will help you save buttons.
Last Friday we submitted our new app to Apple. According to our experience, it usually takes about 5 to 10 days for approval. In this app you can configure light scenes.
Scenes dinner, party, … simply choose, pick lighting circuit as you wish.
In order to see the light control’s configuration in the app, match room and category and activate “use” button, the rest will happen automatically.
This example shows a room with two buttons for scene selection. Controling individual lamps and scene “party” are selected via app. Motion sensor only activates light when it starts to get dark. If you would like to control your lamp “dinner table”, simply connect it to input I1.
For configuring scenes double-click light control module to open dialogue:
In practice you might notice that light configuration does not exactly work out the way you’ve planned it. You have three options to re-save light scenes.
Please load the programming before your next change from the Miniserver, so that the saved light scenes can be taken over into Loxone config.
This question quite rightly comes up time and again amongst home owners, electricians and builders. When we’re being asked about it, the conversation often starts with something like:
The subject of home automation is nothing new – products have been on the market for over a decade now – and yet most people out there haven’t got a clue what a house of the future might look like.
The first thing I used to associate with a house of the future was the intelligent fridge which automatically ordered milk from the supermarket when you ran out. But let’s be honest: who really needs that? No one.
At least not yet anyway. The media’s not done us any favours here – most people shy away from these over-exaggerated examples of so-called smart homes. And quite rightly so, we’re simply not ready for them, the change proposed is too radical and not sensible.
Let’s talk about people’s actual life in their homes – what they want and the many ways in which home automation can fit in with their daily routine and enhance their quality of life.
Everybody has individual needs and ideas about life at home. Home automation can make a positive difference to anyone. What’s important is to know what’s available, and then to decide for yourself what you want.
Our daily routines and life are constantly changing and so does how we use our homes. Sure, at the moment your young offspring might just use their bedrooms for sleeping in, but in a few years time the same bedroom will also be their office and lounge. They no longer want to play in the living room. A few years further down the line and their room may become your study or a spare bedroom. Wouldn’t it be nice if your home could easily adapt as your requirements change.
Do you prefer to think about how you want to live, rather than exactly what technology you’d like to be surrounded by? Unfortunately much too often our attention gets drawn to specific switching protocols, a display technology or something like that. Don’t be lead astray, instead keep focusing on functionality.
Don’t let yourself be put off by the jargon spouted by experts. Your own house of the future can simply be a good thing which will give you great enjoyment and flexibility for years to come. It is not those experts that have to live in the house, but you!
It’s important to know all the options you’ve got for smart home installation, so do some research and ideally visit a few houses and get to know features that you like.
Here are a few everyday examples of how home automation could work in your life:
Did anything from this list appeal to you?
Fair enough, some of those ideas may sound pretty gimmicky to you. That’s not a problem. Home automation is like Pick ’n’ Mix at the cinema. Simply pick out the features that appeal to you, and leave the rest.
Your house of the future can be flexible, and if you opt for a modular solution like Loxone, you can always upgrade at a later date.
When I’m giving people tours of my house, the first thing I usually say is “I’ll show you everything we’ve got set up, and you can just pick out what you like. Simple.”
One of the most important tasks when trying to make a decision is to put things in context, especially with costs.
Saving the best advice until last:
Whether you want to go all out (hopefully with Loxone!), or just to install the basics, you’re investing in the future.
Don’t skimp on the electrical installation. Wire everything centrally. Build a BIG distribution board. Then you can adapt or extend your home automation system at a later date. Who knows what direction things like energy management will go in the future. Be prepared for whatever happens, and don’t let anyone talk you out of it.
It would be a miracle if no one had any questions after reading this article. That’s why our team is ready to answer any questions you might have – via LiveChat, email, or the phone. Take us up on our offer of advice and information straight from the experts, with no pressure to buy anything from us!
And as always… we value any feedback you might have, just post a comment. Finally, have fun looking round the rest of the website, and with your very own house of the future!
With our free software updates and new accessories, your Loxone system just keeps getting better and better. You can now set up an access system for your home or business without having to fork out lots of money!
To gain access to the building, all you need is a little electronic key fob which fits on any bunch of keys. You simply touch this key fob, also called an iButton, to the reader, which is attached to the Loxone system with our 1-Wire extension.
Through the seamless integration with the Loxone Configuration Software you can easily change access rights at different times of day or link access with other functions.
Example: When you get home in the evenings and put your key to the reader: the door unlocks, the hall and living rooms lights turn on, and your favourite music starts playing. Your imagination is the only limit!
You can equally well use this system for business premises – for example to limit access to a stock room or plant room so that only authorised personal can gain access. You can also use iButtons to lock machine operator terminals, for this purpose, there are magnetic keys which are held in the reader.
At the Loxone headquarters in Austria we use this system very successfully in our building. Find out more about how we did it on our blog…
As well as a Miniserver – the brain of your home automation system, you’ll need the following components to create your own access system:
Have we caught your interest? Find out more about Loxone’s access control system and get all the information you might need with the following links:
| What you need to make you own access system SHOP | |
| More information on the 1-Wire extension – perfect for key readers LINK | |
| Read more about our access system at Loxone HQ in our blog BLOG |
Home automation is taking over the media – newspapers, magazines and TV reports are all publishing more and more articles about the intelligent control of your home.
But sometimes the information in these articles is more absurd than helpful. So it is with this ginormous 36 push button switch panel which we stumbled upon in a Swiss magazine.
How this enormous (and unlabelled) panel of switches can be “simple” to use is still a mystery to us.
Buttons are still an essential, maybe even most important, interface in the home. Why? The answer is simple – They’re fast and easy to operate. Having a lot of unnecessary buttons, however, makes them trickier and potentially confusing to use. Home automation should not make life more complicated. You don’t want to hand a visitor a manual to operate the bathroom lights when the need the loo. With home automation, there are several ways to reduce the number of switches in your house:
Only use switches for the most important functions – ones that you need on a daily basis. If you walk into a dark room it needs to be obvious how to turn the light on! Rarely used functions can be controlled with a smartphone app or a using a computer through a web interface.
Having switches to manually control lights, blinds and heating doesn’t require a home automation system. An automation system ought to do as the name suggests – Automate. Rather than increase the number of switches, a well thought through system should reduce it.
Example: Your outside lights can automatically turn on after sunset and your heating can be controlled semi-automatically with a single button which selects different operating modes. Blinds and curtains may work fully automatically, all year round. They’re only adjusted if necessary, for example for cleaning or when entertaining guests on a summers eve.
Often when there’re many buttons on a switch plate, functions that would normally only require one button take up two. KNX and other smart switches often have a separate switch for “Light on” and “Light off”. Avoid this unnecessary doubling up and just use one button.
An intelligent system like the Miniserver can also differentiate between single and double clicks, or short and long clicks.
So you could for example set up the living room so that a single click controls the light, making the system intuitive to anyone, whilst a long click on the same button adjusts the volume of your music system.
Have you got any tips on how to use switches around the home? Let us know by posting a comment. It’s always great to hear your feedback!
Our new IR Extension allows you to control TVs, projectors, air conditioning units and other IR devices. It also enables you to use an IR remote to control your smart home.
For many years now, infrared technology has been fitted as the standard control interface on many devices. TVs, projectors, DVD-players, music systems, air conditioning units and many other things come with their own infrared remote control.
With the IR Extension you can now control these devices from your Loxone system just like you would with their own remote control. We have not stopped there though. You can not only control IR devices with our Extension, but also receive commands from IR remote controls that you already have. This means you can now use the buttons on your TV remote to dim the lights, close blinds etc.
The new IR extension makes the Loxone system even more powerful and opens up new possibilities for integrating devices around your smart home even further.
Whether it’s TVs, DVD-players, music systems or projectors: almost every device can be controlled using infrared and thus can be controlled from the IR extension. It’s therefore possible to integrate seamlessly all your multimedia devices in your smart home. For example:
The IR Extension makes it possible to control devices which don’t have a network or serial interface. As a general rule of thumb: all devices which can be controlled with an IR remote can also be controlled with the IR Extension.
You can thus set your air conditioning unit or ventilation to come on if the temperature rises above a certain level or at a certain time of day.
With Loxone’s IR Extension you can use all common remote controllers to control your house. This means you could control your lights, blinds, music or heating with existing remote controls.
The extension has a practical ‘learn mode’ which makes it easy to add new remote controls. You can also import templates for common remotes directly in the configuration software.
The IR Extension itself sits out the way with your other extensions in a safe place and is directly connected to the Miniserver. You can connect up to 8 IR modules to each IR extension; these go in the rooms with your infrared devices.
The IR module has an inbuilt receiver and can be used to receive commands from other IR remotes. In addition, you can connect two transmitters (IR emitters) to each module. 2 button (or dual eye) emitters can be used so you can effectively have up to 4 transmitters connected per IR module.
The IR Extension comes ready with an IR Module and a 2 button IR emitter included, so you can get started straight away with controlling IR devices.
You can now get everything you need to control infrared devices with your Miniserver in one package. Find out more about our IR-Set now.
Conventional video-intercom systems have been around for a long time now, even some with IP support. However, these systems are of limited use for smart homes – because you need a PC to control them or have a fixed video-intercom panel on your living room wall.
What really is smart though, is when you’re out and about, but can still talk to visitors at your house. With Loxone you can set up a smartphone compatible video-intercom system and create the perfect access control system for your home.
As soon as someone rings the doorbell, your iPhone, iPad or Android app is notified, and you can see on the display who’s standing at your door. With the intercom you can even speak to the visitor from wherever you are.
There are often situations in which having an external access control system is practical. Whether it’s checking the identity of the cleaner, allowing access to someone delivering a parcel, or just letting guests in the front door during a garden party.
To use a smartphone as a video-intercom system, you’ll need the following components:
For more information on how to configure video-intercom devices in Loxone Config, please see our online documentation or make sure you take part in our next online seminar on the 6th August when we’ll be going through this very topic.
PIRs. You’ve no doubt seen them. You may even have a couple installed at home. They’re those little white boxes that sit snugly up in the corners of rooms, between the walls and the ceiling. For the uninitiated, a PIR (Pyroelectric, or Passive InfraRed) is a motion sensor; its sole function is to detect movement in a room. Some motion sensors use not just InfraRed, but a combination of technologies for more reliable detection. But let’s leave the technical nitty-gritty stuff to one side, the fact is they’re small, inexpensive and easily hidden (coming as they do in all shapes and sizes).
So why would you have them fitted in your house? Well, most people that have them use them as part of their security system. And why not? They’re ideal. A burglar or intruder breaks in, emits infrared radiation as they come into the sensor’s range, the PIR picks up on it, triggers an alarm and the person panics and flees. Perfect.
But there’s plenty more that you can do with your motion sensor. If you have PIRs fully integrated into your Smart Home system, you can get the same PIRs to carry out a wide array of different functions for you.
In small windowless rooms or spaces like utility rooms, pantries, walk-in wardrobes and small toilets, you’ll always want a light on when you or a member of your household is in there. So why use a light switch or pull cord every time? You can simply fit a PIR sensor and configure your Home Automation system to turn the light on as soon as motion is detected (and turn off again a set amount of time after motion is no longer sensed). Of course this is nothing out of the ordinary, but never the less very useful.
> Find out more about intelligent lighting control
Simple lighting control with PIRs is all well and good, but can become annoying specially in rooms where you do not always want the lights to come on at full brightness automatically. Let’s say for instance that you have an en-suite bathroom. When you use it in the middle of the night, you might like the lighting soft and unobtrusive and for your noisy extractor fan not to kick in. But when you use it at 7am when you’re getting ready for work, you prefer a brighter light with perhaps the mirror lit up and the fan on to get rid of the steam from your morning shower. A PIR subtly sitting in the corner of the room will notice your entry sending a signal back to the Miniserver, which depending on time of day will prompt your pre-set scenes to kick in. PIRs in bathrooms also remove the need for ugly pull cords.
> To see some PIR-driven lighting scenes in action, read our latest UK Case Study
If you’re concerned about the safety of your walkabout kids or pets, then PIRs can be used to tip you off if someone breaches a specific area. Perhaps you have a swimming pool or pond that you don’t want your children to go near unattended. Or perhaps you live close to a main road and are concerned about your dog escaping and being run over. Installing InfraRed sensors could be the answer. You can set up your system up so that if a perimeter is breached, you receive a call or text. Or some lights flash in the house, or an alarm sounds, whatever you like.
> More about keeping safe with PIRs and Home Automation
Set an external sensor up to detect movement by your gate or at or at the start of your driveway and you can get advanced notice of any guests that are coming your way. One way of doing this would be to have the PIR trigger an IP camera that feeds live footage of the outside of your house directly to your iPad or smartphone. You can see the approaching person or car well before they knock on the door, giving you plenty of time to put on the kettle or hide (depending on who it is)!
> Have a look at how camera footage appears on your iPad, iPhone or Android
None of us like the idea of rising utility bills and energy prices. That’s one of the reasons why it’s important to make our homes as energy efficient as possible. Unnecessary room lighting has to be one of the most wasteful things you can do (and don’t worry – we all do it…). Whether it’s you or your partner that’s absent-minded or your kids that leave lights on, it’s costing you money. With a smart system a PIR can work in revers and turn the lights off after a long period of inactivity, even if you switched them on manually. Stop being the one chasing around after your kids, but let the Miniserver do the chasing instead and you’ll soon notice the reduction in your bills.
> See how you can save money and energy with Home Automation
But those are just our favourite five. There are plenty of other things you can get your motion sensor to do for your in your smart home. Just use your imagination and post your suggestions here or on our forum.
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