By Simon Buddle
As the founding editorial team retires, Simon Buddle reviews his thirteen years of contributing to KNXtoday and the key milestones that helped transform KNX into a global standard.
And so, it is with heavy heart that I break the news that our beloved editor, Yasmin Hashmi, and publisher, Stella Plumbridge, will retire in the next few weeks. Yasmin and Stella started KNXtoday in 2013 with the encouragement of Heinz Lux, CEO of KNX Association, and now it’s time to hand the baton on and for them to get stuck into that bucket list and not to have to get up at ungodly hours to get flights to Light + Building. More than that, it is a moment in time – like the millennium – the end of an era. A time to pause and reflect.
This is the last time Yasmin’s email will sit atop my inbox for 28+ days slowly gnawing away at my conscience, goading me into action, then needling me to fulfill this long-standing commitment.
I have known Yasmin and Stella for more years than any of us cares to remember: back in the day when they published HiddenWires, I’d write about the current AV trends in home automation. I have articles dating back to 2008 buried somewhere on my server. However, it is with KNX and KNXtoday that Yasmin and Stella found their calling. Both highly-trained electronics engineers, like many of us, they saw opportunity in the world of KNX, and KNXtoday was born.
For some 13 years, once every month I have put pen to paper to forward the case for KNX. For many of our readers, we have been preaching to the converted, but the articles have also reached a broader audience, giving us a chance to sing about the virtues of our church, to validate our reason for being in the KNX community, that is.
Key developments over the past 13 years
For me there are three important events along the road that have changed the course of KNX:
- Keypads – front of house finally started competing aesthetically.
- Reaching the M&E community – back-of-house provides solutions.
- The non-proprietary debate – the solution is open protocol and simple to deploy.
Keypads
When I first saw KNX keypads, I’ll admit I was less than impressed. It must have been 2008ish when I was invited to UK building technology distributor, Ivory Egg, as part of a contingent of the CEDIA (the association for smart home professionals) team looking at different manufacturers and distributors.
Founder of Ivory Egg, Colin Price’s house was fully controlled by KNX. For me this was the lightbulb moment. However, it would be a few more years before I took the plunge and then the reason was simple – to solve an integration problem for heating and AC. I was able to get KNX to talk with AMX without the need for a crazy GB£3000 interface, and fulfill the client’s wish to have heating and cooling controlled from a single touchscreen.
After this came yearly visits to the interior design shows at Olympia, London, where Jung and several other KNX companies always had a stand. Each year, I’d stop by to greet everyone and check out the actuators and keypads. Since then, the quality, choice, and styling of said keypads have thankfully improved and now easily match the so-called high-end lighting control systems.
Having aesthetically-pleasing keypads means that you can have a positive conversation with architects and clients alike. When you have that debate, and you’re able to also tell them that they don’t need separate heating and cooling wall controls, you put yourself ahead of the pack. So, good-looking keypads, with high functionality, was a game changer for me.
Reaching the M&E community
We’ve touched on it briefly, but when it comes to the back-of-house conversation – the one we have with the MEP (Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing) design team – KNX becomes an obvious solution. Once you have exposed M&E consultants to KNX’s versatility and integration capabilities I don’t think there’s any going back for them. Just last week, I was asked if we could get window contacts to signal the blinds if the window had been left open. The reason was to prevent the blackout blinds being closed and then blown out of their tracks.
Not only is it easy to do, but it is extremely simple to deploy: a pair Zennio RF window contacts and any Zennio, Jung, Gira, Theben etc blind actuator and you have a solution. Simply use the wind alarm object on any blind actuator and the problem is solved – no need for crazy logic or code that will take two months to debug – and importantly, all on a single system/cable. No need to integrate two standalone systems – just connect using KNX RF and the KNX bus cable. Simple. And that’s just one use-case out of thousands we could discuss.
Advantages of an open protocol
Which brings us very neatly to the decisive point – KNX is a standard and the language is non-proprietary. You can choose from thousands of products, created by hundreds of manufacturers, and they all talk to each other. You are not scrabbling around for integration solutions, interfaces at absurd costs and worse still, programs written by skateboarding, Minecraft-playing 18-year-olds who have never seen the light of day.
Final thoughts
Over the years, the KNXtoday newsletter has grown from a readership of 30,000 to well over 250,000 today. It reaches a wide global audience and as a direct consequence of that, so does KNX. As Yasmin and Stella finally put their feet up with a well-earned cup of tea, it’s perhaps time for us all to reflect on our KNX journey, to focus on our success and the success of KNX to date, as well as the growth we all hope it will enjoy over the coming years.
These past few years have seen KNX take off globally to become the pre-eminent solution for integrated systems. That success is down to all of us in the KNX community and to people like Yasmin and Stella who can bring KNX to a broader audience. So, for that I want to say a huge thank you to them, for their dedication and hard work over the years.
Chapeau! I leave you with the words from The Times They Are A-Changin’ by Bob Dylon:
Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin’
And you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’
(Note from the Editor: Thank you Simon, for all of your super articles over the years and for being so dependable. You have become an institution, and in the open spirit of KNX, you have shared your experience and knowledge with great humour, thoughtfulness and generosity – we are all the richer for it. Chapeau to you too!)
Simon Buddle CEng MIET, is a consultant for Future Ready Homes, a specialist in BMS and ELV services system design.
