For homeowners: understand, choose and get your 1Home quoted

01What you will actually be able to do

• Switch everything off when leaving, in one gesture.
• Check remotely: are the blinds closed, is the heating down?
• Light scenes recomposing several circuits at once.
• Per-room heating with schedules — where the savings actually happen.
• Voice control, useful mostly when your hands are full.

02Do I need an installer?

The honest answer depends on one thing: whether the configuration file of your installation is available. On KNX it is called the ETS project. With it, much of the work is done. Without it, the mapping has to be rebuilt by hand, which takes a professional.

03The four steps of a project

1. Survey: you describe your installation and what you want to control.
2. Choice: we recommend a reference and explain why that one.
3. Quote: hardware pricing, with a clear statement of what is not included.
4. Commissioning: by you if feasible, by a professional otherwise.

04What it costs, and what makes the price vary

The budget splits into three parts, and the gateway is not the heaviest one.

What really moves the invoice: the state of your installation's documentation, the number of functions to expose, and whether a network interface is already fitted.

05The vocabulary decoded

• KNX. The most widespread standard for wired installations. A green twisted-pair cable links all the equipment, which speaks the same language whatever the manufacturer.
• ETS. The software used to program a KNX installation. The file it produces — the « ETS project » — is the map of your home.
• Group address. The equivalent of a phone number for a function: « kitchen light » has its address, « living-room blind » has another.
• Actuator. The board module that switches the power. It acts; the wall switch only sends a message.
• Gateway. The device translating between your installation and the outside world — that is what we sell.
• Matter. A recent common language between consumer platforms. Not an installation system.

05The three mistakes we see most often

Almost every difficult conversation we have starts with one of these three. None of them is a matter of budget — all three are a matter of order of operations.

1. Choosing the gateway before the ecosystem. On a new build, the bus and the wiring decide what is possible for the next twenty years; the gateway is a consequence, not a starting point. Buying it first constrains the project for nothing.
2. Sizing on the number of rooms. What counts is the number of controllable functions: each dimmable light, each blind, each heating zone is one. A small flat with fine-grained control can ask more of a gateway than a large house with three circuits.
3. Assuming a platform supports everything. Every consumer platform recognises a defined list of device types. A function that has no equivalent on the platform stays on the wall switch — which is not a fault, but it must be known before the purchase, not after.

The common cure is the same in all three cases: describe the installation before naming a product. That is a five-minute conversation, and it is free.

Frequently asked questions