← All platforms Brief · Home automation

Home automation: the backbone of the house.

Lights, shutters and heating already live in a system. Lenou does not replace it — it speaks it, and puts it next to everything else.

What it is

In most houses, lights, shutters and heating already hang off a system: a bus in the walls or a controller in the cupboard. That system stays. The switches keep working as they did, the programming stays where it was.

Lenou comes alongside. It reads what happens on the bus, controls where it may, and puts it next to the rest of the house: in the same rooms, with the same tiles.

What Lenou reads and controls

KNX

Local

The open bus of most new builds. Lenou connects to the KNX IP interface or router in the cupboard, or to a small USB interface straight on the bus cable.

Connection: KNX IP, tunnelling or routing. No cloud, no account.
Without an IP interface: A TP-UART interface on USB, such as the busware TUL, on the box in the cupboard. Listening has been tested on a real bus; controlling this way is still in progress.
Reads and controls: Lights (switching, dimming, colour), sockets, shutters and screens with their position, climate zones with setpoint and mode, gates and door openers that pulse, scenes of the existing controller, an alarm panel (arm and disarm, per partition too), a lift, and zone amplifiers.
Reads: Temperature, humidity, presence, door and window contacts, push buttons, sub-meters per circuit, and the weather station as one device: temperature, wind, light per façade, rain and dusk.
Next to another controller: Read-only is possible: Lenou follows the bus and writes nothing, except for one device the installer opens himself. Read requests are paced, so the bus is never flooded.
Moving over: An export from a Gira HomeServer or a Home Assistant configuration is read in: rooms, floors, dimmers, shutters and scenes come along. Whatever does not follow plainly from a name goes to a report for a person.

BTicino / Legrand MyHOME

Local

OpenWebNet on the system's own gateway. This system has its own brief.

Connection: OpenWebNet over TCP to the gateway (F454, MH202, MH200N, MyHOMEServer1).
Reads and controls: Lights and dimmers, shutters, heating zones, buttons; the burglar alarm read only.

Loxone

Local

The Miniserver, straight on the network. No Loxone Cloud, no Remote Connect.

Connection: The Miniserver's websocket, with a token. The password itself never crosses the wire.
Reads and controls: Every control the Miniserver knows, all at once: lights (colour too), switches, shutters, climate zones, temperature, humidity, presence and buttons.
Limit: A Miniserver set to accept encrypted connections only refuses Lenou.

Niko Home Control I

LocalIn progress

The controller of a Niko Home Control I, over its local interface.

Connection: TCP on the network, without a login. The controller reports every change by itself.
Reads and controls: Lights, dimmers, shutters (open, close, stop) and thermostats (setpoint and mode).
Why in progress: The values for shutters and thermostats come from open-source integrations, not from a real controller. Niko Home Control II is a different protocol and is not included.

DALI

Local

DALI lighting through the Lunatone DALI-2 IoT Gateway.

Connection: The gateway's JSON API, with push updates where the gateway gives them.
Reads and controls: Every DALI lamp: on, off, dimming and colour temperature.
Limit: Only through this Lunatone gateway.

Philips Hue

Local

The Hue bridge in the house, over its local API. The Hue cloud plays no part.

Connection: The bridge's local CLIP v2 API. Press the bridge's button once; every change then comes through within a second.
Reads and controls: Lamps and plugs; motion sensors (with their temperature), contacts and dimmer switches come in as sensor or button.
Limit: Hue scenes, entertainment areas and Hue Secure cameras stay with the Hue app.

Somfy TaHoma

LocalOnline once

The TaHoma Switch in the hall, over its local API instead of the Somfy cloud.

Connection: The gateway's developer mode, with a local token fetched from Somfy once. No internet needed after that.
Reads and controls: Screens, shutters, awnings and switchable sockets.

Zigbee (through Zigbee2MQTT)

Local

Zigbee devices of every make, through a Zigbee2MQTT bridge on the house's MQTT.

Connection: MQTT. The bridge says what each device can do; nobody types a topic.
Reads and controls: Lamps, plugs (with metering), shutters, locks, radiator valves, sirens; motion sensors, contacts, buttons, thermometers and humidity sensors.
Limit: Smoke and water-leak detectors are skipped for now. Pairing happens in Zigbee2MQTT itself.

Matter

Local

The shared standard of Apple, Google, Amazon and Samsung: lamps, plugs, sensors, shutters, locks and thermostats of every make that speaks Matter, locally and without an account with the manufacturer.

Which route: Lenou as a Matter controller, through an open-source Matter server that runs next to Lenou on the box. Pairing with the device's QR code; Thread devices through a border router in the house (an Apple TV 4K, HomePod or Thread stick). A device already in Apple Home or Google Home can be shared: it does not have to leave.
Tested: An Aqara FP300 over Thread, shared from Apple Home: presence, light, temperature and humidity come in, each as its own device.
Limit: Control (lamps, plugs, shutters) has not yet been checked on a real device.

EnOcean

In progress

Battery-free switches and sensors that draw their energy from the press of the button or from light: Eltako, Peha, Thermokon, Omnio.

Which route: Through an EnOcean USB stick (USB300 / TCM310) on the box, with the ESP3 protocol. Planned: push buttons, window and door contacts, temperature and humidity sensors, motion sensors, and control of Eltako actuators.
Why in progress: A Lenou driver for EnOcean is planned. What it reads and controls will be listed here only once it has been checked on real devices.

Shelly

Local

Shelly plugs and energy meters, straight over their local API. No Shelly cloud.

Reads and controls: Plugs (first to third generation) switched and metered; a Shelly EM becomes an energy meter, with a correction for a clamp on another phase.
Bluetooth: Shelly BLU sensors (motion, door and window) come in through a Shelly BLU Gateway and MQTT.
Safe: A plug behind a fridge or freezer can be set to metering only.

MQTT, Modbus and REST

Local

For whatever has no brand integration.

How: An MQTT topic, a Modbus register profile or a JSON address becomes an ordinary device: a lamp, a meter, a sensor — with the same tiles as the rest.

What that means in the app

A KNX lamp and a Hue lamp sit in the same room, in the same way. Whoever opens the app sees a living room, not two systems.
One "Evening" scene dims the Loxone lighting and lowers the Somfy screens.
Switch at the wall, and the app follows at once: the bus and the bridges report what changes.
A push button on KNX, Hue or MyHOME can start a rule that does something on a different make altogether.

Honest limits

Lenou does not replace a system's programming. What lives in ETS, Loxone Config or Niko's software stays there.
Most integrations are built on the make's published documentation and tested against a simulated device. When connecting, the installer's test says literally what answers, and what does not.
Where an integration has not yet been checked on a real device, it says "in progress".