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I am new to the field of home automation. I am gonna be on my first project soon. The project has an HVAC system which needs to be controlled by KNX. The solutions I have gone through all involve changing the valves of the dampers and turning on/off the fan coil units. All of this is fine but I cannot seem to understand one thing though and that is if the thermostat alone is changed and an integrative KNX thermostat is used instead, shouldn't this work since the sensor should automatically inform the built in contorl system of the HVAc of the change in temperature etc.... ? |
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Hi, Trying to answer your question plus your comment: Integrating HVAC systems into KNX is a kind of case-per-case issue. Unless you can find a KNX-enabled HVAC system, and I don't know any so far, it is a problem of finding the appropriate gateway. I've successfully integrated A/C units from Mitsubishi and Daiking using the gateways from Intesis (http://www.intesis.com/). With them you can, basically, leave the original thermostat hidden, or even remove it (depending on units), and use your KNX thermostats to send the temps, modes, etc... to the A/C units through the gateway which, by the way, is bidirectional, a subtle but rather relevant aspect (furthermore if you compare these solutions with infrared-based ones). I'm quite happy with their products (and not associated with them at all) and they not only have a wide range of supported HVAC systems, but also have gateways for Bacnet, modbus, lonworks,... Take a look at their site and try to find the one that suits your project. They are very helpful if you need some support, by the way. Good luck! |
Let me just clarify. Lets suppose there is an air conditioner from Trane. Is there a thermostat/thermosensor that can seamlessly replace the thermostat from trane and get its setting temperature from KNX signals? The air conditioning unit(trane in this case) normally comes with a trane thermostat. the trane thermostat acts as the "sensor". If we just replace the sensor with a thermostat from KNX( that is also interfaceable with trane controls) our air conditioning system should work the same way. It would save us the cost of buying fan coil actuators etc.