How do you control a Faber cooker hood using EIB/KNX? Smart home.

Hello,

This is a difficult topic to categorise. I’m starting with ‘Kitchen Appliances’, but perhaps it would be worth creating a forum dedicated to EIB/KNX?

We’ve installed a FABER GLORY ISOLA cooker hood in our kitchen. It’s a cooker hood, sure, but it’s fitted with two light sources: halogen spotlights illuminating the hob and fluorescent tubes lighting up the glass panels.

And this is where the problem begins: how do we integrate this with the EIB/KNX smart home system? We could also ask the question more broadly: how do we integrate this with any smart building system?
Two simple functions would suffice:
- switching the extractor fan on/off and
- switching the lighting on/off

For now, I have two ideas:
1. There is a DB15 connector between the cooker hood and the control module. It would be possible to connect directly to it if the protocol weren’t too complicated.
2. The cooker hood can be controlled using the FABER remote control, product no. 112.0157.354. So perhaps we could simulate the signals sent by the remote control?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

This is an infrared remote control, so you could use, for example, an IRtrans gateway (approx. 170 EUR – http://www.irtrans.com/en/shop/lan.php). IRTrans operates via wired Ethernet or Wi-Fi, so you’ll also need a device to translate LAN telegrams into KNX. One such device is, for example, the Gira HomeServer (perhaps you already have a HomeServer or a FacilityServer? The HS costs around 10,000 PLN, and the FS is I think 18,000) or a programmable KNX/IP gateway. A more expensive option (if you don’t have a HomeServer, this will actually be much cheaper ) would be a KNX/IR gateway (but this costs around 600 EUR). You can then copy all the signals from the remote control to the cooker hood and ‘upload’ them to the KNX system.

Best regards,
Maciej Kapica

__________________________________________
eKap Maciej Kapica
Smart Building Systems

ul. Widok 10, 50-052 Wrocław
tel. +48 603 056 980
http://www.ekap.pl

www.ekap.pl/aycontrol – control your home via iPhone without any additional servers!

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It seems a bit pointless to integrate this into the whole smart home system; personally, on NEXO, I’d power this device via an actuator module (e.g. a relay) - arming the system (leaving the house) would switch this circuit off, unless the customer specifically needs to switch this device on via the LCD panel – not a great idea in my view.
Alternatively, one could try controlling it in conjunction with the cooker’s ionisation current and a twilight switch – when the cooker is in use, the fan always switches on, + twilight switch condition – the light switches on – but that’s rather abstract


Regards

Of course, you could take the cooker hood apart and connect relays (switching modules) directly to the fan and lighting circuits, but in my opinion that’s not the way to go. Unless, of course, you’re looking for a way to do it yourself, on your own, and don’t mind a bit of a ‘mess’.
The method described for infrared control is completely non-invasive for the cooker hood (you won’t void the warranty).

Best regards,
Maciej Kapica

__________________________________________
eKap Maciej Kapica
Smart Building Systems

ul. Widok 10, 50-052 Wrocław
tel. +48 603 056 980
http://www.ekap.pl

www.ekap.pl/aycontrol – control your home via iPhone without any additional servers!

__________________________________________

Thank you very much for your valuable suggestions.

As always, it’s worth considering the purpose of such integration

In our case, it’s necessary to switch off the cooker hood when leaving the kitchen and/or going out of the house. Until now, we’ve sometimes left the kitchen lights on all day...
It’s a practical matter.

It would also be convenient to incorporate the cooker hood lighting into… lighting scenes.
This is a matter of aesthetics.

In the first case (practicality), it is indeed sufficient to connect the power supply for the entire cooker hood via the control module.
In the second case (aesthetics), the integration will be more extensive. The cooker hood’s warranty is about to expire, so dismantling and ‘tinkering’ are on the cards.
But does anyone have a wiring diagram for the extractor hood and/or information on what signals are present on the DB15 connector?

Kind regards,
M.