A tiny arrester made for the KNX bus. What the DEHN BT 24 datasheet says, where DEHN says to fit it, what it will not do, and when I would specify it.

A working wind sensor will retract your awning. A dead or unplugged one does nothing at all, unless the actuator is set up to treat silence as a fault.

Storm season on the Highveld is starting, and the usual story is "we had a bang during the storm and now half the house doesn't work." Nobody ever phones to say the surge protection did its job. That is the point of it. It is the most boring line on a quote, and it is the line most often cut first. So this is a post about the boring line. How much lightning are we talking about? Property24 ran a piece on lightning density that used the South African Weather Service ground fla

For years, the easy way to give a client remote support was to forward port 3671 straight through their router to the KNX installation. It worked. The installer could dial in from anywhere, support calls got shorter, everyone was happy. There was just one problem nobody thought through properly at the time: if the installer could reach the system that easily from outside, so could anyone else who went looking. KNX Association just published a piece on exactly this, and it's w

For years, a security camera did one job. It recorded. Something happened, the footage sat on a hard drive somewhere, and if you were unlucky, you reviewed it after the fact to see exactly how someone got onto your property. Useful for insurance. Useless in the moment. That's changed more than most homeowners realise. KNX Association published a piece in April on predictive smart cameras and video content analysis (VCA), and it's worth digging into properly, because this isn'

Every second house on an estate has one. A driveway light that fires every time a car passes on the road outside. A facade light that comes on for a cat, a moth, or a gardener three properties down. After a few months, everyone stops noticing it at all, which defeats the entire point of having it. That's not a faulty sensor. It's usually the wrong sensor for the spot, or the right sensor set up without thinking through what it's actually watching. KNX Association put out a pi

ABB confirmed it won't patch a firmware flaw in older KNX devices (CVE-2026-12705). The real story: exploiting it needs physical access to the bus, not the internet, and what that means for classic vs KNX Secure installations.

Natural gas rises, LPG sinks. Get placement wrong and a gas detector becomes decoration. Here's where it actually needs to go, room by room, and how to wire it into a KNX system for an automated response.

The Kimwolf botnet hijacked 1.8 million cheap Android TV boxes, and South Africa is among the worst hit. What it means for how you build a smart home network.

Hey there, fellow tech enthusiasts and smart home aficionados! Today, I want to take you on a journey through the fascinating world of my smart home and the incredible automations that make life not only convenient but also surprisingly secure. Imagine this: you walk up to my front gate, and like magic, the light in the entertainment area starts flashing to alert me to your presence. It's not some futuristic sci-fi movie; it's my reality thanks to the wonders of smart home te

We all seek a sense of security and peace of mind in our homes, and with the advent of smart home technology, achieving this has never been easier. Imagine a home that adapts to your needs, anticipates potential risks, and ultimately provides a sanctuary unlike any other. Living in a smart home not only revolutionizes the way we interact with our living spaces but also significantly enhances our overall feelings of security. Embracing the Smart Home Lifestyle The concept of a