News
Firmware Updates 2.8.0/1.8.0 for P44-DSB and P44-LC
The updated firmware brings new features, improvements, matter 1.3 (beta) support and some bug fixes for P44-LC/AC light and automation controllers as well as for the P44-DSB Digital Strom bridge.
In particular, the new firmware features two new "bridging" device types allowing better integration between Digital Strom and matter. For the first time, "briding" devices are now available in the standalone P44-LC as well:
- scene responder bridge: monitors scene calls in a room or at the appartment level and forwards the status to matter as a virtual contact sensor. This allows to set up matter-side automations based on scene calls in Digital Strom or P44-LC.
- scene caller bridge: can call (and undo) a specific scene based on a matter-side virtual on-off switch. Giving the virtual switch an appropriate name, this allows calling specific scenes by voice or home apps.
Under the hood, the matter bridge (beta) has been updated to use matter 1.3 and profits from the stability and other improvements in that release.
Whether you use a P44-DSB for Digital Strom integration, or a P44-LC/AC as a small, efficient smart home/room/office standalone solution - the update to 2.8.0/1.8.0 is recommended as it also fixes some bugs.
As always, you can read up the details about the new version in the release notes
Product descriptions and download links for manuels, leaflets and other documents can be found here for P44-LC and here for P44-DSB.
P44-DSB firmware 2.7.0 released + P44-LC spring promotion!
The established Digital Strom-Bridge P44-DSB receives many improvements and two major features with the new firmware 2.7: matter (beta) and p44script-IDE. For efficient lighting all the convenience of the P44 devices is available in the P44-LC version as a completely independent solution - but can become part of a SmartHome at any time via matter (beta). Benefit from the spring promotion!
Only until the end of May: P44-LC-DE promotion!
25% discount on P44-LC-DE orders only in the plan44 online shop until 31 May 2024!
Implement lighting with the usual SmartHome convenience such as flexible rooms, zones and saved lighting scenes, recalled with single or multiple clicks on battery-free, maintenance-free EnOcean wireless switches.
Based on the tried-and-tested hardware and software of the P44-DSB products, the P44-LC-DE also has a built-in SmartHome controller and can therefore work with rooms, groups, zones and scenes itself. And if the installation should become part of an existing SmartHome: thanks to the built-in matter bridge (beta), the P44-LC can be easily integrated into Apple Home, Home Assistant, SmartThings, Alexa etc. and thus controlled via app or voice.
All features familiar from the P44-DSB, such as evaluators, scripted devices for the integration of devices and services via API and p44script (new with built-in development environment), remote maintenance, etc. are also included in the P44-LC.
More information and links to all documentation can be found on the P44-LC-DE product page.
For more specialised automation tasks, further hardware options such as WS28xx SmartLED, DMX512, motor drivers, etc. are available on a project basis.
P44-DSB-DEH2/E2/E Firmware 2.7 now released!
The new firmware brings many improvements and two major new features for the tried-and-tested DALI/EnOcean/hue Digital Strom-Bridges P44-DSB-DEH2/E2/E/X: matter (beta) integration and much more convenient script programming thanks to a built-in development environment with debugger. Details can be found in the release notes.
With matter, the days when a single system had to cover all SmartHome needs are over. From now on, different systems can contribute their strengths!
A Digital Strom base installation is not matter-capable itself, but with the matter-Bridge (beta) in the P44-DSB firmware 2.7 it is possible not only to see all DALI luminaires, EnOcean relays etc. directly in matter, but even to make pure Digital Strom room states accessible. More information about matter: plan44.ch/matter.
Public Beta available - try exciting new features ahead
Since the release of P44-DSB firmware 2.6.8 this summer, a lot of development has been ongoing behind the scenes. To allow you to opt-in to try new features such as matter bridging and the built-in IDE for script development already now, version 2.6.9 released today allows you to enable public betas via the web interface.
Image: p44script IDE, P44-LC-Torch, plus AI impressions of "P44-DSB" and "light beams" locally generated on a M2 mac with DiffusionBee opensource
What's new in the 2.7.x betas?
Of course, the matter bridge functionality which allows bridging P44-xx hosted devices (DALI, EnOcean, hue, SmartLED, GPIOs, HTTP API-integrated third party devices etc.) into a matter-enabled smarthome system. For more information about this, see details here.
Second: The new p44script IDE (integrated development environment) which makes creating and testing scripts easier than ever:
- a script editor with multiple tabs gives instant access and overview over all scripts in a P44 device.
- a resizable panel shows a live refreshed view of the device log.
- a console allows executing p44script statements interactively in the context of any script.
- a built-in debugger with breakpoints, single step, multiple threads and inspection makes testing and finding problems in scripts much simpler than before.
- a short reference describes p44script features and available functions
Fully integrated - no external dependencies - long time reliable
What makes the p44script IDE special is that it is, like all other functionality of the P44 device, fully embedded in the device itself. It does not depend on any external tools or services, not even internet connection - the only thing you need to use it is a web browser.
This makes P44 devices safe for use in professional projects that need to run for decades and stay maintainable. At any point in time you can be confident you'll be able to inspect and adjust settings and scripts - because everything you need for that is on the device itself. The entire configuration including all scripting can be backed up as a single file, and restored to the same or a new device in its entiety.
Experimenting and learning
On the other hand, p44script and SmartLEDs are a good tool to learn programming and experiment with various DIY hardware - that's why the free P44-DSB-X and P44-LC-X images for RaspberryPi exist.
Grab a RPi (those old B+ are fine for that..) and some WS281x LEDs and make a atmospheric light in the holiday - which will seamlessly integrate into your Digital Strom and/or matter SmartHome, exactly like the commercial P44 devices. If you have questions or need help - be it professional or fun project, just ask in the plan44 forum.
Last minute shopping
Or, if you don't like DIY, but would still like the LED torch - there are still a few ready to buy (CH delivery addresses only) in the plan44-shop!
Cooperation for matter certification of the P44 units
For the certification of the Matter Bridge component, plan44 was able to enter into a cooperation with the company Becker-Antriebe, a renowned German manufacturer of roller shutter and sun protection drives.
Since on both sides the interfaces to the respective systems were already future-proof and modularly designed, the Matter connection can now be elegantly implemented in a joint open source project based on the plan44 Matter Bridge application.
In this way, the concrete experiences of plan44 with the Matter SDK and the beta test with the Matter connection of the P44 products, which has already been running for several months, are efficiently combined with the abilities of a larger company in the area of organisation and implementation of certification.
Work on the joint project is already in full progress, and it is foreseeable that certification can be carried out in a few months already. In the meantime, the Matter beta software for the P44 devices will of course be continuously improved and will continue to be available to interested plan44 customers.
More info:
Support documentation
Online for a while, but still (too) little known: the support documentation for installers and everyone who works with P44 DSB units.
Despite the variety of possible devices, the integration of DALI+EnOcean devices with P44-DSB/P44-LC is generally quite simple and works with little configuration.
Nevertheless, there is no such thing as technology without problems, and especially with DALI there are very different DALI drivers that require a little more care depending on the situation, to ensure that everything works properly.
To make sure that installations and support cases can be solved as quickly and well as possible, there has been a detailed section on installation and support in the Technical Documentation since the end of 2022.
You will find a lot of help and answers to questions that sometimes arise during installation, commissioning and maintenance, e.g.
- Tips on selecting DALI devices (topic: unique identification)
- Safe procedures for troubleshooting and for adding DALI to existing installations
- Radio range and external antennas for EnOcean
- Logs, loglevels, focusing on a problematic device
- Remote maintenance from P44-DSB/P44-LC directly to the unit without going via dSS
- Checklist for efficient support requests to plan44
- etc.
I am also happy to receive tips from the field on what is perhaps still missing or should be described better. Otherwise, I hope this documentation helps you with new and existing projects with P44-DSB and P44-LC devices!
Happy New Year!
Thank you for your trust in the P44 products, your feedback, your ideas for new features and sometimes your patience in solving problems! 2023 will be an exciting year for the SmartHome, I hope you will continue to be part of it!
Many things will be exciting in 2023 - certainly including seeing where the text and image AIs that became widely available at the end of 2022 will take us. The image for this text, for example, was created by Midjourney with the prompt "The future and power of open source standards, abstract, geometric, calm, clean smart tech look, many joyful colours ".
For the SmartHome, 2023 will be exciting to see the adoption of matter. Although this new standard was already published in October 2022 and many manufacturers have shown or announced devices, there is still very little on the market.
So there were probably hardly any matter gadgets under the tree, even for smart home fans...
But if you have a P44-DSB or P44-LC, you can already try it out now as a beta. Or if you like to do some tinkering over the holidays, likewise - the do-it-yourself LED torch from last year or other LED setups become a matter bridge with the new beta SD card image for P44-DSB-X or P44-LC-X standalone controller. With this, you can already say "Hey Siri, switch on the torch", and much more, see Youtube-Video...
Soon in 2023, however, things should really get going with matter, when many of the announced products and updates actually become available.
For the installation industry, matter opens up above all a new long-term opportunity: Smarthome-capable infrastructure!
Because matter is to the smarthome what the power socket was to electrification 100 years ago - a standard so that the building-side infrastructure can be connected to (and disconnected from) the customer-side devices in a simple way.
If matter-enabled devices (such as P44-LC-DE) are installed in a fixed installation, the future users can determine the mobile part of the smarthome themselves and bring it along with them. Whether they prefer to use Alexa or Siri, have chosen iPhones or Android, Apple or Samsung, or even use a combination of everything - it no longer makes any difference.
What also makes matter special: the software is open source. Not only big companies, but also small ones like plan44 can join in (there are still problems in the area of certification, which will hopefully get more attention in 2023).
In this sense - a happy new year - in which we will hopefully see a lot of the illustrative "future and power of open source standards", not only in the SmartHome!
Interview with plan44 at matter-smarthome.de
Frank-Oliver Grün interviews me about opportunities and problems with matter for a micro company like plan44
The questions revolve around technology and product development, but also in particular around the certification of matter devices developed in micro companies and/or arising from open source projects.
Link to the interview on matter-smarthome.de: Taking the open source path to the end
Playing with matter-beta on plan44.ch devices
A short Youtube video showing what already works with the current beta firmware for P44-DSB devices with matter, DALI, hue, SmartLEDs and digitalSTROM.
Watch the video on youtube.
matter and P44 devices
What is "matter" and what does it mean for users of plan44 devices?
This week the new SmartHome standard matter was published.
What it is all about and what it means for users of P44-DSB and P44-LC devices is explained on the new matter page at plan44.ch/matter
Tutorial: Dynamic color scenes with P44-DSB / P44-LC
The P44-DSB / P44-LC "scene scripts" can be used to create dynamic scenes for any CW/WW or color luminaire, whether DALI, hue or SmartLEDs.
In the "Tutorial" section of the plan44 TechDoku there are now two new directly applicable examples for this:
Newly opened: the plan44.ch community forum
The community forum aims to exchange questions, answers, ideas, projects with and around the the P44 products and OpenSource, and to complement the support.
The forum has its own RSS feed, which can be subscribed to separately besides this general Plan44 news feed with the link forum.plan44.ch/atom/discussions
Tutorial: DIY LED-torch with Rpi+P44-xx-X
In the new "Tutorial" section there is now a detailed guide how to create a "torch" using the free P44-DSB-X or P44-DSB-LC on a RaspberryPi connected to a WS281x SmartLED strip
The tutorial section is part of the "plan44 tech docs", where you can find a lot of advanced information about the P44-DSB and P44-LC devices, especially about the possibilities offered by the built-in scripting language 'p44script'.
The instructions for building the "Torch" explain step by step with pictures and videos how to build the decorative "Torch" - but also show the basics of working with SmartLEDs and P44-LC/DSB, which can also be used for other projects.
Go to the "Torch" construction manual: plan44.ch/p44-techdocs/en/tutorials/p44torch
To the plan44 tech docs entry page: plan44.ch/p44-techdocs/en