News
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