A system that emails you when something’s wrong

DRAFT — to be approved.

In many homes the most important equipment works on its own. The heat pump has its own panel, the ventilation unit has another, the energy meters have none at all. If one of them stops, you find out when the house gets cold — or when the bill arrives.

In some flats we worked on in 2025 and 2026, we changed that with a supervision system.

What we did

The electrics were already on KNX: lighting, blinds and thermostats all spoke the same language. The equipment didn’t.

We installed a LogicMachine controller, which speaks two languages: KNX and Modbus, the standard many pieces of plant use to communicate. Over Modbus we connected:

• the heat pump, to read temperatures, status and alarms;
• the mechanical ventilation unit, for fan speed and filters;
• the energy meters, to see how much the home uses.

From then on everything appears on one screen, and the KNX system can send commands to the equipment too.

The part that really matters: alerts

Seeing the data is useful. Getting an alert is better.

We set thresholds: if a temperature drifts out of range or a unit faults, an automatic email goes out. A watchdog checks that the supervision system itself is running, so silence is never mistaken for “all fine”.

For one of these installations we also wrote two manuals: a user guide for the people who live there, and an installation manual for whoever works on it after us.

What we took away

• Equipment talks, if you connect it. Plenty of units already have a Modbus port nobody uses.
• Less is more. A few clear alerts are worth more than a hundred charts.
• Documentation is part of the job. A well-explained system is easier to maintain, by anyone.

When programming the scripts we also used artificial intelligence as an aid; we then checked every line on the system itself.

Want to know more? See supervision and BMS.