DomBus: Rock-Solid, Wired home automation Modules for Domoticz

[psubiaco]

Hi everyone!

If you’ve ever dealt with a Zigbee bulb falling off the network, or a Wi-Fi sensor lagging because of interference, you know that wires are still king when it comes to mission-critical home automation.

We’d like to introduce the DomBus ecosystem, natively developed for Domoticz through the Creasol DomBus plugin, available from github and also from Python Plugin Manager. More info in the wiki, https://wiki.domoticz.com/Creasol_Dombus

Why RS485 instead of Wireless?

While Wi-Fi and Zigbee are great for retrofitting, a truly stable smart home (especially for lighting, shutters, and security) benefits from a wired backbone.

• Zero RF Interference: No more “Entity not available” because someone turned on the microwave.

• Ultra-Low Latency: Instant response times for switches, alarm sensors, relays, ...

• Power over Bus: A single thin 4-wire cable for 12/24V power supply + Data communication, easy to connect with any bus topology (linear, star, mixed), much better than LAN cable. No batteries to change. Ever.

• Ultra-Low power: our modules consumes typically less than 15mW when operating, +75mW for each relay output in ON state. DomBus36 consumes less than 750mW with all 12 relays ON! Do you know how much a Shelly/Sonoff/ESP32 consumes?

Creasol DomBus plugin

We know that hardware is only as good as its integration. Our DomBus python plugin works perfectly with Domoticz since 2019, successfully managing dozens of modules corresponding to several hundreds of devices without any pain or fault.

• Plug & Play: It talks directly to your USB-RS485 adapter.

• Your DomBus modules (DomBus12, DomBus31, DomBusTH, DomBusEVSE to make your DIY wallbox, etc.) appear automatically in Domoticz as soon as you connect them

• 100% Local: No cloud, no external APIs. If your internet goes down, your house keeps running perfectly.

For those nostalgic for radio connections, it is still possible to connect the DomBus modules via WiFi, LAN and simple RS485/RF modules operating at 433 and 868 MHz

What can you do with DomBus?

Our modules are designed to fit into your electrical cabinet (DIN rail) or behind wall switches:

• Multi-I/O Modules: Control 12+ inputs/outputs from a single module.

• Climate Control: temperature sensors (NTC probes) connected to analog inputs, or temperature/humidity sensor already integrated in the very tiny DomBusTH board.

• Energy Management: Interface with heat pumps, boiler, meters via solid, wired connections.

• Electric Vehicle Charinging: full-feature EVSE module to make your full-features DIY wallbox

• Single/Dual Axis Solar Tracker controller: using DomBusTracker2 module

Get Started

• DomBus plugin

• Full Hardware Documentation

• PDF catalog

• Our store with all DomBus modules and starter kits: store.creasol.it

We are looking for feedback from the community! Whether you are building a new house or renovating a single room, we’d love to hear how you’d use a wired RS485 system to make your setup more “bulletproof.” Thanks a lot!

For any support request, please reply on this topic or contact Creasol by Telegram or Whatsapp.

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[gizmocuz]

Looking great!

I personally never had a failing Zigbee bulb (okey, one time the bulb was end-of-life), it is a very reliable protocol once you have a good mesh network.
And if you have a WiFi bulb (wonder what hardware does that... something in the cloud?), you have more things to worry about then a light bulb... Aldo it is a good indicator you have to fix your wifi

Hardware looks solid!

[lost]

I personally never had a failing Zigbee bulb...

IMO, this remark was about any faulty radio device may block others: I have some zwave PIRs of 2 types, the 'eye' from Fibaro and it's chinese copy from Neo-Coolcam. I have to be very careful with Neo devices that does not manage battery correctly: I had them continuously sending false detection at 20% reported remaining battery. This adds noise and can even take most of such mesh network bandwidth... and zwave proved much more reliable/interoperable (possible issues are mostly at device inclusion) than zigbee for me. Did go with the later for newest additions because I dislike zwaveJS & kept OZW for my legacy stuff.

For wifi, that's even worse to rely on it as pocket devices sending continuous deauth on every network they find looks now widely used, as an alternative to jammers, by robbers to disable wifi IP cameras. Even think about monitoring deauth attempts frequency as a former clue something bad may be ongoing around my home (for instance to lower my sensors added weight over a time slice thresholds, as a temporary alarm sensitivity increase)!