An interview with Satja Lumbar, CEO of technical building supplier 1Home. The company from Berlin with offices in Slovenia offers a Matter server for KNX and relies heavily on the new smart home standard. Lumbar explains why this is the case and why he believes Matter is becoming important for professional installers.
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Mr. Lumbar, 1Home’s new product is a device that connects the KNX building standard with Matter. But where did you originally come from and what else do you offer?
Satja Lumbar: All began in 2017 when our Founder Gregor Rebolj bought an apartment. He put KNX in that flat and liked the system, its stability and robustness. But he didn’t like the fact why he could not control the installation with Alexa voice service. That really bothered him. And since he’s also a programmer at his core, he basically did a prototype of a KNX to Alexa solution. This is how the firm started.
In the beginning, we had a cloud-based product with subscription. And as a lot of people were asking themselves the same question, they were searching for a solution on the internet. We had nice growth, but we quickly realized that if you really want to scale in this business you need to work with system professionals, integrators, distributors. And a cloud product with subscription-based charging was not a type of product the integrators would lightly accept. So, we decided to build a physical product that talks to KNX and can be installed in the electrical cabinet.
We have added other things such as secure access to the customer’s ETS, so integrators can carry out programming remotely. Control with Apple was added as an addition to Alexa. We integrated a special algorithm that made it easier for them to configure devices, since the device/room/actuator structure from an ETS (KNX project file) was automatically recognized and transferred to our 1Home environment. This was our first hardware product, the 1Home Bridge.
“We decided to take a risk and be the first on the market with a KNX to Matter device.”
And now you are entering the market with a Matter product, while other companies in the KNX environment are still waiting and watching. Why this early entry?
Lumbar: We had Matter on our radar early on. It showed great promise because in wireless there is no real interoperability. You always must check if a device will work with your phone. Or your wife’s phone. And if it works with the devices that you bought previously. So, we felt that Matter can really be a big thing and decided to take a risk. The risk to be the first on the market with a KNX to Matter device.
You already had a bridge that connected KNX with systems such as Alexa and Apple Home. Couldn’t it have been converted into a Matter Bridge?
Lumbar: Our first device was unable to support Matter because it didn’t have IPv6 connectivity. There were also other limitations, such as memory storage. And we were not using our own hardware, it came from a German company, Weinzierl. So we decided to build our own customized hardware and support Matter on top of that. This is how the 1Home Server was born in October 2023. And it was really, really well received by the market. Since then, we have sold more than 5,000 items – in less than half a year.
“5,000 items have been sold – in less than half a year.”
But essentially, this new server is also a Bridge …
Lumbar: We decided to release the server with a basic functionality, so that this main functionality is working really well. But we already announced two new features. One is 1Home Automations. Because with the 1Home Bridge, we didn’t have any automations on our product and many integrators told us they missed them.
The good news: automations are coming with an update planned for April 8, 2024. And of course, all the servers that were purchased before that date will get this update free of charge. With the release, we will raise the price of the server and then there will be another feature update at the end of June. It enables communication in both directions – from Matter into a KNX installation and vice versa from there to products that use the Matter standard.
So the Matter Bridge becomes some kind of Matter Controller as well?
Lumbar: Our integrators are confronted with such requirements all the time. For example, they have a KNX project, but then customers come and want to have their Philips Hue system integrated – to control the lights from the KNX system using a normal push button. Or someone wants to lease an apartment on Airbnb and would like to install a Nuki Smartlock or something similar for access control. All things that were previously not so easy with KNX. These are primarily the problems that we are solving with a Matter Controller functionality. But we are also looking more long term. Basically, we want to take the Matter part and put it into a new product.
“There is a 300x bigger market of smart retrofit ready homes that will never get rewired.”
Stand-alone Matter controllers are already available from Apple, Google and others. Why should you build your own?
Lumbar: Because we want to enable system integrators to do retrofit projects with Matter. The big companies like Apple, Google and Samsung are not looking at the system integrator. According to them, you buy devices online, bring them home and configure them yourself. But us coming from KNX, we understand that there is no real smart home without a system integrator. Because either you don’t have the time to select and configure all the devices, or you don’t have the necessary knowledge. However, we also know that with KNX we only reach around 10 to 20 percent of customers who are building new houses or doing complete renovations. There is a 300x bigger market of smart retrofit ready homes that will never get rewired and whose owners don’t buy products online. This is what we’re really looking at, the Vision of 1Home.
Would you explain such a professional retrofitting with Matter in more detail?
Lumbar: Let’s assume you want to retrofit a home with Matter. Then you buy products for lighting, shading, doors etc. from different manufacturers and there are probably different setup processes. Today, as a system integrator, you would need the customer’s smartphone to set everything up. Most integrators already say no thank you at this point.
What we want to do is offer them a way to bring any Matter device into 1Home with a unified procedure. There the integrator can control them, has automations and the option of remote maintenance and remote access to the system. At the end, the entire installation is handed over to the customer – with a QR code that end users scan with their favorite Matter app on their personal smartphone. We think in this way we can enable various system integrators to offer a Matter-based smart home for, I don’t know, 2,000 to 5,000 euros. It allows them to address this market for the first time, which they were previously unable to target.
“We think we can enable integrators to offer a Matter-based smart home for 2,000 to 5,000 Euros.”
Why should integrators get involved with Matter? They receive a much higher margin on KNX products?
Lumbar: It’s true that in an KNX project you will have a much larger margin. But it’s also true that such a project needs two or three months to complete, maybe more than a year. Matter is primarily about configuration. In the time required for a KNX project, perhaps 100 or even more Matter homes can be realized. This compensates for the lower margin. Furthermore, the markets differ from country to country.
In Slovenia, where I come from, a system integrator receives a margin on the sale of KNX devices and adds around half the price of the devices on top for his service. In Germany, I met many integrators that don’t even sell the equipment – they leave this part and the margin to the electrician – but at the same time they charge more for the service. We can assume that in this kind of budget distribution it really doesn’t matter how much margin you make on the physical equipment. At the end of the day, it all depends very much on how the budget is distributed.
In professional use, reliability is also important. KNX has proven itself to be a solid and stable system. As you know, Matter has not yet reached that stage.
Lumbar: Of course, Matter is still young, and it has its problems. Although I’m happy to say there is progress. I’m an early adopter of Matter and bought everything when it became available. My first Thread bulbs from Nanoleaf, for example, got unpaired regularly. But now, eight months later, I never get any Problems with them anymore. Probably we will define the set of devices for which we can guarantee that they work well. But our solution is not developed yet and, in a few months, things should become even more stable.
Is this the reason why many suppliers from the professional building technology sector still have a wait-and-see attitude? There are very few announcements from this sector.
Lumbar: Matter is heavily on all radars, I would say. ABB bought Eve Systems, Gira showed a case study at this year’s Light + Building, Schneider Electric is preparing Matter support on its Wiser Server, as far as I have heard, Domovea from Hager will also get it …
But there is no general upbeat mood for Matter…
Lumbar: You need to know that there is a similar kind of protocol being developed within KNX. It’s called KNX IoT, but it’s moving slow. And there is a lot of friction in some traditional companies. They see Matter gaining traction and at the same time there is difference of opinion whether they should wait for KNX IoT as a retrofit solution. Because KNX IoT will have all the installer tools from the get-go. But right now, you only have three devices on the market, the choice is much more limited than with Matter.
“KNX IoT is moving slow. There is a lot of friction in some traditional companies.”
And above all, Matter is already really present in the media. People have heard about it, which is important. In the past, there were many promising wireless technologies such as Z-Wave or Zigbee. But if you ask anyone on the street about them, no one knows them. But for Matter already people know, and why do they know it? In my opinion, it’s because the big guys are on board. Apple is there, Google is there, Samsung is there, they are all talking Matter. That’s why normal customers, who have never heard of KNX and do not know any KNX providers, are interested. And with this kind of traction, standards are rising really fast.
Will Matter change the way buildings are automated?
Lumbar: I think so, and that’s a good thing. ETS is a practical solution. It has its pros and cons, but at the end of the day, you can do a lot of things within that software tool. On the other hand, you need a lot of know-how to do so. You need to understand electrical processes, machinery and so on, and then you need to be able to define all that in ETS. And not every integrator works at the highest level and can exploit all possibilities. They do lighting control, shading, basic HVAC and so on. But when they have to do a complex smart shading algorithm based on outside and inside temperature, the weather station and more, things get tricky.
“I think that an interface to make all of that easier is necessary.”
We feel that the basic kind of switching lights on and off will not be enough anymore. Enabling maybe not so well-versed system integrators to perform complex functions and these functions are really what is needed to save energy, have some health benefits etcetera. So basically, I think that an interface to make all of that easier is necessary. Incidentally, this is what is already happening today with systems such as Gira One or 1Home. Matter just significantly expands the possibilities.
Mr. Lumbar, thank you very much for this interview.
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