Thread Innovation Award-winner Atouch leverages Cascoda’s KNX IoT platform for seamless development and quick time to market
Atouch Winwel is no stranger when it comes to innovative smart building and high-end smart home solutions. As one of the leading Portuguese manufacturers and suppliers of home automation technologies, they have always been on the forefront of selecting technologies that offer the best solutions to the high demands of their customers.
It’s therefore unsurprising that Atouch is also full-in on KNX. After all, the world’s largest building and home automation platform has several decades of proven reliability under its belt, and its wide ecosystem of products means that an optimal solution is almost always available. That’s not only good for the end-users that will enjoy their smart and robust smart home set-up. It’s also great for the system architects and installers who are sure to work with proven technologies which will delight their customers.
The quest for flexible retrofitting
Atouch was already a specialist in making things easy for architects and installers. To provide installers with yet more flexibility they searched for a technology that would enable seamless retrofitting of existing lighting control buttons, without the need for breaking walls to pull extra cables for control and power. Of course, all of this while still being integrated natively into KNX systems and be instantly familiar to set-up.
Atouch ended up with KNX IoT, the IP-native variant of KNX that uses existing IP infrastructure, like ethernet and Wi-Fi, to connect to the rest of the KNX installation. To provide the best reliability and range, while being extremely low power consuming, KNX IoT’s primary networking technology is Thread.
Teaming up for the ultimate keypad
The Atouch glass keypad is renowned for its stylish design, wide range of functions and ease of use for end-users. As Atouch wanted to develop a Thread-based KNX IoT variant of this keypad, they looked for a reliable platform to build this product on. They had a few requirements, most importantly that it should provide a level of connectivity that is at least as reliable as their wired solutions. And a quick time to market was essential.
Atouch selected the KNX IoT platform modules from UK-based Cascoda as the basis of their product. Cascoda’s KNX IoT Thread modules incorporate patented transceiver technology that provides the best receiver sensitivity in the industry. And since Cascoda provides the entire suit of technologies, from the chip design to the software stack, and from the modules to the border routers and network extenders, they were a one-stop-shop for Atouch to develop the product and offer it as a native solution to their KNX customers.
Quick development and certification
Combining their joint advantages, the engineers from Atouch and Cascoda quickly finished up the product, and got it through CE, Thread and KNX certification. It ended up being the first fully certified KNX IoT keypad. According to the KNX Association staff on the Iberian peninsula, the Atouch glass panel went through one of the fastest certification-processes they have ever experienced.
No wires – all the power
The final product, the Atouch KNX-K4IoT, proved to be a beloved addition to the line-up for system architects and installers alike. It can be installed quickly without cumbersome drilling and rewiring. It can be natively integrated into the rest of the KNX system and be configured in ETS as usual. And since the actuator is built-in, there is no need for separate wiring for control and power. It just replaces any existing traditional light or shutter control buttons.
All communication goes via the low-power 2.4 GHz wireless Thread network. Cascoda’s Thread border routers natively connect to the KNX infrastructure and neatly handle all the network traffic. The panels can even act as Thread routing devices in the network, forming a seamless mesh, to even further extend its range and reliability. Another peace-of-mind addition to the proposition that puts it above traditional wireless technologies like Wi-Fi.
Lightening up installer’s lives
The Atouch panel allows for dynamic and flexible configuration of a wide range of usage options, from setting lighting intensity and colors to operating window blinds and shutters, using either one-touch or sliding operations, even on the same panel. It even has an integrated temperature sensor, indicator led and audible speaker. With a single panel, end-users are being presented with several exiting new enhancements to their smart home or building experience in one go.
Recognition
All of this went not unnoticed by the Thread Group, the organization that developed the Thread connectivity standard and is constantly on the look-out to improve the specification to even further extend its possibilities. They recognized the development efforts that went into the product leading up to it being one of Thread technology’s best use case examples, which lead to them assigning the Thread Innovation Enabler Award to Atouch.