Best retrofit smart home new build

And the support is world-class! You haven’t even finished listening to the announcement at Gira as quickly as someone at MDT has already solved your problem.

MDT will definitely make it to the shortlist

I also think the glass switches don’t look bad at all in the pictures

how is it done with the KNX smart home regarding the sockets?

are all sockets made controllable in the switch cabinet or is that possible as flush-mounted?

I intended to convert a single socket into a double or triple socket later by myself.
I know someone who would do that for me.

How would one do that with the KNX smart home? Have all sockets installed and made controllable directly or only selected ones?

Do you make all sockets controllable in the control cabinet or is it possible as flush-mounted?

It is possible, but more expensive because more hardware is required. You also don’t have to make all sockets switchable, so probably one or two five-core supply lines per room are sufficient. Then you can decide later yourself which sockets should be switchable and possibly add some more.

so I am supposed to have all sockets installed with five-core cables?

how would the sockets then be made switchable later?

The ones you want to make switchable can be placed in the distribution board. Placing "all" star-shaped in the distribution board is, in my opinion, exaggerated, but I have seen it done before. That way you have freedom later. However, it costs more copper accordingly and you should also leave enough space free in the distribution board. Later, the cables that were originally directly on terminal blocks would simply be routed via the actuators. But the electrician has to prepare it properly so that this works later.

In case of emergency, there are also KNX-RF switching actuators that can be installed flush in the box, provided there is still space.

But: First consider what you actually want to switch. For example, a TV is usually not switched off hard; they don't like that at all. Then there are floor lamps or some effect lighting (keyword: sockets in the window reveals). Often, major appliances are also made switchable because this also allows power measurement for other scenarios on request.

But if at some point it's only about a floor lamp, it can also be solved with Hue bulbs, for example. There are quite a few gateways for that. For such emergencies, I have come to appreciate the TP-Link KASA bulbs at my place; they run directly on WLAN and are directly integrated into my control system.

Just to make it a bit clearer: The most extreme option is to connect every socket with three wires directly from the distribution board. Then you can - logically - switch each socket individually from there. If you only do this for a few sockets, you can only switch those few sockets, but not the others at all. A reasonable compromise for me - especially if it is not yet exactly defined which sockets should be switchable - is the option of connecting each room directly to the distribution board with a five- or possibly even seven-wire cable and then going from socket to socket within the room with five- or seven-wire cable. This way you can use up to two or up to four switching groups per room and only need to connect the sockets accordingly to assign them to one of the three/five groups (group one is always constant power).

Despite all the theory, I would still like to point out that the idea of switchable lamps at the socket sounds good at first, but in practice it sometimes fails because modern lamps stay off when the power supply is switched on and then need to be switched on using their built-in switch.