We recently got balanced ventilation installed, and I have interfaced it with Home Assistant. However — the ventilation unit have three “special modes” that can not be enabled through the Modbus interface; fireplace, kitchen, and override. These can only be set on the touch panel, mobile app, or through inputs terminals on the controller.

So I repurposed an old project and made a three-relay Wi-Fi controlled module, using MQTT to send commands and receive statuses.

Then used Home Assistant to automate it 🙂

Using a few cheap sensors, a wireless keypad, Zigbee2MQTT and Home Assistant; I was able to get a basic security alarm up and running during a free afternoon 🙂

We recently got balanced ventilation installed, and discovered that our ventilation unit has Modbus TCP/IP support. I even found a thread on the Home Assistant community talking about interfacing the C6 controller, which our unit has, into Home Assistant 😃

Here is my implementation 👇

Our house was first built as a log cabin in 1890, then extended in the 1950s, and again extended and completely renovated in 2000. It’s well insulated, and has no drafts — it seems to be relatively airtight.

Great for keeping the heat in, not so great for the air quality. Add the fact that we didn’t have a single fresh air vent, only those tiny trickle vents above the windows. What you are left with is a house with bad air quality.

So we installed a balanced ventilation system 🙂

The first network run I did in this house — was to the hallway access point. It ran along the basement stairwell ceiling, through the basement, and into the home office.

Since I’m already running hidden network cables in the same area, I figured why not hide this one as well 🙂

Invisible cables are the best kind of cables!