Under way
Design, Implementation, and Evaluation of an Open Source KNX Bus System for Building Automation
Type of work:
Bachelor Thesis
Assignment:
In this work, an open-source KNX device demonstrator based on the Selfbus project (selfbus.org) shall be developed, implemented, and evaluated. For this purpose, a first demo application from Selfbus shall be built in hardware and thoroughly tested. In a second step, an open system with standard communication interfaces for sensors (e.g. I2C, SPI, ...) shall be drafted, realized, integrated into an existing KNX environment, and evaluated.
Skills:
- C/C++
- Network and bus technologies
- Microcontrollers
Background:
One of the biggest challenges in building automation is the mismatch between prospective usage periods of buildings (in general > 30 years) and the fast progress in information and embedded technology used for building sensing, control, and intelligence (mostly < 5 years lifetime).
Open source technologies and standards can help to bridge this gap by making technologies, interfaces, and applications transparent and maintainable by a growing community. KNX is one of the most popular building automation standards. However, although this standard is open, a proprietary management software (ETS) is required for provisioning KNX devices. The Selfbus project aims at providing an open solution for creating own KNX devices that can be configured with the ETS.
Supervisor:
Student:
Yu Xiao
Year:
2026