A building with a fully operational KNX installation, but completely frozen: this is a situation GET Conseil regularly encounters among landlords and owners of commercial or professional property. The bus worked, the equipment responded — but without the ETS project file, nobody could change anything any more.
An operational installation, but completely frozen
The building had a working KNX installation: lighting, shutters and heating all controlled from the bus, running day to day without issue. But the ETS project file — the one that documents the group addresses and the installation’s logic — was nowhere to be found, and the original integrator could no longer be reached. The result: any change, even a minor one, had become impossible without risking breaking what already worked.
It’s a more common situation than you’d think, particularly among landlords and owners of commercial or professional property: a building changes hands, or managing agent, and the technical documentation for the home automation installation doesn’t always follow.
Listening to the bus rather than redoing everything
Rather than proposing to replace the installation — a heavy, unjustified expense since the existing equipment worked fine — GET Conseil installed an IP gateway on the KNX bus. This gateway makes it possible to listen to the frames in circulation and gradually identify the group addresses used by each piece of equipment, with no need for the original ETS file.
Home Assistant as a new control layer
Once the objects were identified, the installation was integrated into Home Assistant. This step changes everything: interactions with the existing equipment become editable again, new scenarios can be created, and new equipment can be added over time — without ever touching the physical wiring already in place.
Result: an installation that’s evolvable again, and controllable day to day
What seemed frozen became evolvable again. Even better, the installation can now be controlled from a smartphone app, just like a recent home automation installation — an immediate usability gain for the owner, and a real value-boosting argument for the building.
A common case among landlords and professional property
This approach is particularly aimed at landlords and owners of commercial or professional property: a building fitted with KNX is no longer a liability for lack of documentation, but an asset that can be brought up to date without major works. GET Conseil has a dedicated page presenting this KNX installation recovery service with no ETS project, also available as part of our home & building automation offer.
Our KNX installation’s ETS file is lost — can it really be recovered?
Yes. An IP gateway installed on the KNX bus makes it possible to listen to the frames in circulation and identify existing group addresses, with no need for the original ETS file.
Does the existing KNX installation need to be replaced?
No, that’s the whole point of this approach: the physical installation stays in place, we simply connect to it via Home Assistant to make it usable again.
Can the installation really be controlled from a smartphone afterwards?
Yes. Once integrated into Home Assistant, the installation becomes accessible via a mobile app, just like a recent home automation installation.
Is this approach specific to KNX?
The principle — listening to the bus, then integrating via Home Assistant — applies to other frozen home automation installations, but KNX is the most common case for lack of a transmitted ETS project.