KNX Development including IoT: the full picture

Added possibilities

Because of the KNX IoT project, another dimension has been added to the development possibilities for KNX.

Reference is made to the below picture summarizing the text.

First let us concentrate on the KNX Classic world:

For a manufacturer wishing to continue developing “pure” KNX devices, the possibility remains to purchase lower layer chips supporting one of the specified transmission techniques across Twisted Pair and Radio Frequency and designing a KNX Classic stack and a KNX Classic Application on top of that. Strictly speaking, also when making the above-mentioned products based on KNXnet/IP, this would still qualify as a “pure” KNX device, as for these devices the well-known KNX frame is tunneled in an IP frame.
Some manufacturers may also be interested in contributing to the infrastructure of the KNX classic system, e.g. cable manufacturers providing recognized or certified cable for Twisted Pair installations.
A manufacturer designing a KNX product (e.g. a powerful display) may opt to also add the ETS Inside server functionality to it, thus allowing installers to configure through his product via the ETS inside client installed on a mobile platform a KNX installation.
A manufacturer offering KNX products or a software development company may opt to concentrate on offering via the MyKNX platform functional extensions to the ETS design & configuration tool via “ETS Apps”.

The KNX IoT specifications adds the following additional possibilities:

Development of a KNX IoT 3^rd Party Gateway, i.e. a device that “southbound” contains the same lower layer KNX chips and KNX stack, but on top of that contains an IP stack tuned to KNX (supporting the KNX IoT 3^rd Party API) and a physical connection to the IP network;
The same as above, but supporting the KNX IoT Point API;
Such KNX IoT 3^rd Party Gateways then allow software developers to realize KNX IoT 3^rd Party Clients transporting KNX data even to cloud applications, in turn then offering services;
Development of a KNX IoT Point API device that only has an IP stack tuned to KNX (supporting the KNX IoT Point API) and a physical connection to the IP network. Such IP field level device could then communicate to a Point API to Classic Gateway or another KNX IoT Point API device.

All of the above is or will become configurable and manageable in the current or a future version of the ETS.