Our build is moving on nicely. We should be watertight some time in December 🤞🥳

We’re reviewing our lighting strategy. Current plan is for all (or most) lighting to be DALI-2, controlled via an Atios Smartcore and Home Assistant.

We have quite a few Hager Klik-7 marshalling boxes (more than enough for the whole house) and am thinking that this could be a neat way to run the lighting. We also already have the Smartcore (so I could have a play around with it before committing) and a lot of DALI kit… presence detectors, drivers & luminaires.

There are plenty of convenient accessible spaces to house the boxes.

So… just looking for a sense check really. Any downsides of using the Klik system? We installed a load in our factory/office some years ago (albeit not the DALI version) and without wishing to tempt fate have had zero issues. Made installation a doddle too 👍

Thanks :)

Oh that Atios Smartcore looks good. Not seen it before.

I'm not building atm so haven't been paying a huge amount of attention to new products recently but had previously ruled out DALI due to the lack of interfaces I wanted to use. That Smartcore may change my view.

My main thought on the Hager Klik is cost. It's obviously a huge timesaver in the right place. If you have them anyway and can use them in your layout (without making access worse) then I don't see why not.

Obviously using DALI may put off normal domestic electricians from touching the system but guess you are comfortable with that.

5 minutes ago, -rick- said:

Oh that Atios Smartcore looks good. Not seen it before.

It certainly seems to be a nice bit of kit and very straightforward to use. Proof of the pudding will come in time though… I’ll add my thoughts once it’s been installed for a while :)

5 minutes ago, -rick- said:

I'm not building atm so haven't been paying a huge amount of attention to new products recently but had previously ruled out DALI due to the lack of interfaces I wanted to use. That Smartcore may change my view.

My main thought on the Hager Klik is cost. It's obviously a huge timesaver in the right place. If you have them anyway and can use them in your layout (without making access worse) then I don't see why not.

Yup… they were virtually free, so it seems daft not to consider using them, but otherwise you’re right… not particularly cheap.

5 minutes ago, -rick- said:

Obviously using DALI may put off normal domestic electricians from touching the system but guess you are comfortable with that.

I am… might change my mind in the future though, if/when I have to pay someone else to work on it 😬

So I understand Dali-2 is a hardwired lighting control system. It claims reliability as a result of being hard wired. But hard wiring control to every device and having to choose Dali-2 controllable lights seems like quite a constraint.

The atios smartcore seems to offer a wireless matter interface. But isn't DALI-2 a bit like using ethernet cabling when the flexibility and cost advantages of wifi are available. Technology on the way out rather than the way in ?

Home automation/Smart home used to be a case of paying some specialist installer mega bucks to install systems like Dali, control4 etc And then paying them again every time you wanted them to come back and extend or reprogramme the thing. But Smart Home is breaking out of that mold into ordinary homes and user friendly apps.

I don't know that you are wrong because I don't know Dali or your budget, but maybe are you sure ?

Frankly, I greatly dislike the move to wireless everything in smart home. It's obviously easier for retrofit or DIY installs but if you follow the heavy users of wireless devices a very common complaint is that they are flaky and when there are issues they are difficult to diagnose. Matter/Thread is supposed to make this better but there are plenty of complaints out there about that too. Hard wiring is still the most reliable way to go (and much less hackable if that's a concern).

DALI is traditionally a much more installer thing but this Smartcore looks much better. DALI drivers seem one of the most easily available hard wired 'smart' lighting drivers so if you want to hard wire and have an easy diy friendly control option then it's well worth looking at.

100% agree using wired connection wherever possible / reasonable.

DALI is my preferred technology for lighting. I've had some domestic contractor give a massive markup (additional £100 per point!) for DALI but in reality it should if anything be simpler for them: one loop per floor, no need to route cables from switches to lights, max flexibility if things change during 1st/2nd fix.

On paper DALI is great for CTT , but in practice I found it clogs the bus a lot (maybe a feature of the specific controller more than the protocol) and actually a bit of a gimmick in most residential settings IMHO. And pushes prices up more.

I've never used DALI for sensors (switches nor motion). It seems overkill, heavy gauge wiring for low-power data only connection. I'd keep to KNX or Loxone Tree (on Loxone projects obv) for inputs.

I'd love it if Matter came up with a half-reasonable wired alternative to (natural successor to) KNX but won't hold my breath. And it's only after >30 years on market that KNX has really started getting to a sensible price point for non-luxury builds.

Hager Klik seems overkill for domestic - I just put some DIN terminal blocks with cross-connects for distro in the lighting control panel. Easily expanded and means the only cable junctions are at the light fittings themselves or in the panel.

But if you have the Klik and see a sensible way to use them then why not.

Will be interested in how you get on with the Atios Smartcore. I get increasing enquiries from would be customers wanting a Home-Assistant native house, and as a professional installer it's not been something I can stand behind support wise (just too many ways for it to break IME). But in time it will mature and clearly demand is increasing.
(Don't get me wrong - with my technie consumer hat on I have Home Assistant everywhere !)

36 minutes ago, joth said:

DALI is my preferred technology for lighting. I've had some domestic contractor give a massive markup (additional £100 per point!) for DALI

!! Well that would pay for the Klik PDQ if that saved that uplift

36 minutes ago, joth said:

On paper DALI is great for CTT , but in practice I found it clogs the bus a lot (maybe a feature of the specific controller more than the protocol) and actually a bit of a gimmick in most residential settings IMHO. And pushes prices up more.

Interesting. Can you provide more colour? How many fittings on the bus? Not checked in depth about how DALI works but wonder if the controller was trying to do smooth dimming on many fittings simultaneously step by step rather than using programmed scenes on the devices and using group messages rather than individual addressing. CCT lights should just have equivalent traffic on the bus to two normal lights. RGBWW would be 5x the load.

OTOH I just checked and DALI is only 1200bits/sec though so dog slow compared to modern protocols and not going to do anything fancy with that.

36 minutes ago, joth said:

I've never used DALI for sensors (switches nor motion). It seems overkill, heavy gauge wiring for low-power data only connection. I'd keep to KNX or Loxone Tree (on Loxone projects obv) for inputs.

I'd love it if Matter came up with a half-reasonable wired alternative to (natural successor to) KNX but won't hold my breath. And it's only after >30 years on market that KNX has really started getting to a sensible price point for non-luxury builds.

You can use matter over ethernet and there are some interesting physical layer ethernets out there 10base-t1s allows 8+ devices daisy chained on over a single twisted pair.

36 minutes ago, joth said:

Will be interested in how you get on with the Atios Smartcore. I get increasing enquiries from would be customers wanting a Home-Assistant native house, and as a professional installer it's not been something I can stand behind support wise (just too many ways for it to break IME). But in time it will mature and clearly demand is increasing.
(Don't get me wrong - with my technie consumer hat on I have Home Assistant everywhere !)

How do you deal with these customers? Provide them with the smart stuff connected to something basic like Apple/Google/whatever but ensure everything will work with Home Assistant if they want to switch or just send them away?

19 hours ago, -rick- said:

Frankly, I greatly dislike the move to wireless everything in smart home. It's obviously easier for retrofit or DIY installs but if you follow the heavy users of wireless devices a very common complaint is that they are flaky and when there are issues they are difficult to diagnose. Matter/Thread is supposed to make this better but there are plenty of complaints out there about that too. Hard wiring is still the most reliable way to go (and much less hackable if that's a concern).

Agreed 100%… we’re aiming to minimise the number of wireless connections for this reason. If future wireless options become more robust, we’ve not really lost anything… just a bit of my time and a small outlay for cables. Having spent some time playing with the Atios, it would seem to be quite straightforward 🤞😁

On 19/10/2026 at 16:48, -rick- said:

!! Well that would pay for the Klik PDQ if that saved that uplift

haha, nah I think that contractor would have charged an additional fee for each Kilk in addition to the DALI uplift...

On 19/10/2026 at 16:48, -rick- said:

Interesting. Can you provide more colour? How many fittings on the bus?

Pun intended? LOL

Anyway...

The issue was driving the from Loxone, about 40-50 fixtures per bus. The exact details escape me now, but for a standard DT6, changing DIM level needs one (or two?) commands per fixture, but for DT8 it was taking more like 8 command/response transactions. Including querying a few vendor specific/extension commands. This was from the Loxone built in DALI monitor. It smelt vaguely like a workaround for a specific manufacturer, e.g. the one used widely in Loxone's own HQ or something. (I get feeling a lot of the commercial scale features dev was driven by the build out of their own facility). I can't find the trace now of what it was, I can probably recreate if needed. (Indeed maybe it has been improved since then, I observed this 3 years ago).

The obvious work around is to create DALI groups for each room, which largely masked the issue.

Not my post but other challenges people found with this combo. https://groups.google.com/g/loxone-english/c/IcAXTtPaLO8/m/E2W1VzBEAgAJ

Honestly I mostly avoid CTT now unless customer is dead set on it.

On 19/10/2026 at 16:48, -rick- said:

How do you deal with these customers? Provide them with the smart stuff connected to something basic like Apple/Google/whatever but ensure everything will work with Home Assistant if they want to switch or just send them away?

Yes. For all customers my default position is to think of KNX/Loxone etc as a building control layer: built into the fabric of the building, lives and dies with the building itself, remains there across owners.

If adding consumer based smart tech (Goog/Appl/Amzn or Home Assistant) structure this over the the top: be methodical in use of the Loxone or KNX API such that failure/removal of the higher level smart home controller stack doesn't break the house. That smart tech lives with the occupier of the building and would typically move with them on house sale.

Of course it rarely works this cleanly in practice! but I find it's a solid strategy to build from.

Separately, for recent uptick in prospective customers mandating a Home-Assistant centred architecture, I'm increasingly turning down or just ignoring the requests, much as it pains me to admit it. They generally involve a lot of chat that ultimately goes nowhere, and I'm increasingly convinced their specifications are being regurgitated by AI and the customer themselves have little clue what it is they're actually asking for. A true Home Assistant enthusiast would of course not pay someone else, they'd be all over setting it up themselves (perhaps with a Claude assist to get there). The people sending these queries are increasingly asking for the impossible, a professionally installed and robust solution, but where the installer hands over root access, revokes their own keys. Yet still warranties the product, whatever the customer might do to it.

It of course makes total sense that AI would specify Home Assistant above pretty much any other solution these days: being open source, AI has total visibility not just of the source code itself but pretty much all the developer and user documentation and discussions. The premium closed-source solutions like creston, control 4 and largely even KNX & Loxone, are an information desert in comparison. Whenever I ask gemini for suggestions or guidance to integrate two random technologies together, it always reaches for Home Assistant, so of course they all are doing so for all consumers.

I do need to work out how to engage with these enquires more thoughtfully, they're often really interesting projects (and with seemingly deep pockets), it just doesn't leave much space for designing a solution I can stand behind when the customer's AI has led them up a different path. ("Home assistant will integrate and control everything; everything will still work even if Home Assistant crashes")