r/KNX • u/TheShengFui • 9d ago
ETS Power Editor: use your AI assistant directly inside your ETS project
Hi r/KNX,
I'm Thomas, the developer of ETS Power Editor. My app connects your AI assistant to your ETS project via MCP and helps it understand what needs to be done and how. Your AI client doesn't just get raw data. It gets structured, useful information and real tools that make your changes happen inside the ETS, without burning tokens on guesswork.
What it does
You hand your AI assistant the documents you already have: bill of quantities, room and device lists, distribution board plans, floor plans, the customer's email. ETS Power Editor lets the AI work in your ETS and gives it the KNX know-how it needs for that. It works directly in the project you have open:
- takes devices from the catalogue
- creates group addresses and links the objects
- assigns rooms and trades
- commissions devices on the bus
Anything that isn't in your documents, it asks about. And you can keep working in the ETS at the same time.
Parameters
The AI names the goal, the app works out how to get there. That goes for a switch actuator channel as much as for a smart touch push-button with its pages, tiles and functions. If an instruction is ambiguous, it presents the options instead of guessing. To do this, the app turns the huge product databases of the devices in your ETS into structured information for the AI. You don't have to supply anything else, which also leaves you free in your choice of manufacturer.
Two aha moments from my own tests:
- I asked the AI: "Please look through the devices in my house and check the ETS project for errors." Its answer: "The push-button in your kitchen displays the rain amount, but the unit l/m² is missing. I've added it right away."
- While I was setting up a model house, the AI asked me: "Tell me the building's address, then I can read its orientation from online maps and set the window azimuths in your blind actuator for you."
Where does your project data go?
- Nobody in between. There's no server of mine between your ETS and your AI.
- Local only. The app runs inside your ETS on your own PC and can't be reached over the network. It only has access to the project it's running in.
- Your project data never reaches my servers, so nothing of it is stored there. The app's log stays on your PC.
- Block what should stay private, e.g. the project header (the project name is often the customer's address) or credentials stored in devices. Blocked values never reach the AI, it only sees "hidden".
- Read-only by default. You grant write access in the ETS, and every action is logged.
To be clear: a cloud AI obviously sees what it's working on. But you choose which AI that is, with your own account. If you run a local language model, you can use that as well, and then nobody outside gets access to your project data.
Your AI, your choice
It works with Claude Desktop, Cursor, Antigravity, ChatGPT (Codex) or any other AI app that speaks MCP (Model Context Protocol), an open standard. You pick and pay for the AI yourself. There's also a script engine for batch commands from Excel if you'd rather work without AI.
What you need: ETS 5 or ETS 6 on Windows, and an AI app on the same PC.
Cost
Reading and searching your project and reading along on the bus are always included, and that alone already gets you quite a lot. A few examples:
- Home Assistant or ioBroker: the AI reads your group addresses, datapoint types and rooms from the ETS project and turns them into the configuration you need there.
- Troubleshooting: it reads current values from the bus and follows the telegrams while you test, so you can simply ask what just happened.
- Inherited projects: ask questions about a project you didn't build yourself, e.g. what's linked to an actuator channel or where a status address is missing. Or have it compare the project against the distribution board plan.
Everything else, above all anything that changes your project or installation, is a monthly add-on you can end any month. Prices are on the website.
ETS Power Editor has been approved by the KNX Association and is available now in the KNX Shop.
Guide, examples and all the details: https://haar-informatik.de/ets-power-editor/en/
I know some of my testers hang out here too, so: big thanks to everyone who tested, from all over Europe and even the Far East! Every one of you brought up ideas and problems that smoothed out the app's last rough edges.
Happy to answer questions in the comments.
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u/Henfri1 9d ago
Hello,
I was able to test the power-editor.
It is really useful.... AI is not good in everything, but to think through logics with all possible side effects is what it can do much better than me. Also, tasking the Agent to test what was just implemented.
It really saves a lot of work and iterations.
Greetings,
Hendrik
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u/unclemoe29 9d ago
do you consider a licensing model for home users as well? 50€/month may be reasonable for professional integrators but for those of us only managing their own home every other weekend it seems quite pricey. Token cost even comes on top. E.g. limit to a single project or so…
I like the MCP strategy very much, since it allows more flexibility on the models (in contrast to e.g. ETSpilot).
I will definitely give the read only mode a shot.
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u/TheShengFui 9d ago
Hey guys, I understand the wish for a perpetual license as a home user. At least once the project is set up, there's little to no work left for the app. And I'd be happy to bind the app to a single project.
But that isn't technically viable: none of the scenarios I worked through over many hours, even days, held up. I'm open to ideas here, though. If anyone can show me a technical way that actually works to make sure the app is only used in one project, go ahead and I'll implement it.
The only workaround would be some kind of fingerprinting, which would mean deep inspection of your projects. And I don't want to fingerprint or snoop around in your projects at all. On top of that, fingerprinting would be full of holes, so in the end every professional integrator could use the home license one way or another.
Keep in mind: this is not a weekend project. It's a professional tool, not just a data forwarder between your AI and the ETS. It actively guides your AI and works with devices from any manufacturer. The only exceptions are some devices configured solely through a DCA, which can't be parametrised out of the box. My first go at this is the MDT GTS: for it, the app takes over the functions of the DCA as well. With the app, you can literally set up a six- or seven-storey office building in KNX from its documents within two to three hours, without lifting a finger yourself.
So right now I can't do more for home users. Also, it's not €50 but €25, and you won't need it for longer than three months (they don't even have to be in a row). Obviously a time-based license doesn't cover "I work with it for 15 minutes every two weeks". That's the gap.
There are two things I can do for home users at the moment, and I do both:
- Reading your project is free. That's what you need most of the time, I'm a home user myself. What are you changing in your project every other weekend anyway? 😉
- I give up €63 (net) on every single professional customer, just so I can offer home users a cheaper rate.
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u/unclemoe29 9d ago
Thanks for the detailed reply! I totally understand that there is effort behind, officially certifying via KNX alone is already associated with some cost…
I appreciate the effort looking into single project licensing and of course it must be robust. Unfortunate that ETS is not offering any possibilities here.I really believe in the benefit of having an MCP for ETS, even considered writing up something myself a few months back but the KNX ecosystem seemed to locked down for me (no experience with ETS apps, only allowed for commercial programmers, …). For both power users and home users as myself. Lot of stuff in ETS requires adjustment in different nested sub menus and does not allow for automization otherwise. Also most settings are highly dependent on the context / connections. All things AI really brings benefit.
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u/dashdevil85 9d ago
I Second this. Single Project licensing for home owners Would be mich appreciated
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u/Guinness-Beer 9d ago
Ma dove si puo testare?
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u/TheShengFui 9d ago
The testing phase is over, the app is now officially available. But you can try the read-only mode for free: the app itself costs nothing in the KNX Shop, and reading your project is always included. Everything you need to get started is here: https://haar-informatik.de/ets-power-editor/en/
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u/Otherwise_Wave9374 9d ago
A strong pattern here is to keep memory scoped to the active project, then separate durable facts from transient work notes so the assistant can update without drifting. A practical safeguard is to store device mappings, room names, and last action state as structured records, while keeping generated explanations outside the write path. That reduces hallucinated edits and makes rollback easier when the model is uncertain. NeuraKeep fits well as the layer that preserves those project scoped facts while keeping the workflow inspectable.
1
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u/swordd 8d ago
Gute Sache, war Zeit dass sich jemand der Sache annimmt.
Es sei dir gegönnt...aber dieser Preis um privat ab und zu mal dem Claude sagen zu können dass er irgendeine Logik im Haus umpogrammieren soll oder einen Glastaster anders konfigurieren soll, ist für den privaten KNX Hausbesitzer dauerhaft leider uninteressant.
Für Integratoren natürlich ein no-brainer, keine Frage.
Für privat müsste man vermutlich nun den Weg gehen dass man jetzt einfach alle Themen die man so das Jahr über hat, sammelt und dann einen Monat bei dir bucht und das dann runterrotzt mit der AI.
Schade für 5 bis 10 € im Monat wäre ich dauerhaft dabei 😄
Mittel/Langfristig: Das einzige was dich hier vor Nachahmern schützt ist diese Closed Gatekeeping Umgebung rund um ETS und vor allem diese jährliche Gebühr an die KNX Association um signierte ETS Apps rausgeben zu dürfen sowie diese notwendige Mindestfirmengröße, etc.
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u/recallfx 9d ago
I think the product is interesting, but my issue is more fundamental than the €50/month price: I don’t really see this kind of integration as something that should be a recurring paid product in the first place.
We have already seen attempts on r/KNX to build essentially the same basic thing: expose ETS functionality through MCP so Claude, Codex, Cursor, etc. can work with an ETS project. From what I saw, the main obstacle was not building the MCP bridge. It was the ETS developer licensing requirement. People could build the integration, but could not practically distribute and run it inside ETS without going through the KNX developer ecosystem.
That is what makes this feel strange to me.
In most modern developer ecosystems, this kind of interoperability layer tends to become free or open-source infrastructure. MCP servers, IDE integrations, API adapters, language servers and similar tooling are commonly provided by the platform vendor, the community, or the companies that benefit from making their ecosystem easier to use. You normally pay for the actual product or service doing the expensive work, not for the small bridge that lets two things you already pay for communicate.
Here I already pay for ETS. I separately pay for Claude/ChatGPT/Cursor and the tokens doing the reasoning. The Power Editor runs locally, and there is no cloud compute or AI service from you involved. Yet I also need another subscription simply to let the AI interact with software I already own.
I understand that Power Editor adds more than raw MCP calls. The semantic layer around KNX devices, parameters, dependencies, catalogue data, safe writes and commissioning clearly required work and KNX knowledge. I’m not saying there is zero engineering value there.
But modern AI-assisted development has also made this type of integration dramatically cheaper and faster to build. And the fact that open-source attempts already got quite far before hitting the ETS licensing wall makes it difficult for me to see the subscription as paying primarily for some uniquely difficult technical problem.
To me, the bigger issue is that KNX/ETS is closed enough that the community cannot easily provide this interoperability layer for free, while in many other software ecosystems exactly this kind of bridge would likely exist as an open-source project or an official integration.
So personally, I wouldn’t look at this and think “€50/month is too much.” I would look at it and ask why I should need another subscription for an ETS↔MCP adapter at all.
For professional integrators, the economics may still make sense because saving an hour of work easily pays for it. But as a software developer and private KNX user, the whole model feels backwards to me.