RADIO · finished, occupied property

Retrofit automation without opening walls

We automate finished, occupied flats without opening walls: relay modules behind the existing switches, wireless devices and a local controller. First we check the wall boxes and the neutral, and if something will not work, you hear it up front — not halfway through the installation.

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What we do: In-wall relay modules, wireless devices, a local controller
Where: On site, after a wall-box and neutral survey
What you receive: Working control, the documentation and every credential

What retrofit automation means in practice

It means the existing switches, faceplates and cabling stay where they are. Control either moves into a module behind the faceplate, or goes over radio. We do not chase walls or lift finishes, and the flat stays liveable throughout. The constraint is not the technology — it is physical space and whether there is a neutral conductor.

Existing switches kept, control moved behind the faceplate
A wireless segment where the box will not take a module
Existing blind and shading motors wired in through a gateway
A locally running controller, with no cloud dependency

Fitting Shelly modules: where, and on what condition

Modules that fit behind the wall box — most often Shelly — are the cheapest and least invasive route. They are controllable over a local API, so they do not depend on a vendor cloud, and they meter consumption too. They need two things: a neutral in the box, and enough depth behind the module. We check both during the survey, and if either is missing you hear it up front — not during installation.

Box and phase check before anything is ordered
No neutral in the box: what the realistic alternative is
Per-circuit energy metering where the module supports it
Wired into the controller over a local API or MQTT, no cloud

Wireless in a finished flat: where the limit is

Wireless is excellent for lighting, shading, heating and sensors. But where many devices end up in one space, the 2.4 GHz band fills up fast: Zigbee, Thread and Wi-Fi all share it. So a wireless system needs designing too — channel allocation, router coverage, coordinator placement. Skip that, and you get the network that is perfect for a month and then starts dropping devices.

When cabling is worth it anyway

When a renovation is on the table regardless, and the walls will be at least partly open. At that point running the bus cable and network cabling now is disproportionately cheaper than doing it later: the routes can still be chosen freely. Even if only one room is being redone, it is worth pulling a spare run. We will tell you when cable is the better call — even when it means more work for us.

related systems

What we work with here

The full list, organised by layer on the home page, and protocol by protocol in the compatibility matrix.

Retrofit — related systems and protocols
System	Bridge	What we do with it
Zigbee 3.0	coordinator	Channel selection to avoid Wi-Fi collision, planning router coverage, surveying and fixing an unstable network.
Z-Wave	controller stick	Building the network, rebuilding routes, sorting out coexistence between older and 800-series devices.
Matter / Thread	Thread border router	Placing border routers, sorting out coexistence between Thread and existing Zigbee on the same 2.4 GHz band.
Wi-Fi	IoT VLAN / SSID	Separate IoT SSID and VLAN, AP placement, moving cloud-dependent devices to local control where possible.
Somfy / Velux (RTS, io)	RTS / io gateway	Wiring and configuring motors, fitting a gateway to the controller, end-stop and scene programming.
Shelly	local API / MQTT	Fitting behind existing switches without opening walls, energy metering, wiring into the controller over the local API.

what we fix

The situations people bring us for this

Symptom, cause, intervention. These are the most common situations people bring to us — most of them do not need a new system, only a survey and a clean-up of the existing one.

Unstable Zigbee network, devices dropping off

RADIO remote or on-site Symptom · cause · fix Close

Symptom: Devices go unavailable at random, commands are delayed or lost, and re-pairing helps for a few days before it starts again.
Typical cause: Usually channel collision with Wi-Fi, too few mains-powered routers in the mesh, poor coordinator placement, or 2.4 GHz noise from a USB 3.0 port.
What we do: We survey the whole network: channel occupancy, per-device LQI and routing. We change channel, place routers, move the coordinator away on an extension lead, then re-measure.

Retrofit automation in a finished flat, without opening walls

RADIO on-site Symptom · cause · fix Close

Symptom: A finished, occupied flat or house. Opening walls is off the table, but lighting, shading and heating control are needed.
Typical cause: No neutral in the wall box, not enough depth behind the faceplate, or the existing switch layout does not support the number of circuits wanted.
What we do: We work with modules that fit behind the faceplate and with wireless devices. We check the boxes and the phases first — if there is no neutral, you hear that up front, not during installation.

Bringing a mixed system under one interface

CONTROLLER on-site Symptom · cause · fix Close

Symptom: KNX on the lighting, Shelly on the blinds, Zigbee on the sensors, a separate app for each — and none of them aware of the others.
Typical cause: The layers were built separately, there is no common controller looking across them, and no single place where the automation logic lives.
What we do: We bring the layers under one controller through gateways and move the logic to one place, while the bus keeps working on its own if the controller goes down.

what we do

The other layers of the stack

A system rarely stops at one layer. We handle these too, as part of the same installation.

KNX installation and ETS programming in Hungary

Topology design, bus cabling, ETS programming. We also take over existing installations, even when the ETS project is missing.

Details 02

Structured cabling, KNX bus wiring and electrical work

Structured cabling, mains electrical and the camera network, installed under our own electrical qualification.

Details 03

Home Assistant troubleshooting and remote support

Stuck on your own system? Most faults can be measured and fixed remotely.

Details

contact

Book a consultation

Describe what is installed today and where you got stuck. You do not need a finished plan — the point of the consultation is to work out what is realistic. The more specific you are (protocols, devices, controller), the more precise an answer we can give, even without a site visit.