Ramses

I already had HomeAssistant. Using so-called Integrations you can link various brands to it. What ‘smart’ devices do you have in your home? Manufacturer sometimes offers an app to control the device. This often works with a cloud (server via the internet): security risk, and depending on what the manufacturer shows data in the app. Examples:

• Ikea Tradfri: Ikea app + Tradfri hub
• Tuya Smart: Tuya app + Tuya bridge
• Nibe heat pump: MyUplink app + UTP
• Luxaflex shutters: PowerView app + bridge
• Casambi lamps (bluetooth): Air app + iPhone as BLE bridge
• Honeywell thermostat, Itho ventilation: evohome + RF bridge

Sometimes a manufacturer shares the data that the app uses, an application programming interface (API](https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_programming_interface). If not, you have to find out for yourself what the visible data mean and how you can imitate it.

Open source, people code Integrations for HomeAssistant (HA). Rather connect directly to device than via the API for security/privacy reasons. I have installed a few, such as PowerView and Ikea Tradfri.

For our Nibe F1255 heat pump there is a Swedish program that is connected to the ModBus connection instead of via the API, and sends and receives messages to MQTT via Wi-Fi on a PiZero microcontroller.

Our HRV fans in the bathroom, bedroom and living room come with an (expensive €100) wireless RF switch. But wouldn’t it be useful to switch them on at certain times, e.g. when you turn on the light in the toilet, or in the morning after getting up on high for an hour?

The manufacturers did not provide any technical information about how the switches “talk” to the fans. On the contrary, they prefer not to have you touch their default settings for fear that complaints will arise. And they want to make money from their “knowledge” by shielding it and only giving professional mechanics this information. And they don’t like to share that info either (if they are allowed to do so at all).

So I opened my ClimaRad HRU - which did not come with a remote control - myself and found a circuit board with an antenna there. Through the stickers I learned that it was an RF antenna and that the print was produced by [Airios] in Holland.

A phone call to Airios didn’t help: “contact ClimaRad”. Airios appears to be originally the consumer branch of Honeywell/Resideo. And with that info I ended up with the open source HA integration Ramses RF, written in python by David Bonnes.

• HA User Forum: Ramses RF thread
• Repo lib: https://github.com/ramses-rf/ramses_rf
• Repo integration: https://github.com/ramses-rf/ramses_cc
• Wiki: https://github.com/ramses-rf/ramses_cc/wiki
• Pypi: https://pypi.org/project/ramses-rf/

From 2021 onwards, David and Peter Price figured out how the messages they received with an 868MHz antenna worked (Ramses-II protocol). For example, the first hardware and software for controlling heating and hot tap water (evohome; HEAT). Dutch users supplemented the code to also control ventilation (Itho, Orcon, Nuaire; HVAC).

But our fans and heat recovery units (NL: WTW, EN: HRU for heat recovery unit) from Vasco and ClimaRad did not yet work with Ramses RF, so I started writing extra code for that. When that code worked well here in the house, I asked David if he wanted to include the code in a new version that all users can install. But he was concerned that my changes could cause problems with other users. He also indicated that his work meant that he had too little time to keep Ramses RF UP-to-date and wrote in the code that he wanted to transfer everything to a new administrator. After 4 months, I took over that task from David in mid-2025. Due to announced changes in HomeAssistant, the Ramses RF integration would no longer work by the end of 2025, so those became my new priorities:

• Blocking file IO during startup
• Outdated (non) entity schemas

Unfortunately, I also discovered that I could not control my ClimaRad Ventura HRVU with Ramses RF (I can read it, but you can’t connect a remote to it). Someone in Spain happened to have come up with something for that at the beginning of 2025: the PyAirios library and airios HA-integrate, which I discovered by searching for “airios + ramses”. More info:

• my own homeassistant-airios-component fork
• my own pyairios fork
• Samuel Cabrero’s pyairios): Python library to interface with Airios RF bridges