Meet Ramses
I already had HomeAssistant running at home. Using so-called Integrations you can link various ‘smart’ hardware brands to his home automation system. What ‘smart’ devices do you have in your home? Manufacturers sometimes offers an app to control their devices. Those apps often pass all your data via a cloud (server on the internet): a security risk, and limited to what data the manufacturer wants to expose. A few examples:
- Ikea Tradfri: Ikea Smart 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
Some have an API
Some manufacturers share the data their app uses as an application programming interface API to which HA can connect. If they don’t, you have to find out for yourself what data is passed around via Zigbee, WiFo or Bluetooth, next try to understand what all that data means and how you can imitate some of it. When they apply advanced encryption, reverse-engineering aq protocol is nearly impossible!
As Open Source python programms, people code Integrations for HomeAssistant (HA). I installed a few in HA, such as PowerView and Ikea Tradfri. From a privacy and security standpoint it is preferred to connect directly to a device, bypassing these APIs.
For our Nibe F1255 heat pump there is a Swedish program that connects to the ModBus connection instead of via the API, and sends/receives MQTT messages via Wi-Fi on a PiZero microcontroller.
HVAC Integrations?
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 allow professional mechanics to access this information. And they don’t like to share that info either (if they are allowed to do so at all).
Not for ClimaRad
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: “You must contact ClimaRad”. Airios appears to be originally the consumer branch of Honeywell/Resideo.
Meet Ramses RF
And with that info I ended up with the open source HA integration Ramses RF, written in python by David Bonnes. From 2021 onwards, he and Peter Price figured out the messages they received with an 868MHz antenna (Ramses-II protocol). They developed the first hardware and software to control heating and DHW (hot tap water) as (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 work with Ramses RF at the time, 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 repository 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
Links
- 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/
pyairios
Unfortunately, I also discovered that I could not control my ClimaRad Ventura HRU with Ramses RF (HA can read it, but you can’t connect a remote to it). Samuel Cabrero from Spain happened to release a solution at the beginning of 2025: using an Airios RF Bridge with the pyairios library and airios HA-integration, Search for “airios + ramses”. See:
Enjoy Reading This Article?
Here are some articles you might like to read next: