Loxone Tree, Air and 1-Wire — Choosing the Field Layer

Air: wireless where cable is the constraint

Air is a wireless link for sensors, controls and actuators. It is useful in refurbishments, heritage interiors, rented space and any room where chasing walls would cost more than the device. Wireless does not remove engineering: radio path, interference, battery replacement, pairing and device ownership all need a plan. Batteries are a maintenance item, not a commissioning detail, and the building's IT or security team may have views about radio use. Use Air where it solves a real constraint, not as a substitute for thinking about the cable route. If the building has a wireless policy, apply it from the start; adding a radio network after handover is harder than agreeing one before installation, and the device list will have changed.

• Plan the radio path before fixing devices
• Record battery type and replacement cycle
• Agree radio use with IT and security

1-Wire: simple sensing, not control

1-Wire is a low-speed bus for small sensors, most commonly temperature probes on pipes, tanks and plant. It is inexpensive and easy to extend, which makes it attractive for plant-room monitoring, frost protection and metering support. It is not a general control bus: it is slow, electrically simple and intended for sensing. Keep 1-Wire segments short and documented, label each probe, and record the conversion or offset used. A temperature reading is only useful if the next engineer knows which pipe it belongs to. The same discipline applies to any simple sensor bus: label, record and keep the segment plan with the panel schedule, not only in the installer's notebook or a photograph on someone's phone.

• Use it for probes, not for sequences
• Label every sensor at the pipe
• Record offsets and conversion factors

Choosing by zone, not by ideology

The right answer is usually a mix. A new-build hotel may use Tree in guest rooms, 1-Wire in the plant room and Air for a few retrofit corridors. A heritage villa may use Air almost everywhere and 1-Wire where cable is easy. A plant room may use wired fieldbus for deterministic control and 1-Wire for monitoring. Decide zone by zone, record the choice and its reason in the design, and keep the field layer consistent within each zone. Consistency reduces spares, training and commissioning errors. The worst outcome is a different field layer in every room because no one wrote the rule down; the second worst is one layer stretched beyond its physical limits.

• One field layer per zone where practical
• Record the reason for each choice
• Standardise spares and training by layer

Loxone Air and 1-Wire in practice

Loxone Air is the wireless field layer for rooms where cabling is impractical: retrofit apartments, heritage ceilings, moving partitions and occupied spaces. Plan device density and battery replacement access before commissioning. Loxone 1-Wire is a separate low-speed bus for temperature sensors and identity devices; it is useful for plant, risers and metering points where a simple two-wire run is more practical than a controller per floor. Neither layer replaces a wired backbone for high-density I/O. Use them where the building geometry or retrofit constraints make them the lower-risk option, and document the radio plan and bus topology in the handover pack.